A brutal and record-early heat wave is baking Texas this week — bringing the triple-digit temperatures typical of July to the middle of May.

The sudden heat spike, which was made more likely by the decades-long failure to stop burning fossil fuels, creates an acute danger for a populace not yet acclimatized to summer heat.

It also comes at a fraught time: as the Texas Legislature debates measures that experts say would curtail the very power supply that will keep the air conditioning on and deadly blackouts at bay.

This week, the state House advanced S.B. 715, a bill passed last week by the Senate that would require existing wind and solar plants to provide backup power when they aren’t operating — a measure the state business lobby said would lead to blackouts and higher power costs.

Last month, the Senate also passed S.B. 388, a bill requiring that every new watt of wind and solar power also come with a corresponding new watt of coal, nuclear or gas — despite a turbine supply chain bottleneck that will make it very difficult to build new gas plants before the 2030s.

The Texas Senate has also passed S.B. 819, which significantly restricts where windmills and solar farms can be built while creating no such restrictions for coal or gas plants.

This push, which the Texas renewables industry calls an existential threat, is happening alongside an effort by the national GOP, which controls Congress and the White House, to slash Biden-era clean energy tax credits and

© The Hill