AUSTIN, Texas — Solar energy might be clean, cheap and slow the heating of the planet. But that’s not what the solar industry wants lawmakers to focus on.

Instead, solar leaders are at the Texas Capitol this week presenting their industry as a lucrative pathway toward American “energy dominance.”

On Wednesday, they pitched solar and battery storage to Texas legislators as a key source of jobs and rural renewal and — above all — the fastest possible way to get new electricity onto the state grid.

“We’re spreading the good news,” said Daniel Giese, Texas director for the Solar Energy Industries Association (SEIA), as he walked between legislators’ offices.

The news: that 75 percent of Texas counties now receive revenue from renewables production and battery storage, per industry data — which meant spillover effects for schools, hospitals and roads in counties where there has, increasingly, been little other source of economic growth.

Across Texas, solar, wind and battery projects will pay $20 billion in taxes — and $30 billion in landowner payments — across their lifetimes, according to a renewable industry-funded report by University of Texas professor Mark Rhodes.

Solar industry leaders' new pitch combined these local impacts with national and global implications as part of a story that increasingly centers on Texas, which leads the nation in solar and wind energy and is No. 2 in the growing field of battery storage. Solar and battery storage added more power to the Texas grid in 2024 than any other single power source, per research from the Dallas Federal reserve.

And with the state and national grids both facing surging demand from electrification, climate change and data centers, the industry argues that combined solar and battery plants are the fastest way to get new power online.

A recent report from SEIA found that solar and battery plants take just two years to get on the grid — about twice as fast as combined-cycle gas plants, and seven times as fast as nuclear power plants.

But despite that leading position when it comes to speed — and the state's surging demand for power — solar faces strong political headwinds in Texas, said Abigail Hopper, national head of SEIA.

The state’s solar boom, she said, isn't happening in “a place like California where everyone's like, ‘Oh, yay. We're so glad you're here.' It is happening in a state where there has been some significant pushback in the legislative cycle.”

As solar energy has established a bigger and bigger presence in Texas, she added, the industry has become “a bigger and bigger political threat” to a Republican state political consensus still largely built around fossil fuels.

November's elections appear to have raised risks for solar in the state Legislature. Industry leaders' pitch this week follows a purge of 14 veteran state House members led by Texas Gov. Greg Abbott (R). While the anti-incumbent primary campaign aimed to clear the House of rural members who had fought against school vouchers, it had a side effect: Many of the Republicans most friendly to Texas’ nation-leading wind and solar industry lost their seats too.

Among the new members who came to office in that purge is staunchly conservative state Rep. Don McLaughlin (R), who described himself to The Hill as something of a solar skeptic. "Texas’ energy future will........

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