The Dallas Morning News reports that Sen. Troy Fraser (R-Horseshoe Bay), the chairman of the Senate Natural Resources Committee, is attempting to end the renewable energy program he championed a decade ago, when the Texas wind power industry was just getting started. Wind power now accounts for almost 13,000 megawatts and at times supplies as much as one-quarter of the power being delivered to Texas electric power grid.

“Mission accomplished. We set out to incentivize and get wind started in Texas, and we far surpassed that goal,” Fraser said. “There’s no state that’s come close to what we’ve done.”

With the support of the state’s Public Utility Commission, Fraser wants to freeze the state’s Renewable Energy Credit program, ending a requirement that power retailers buy credits from wind and solar farms to meet state renewable standards. Also, the $7 billion-and-counting Competitive Renewable Energy Zone project, which has constructed 3,600 miles of transmission lines to bring wind power to Dallas-Fort Worth, Houston and Austin, would officially end.

The bill is expected to go before Fraser’s committee on Tuesday, before being moved to the Senate for a vote. Already, renewable energy companies and environmental advocates are starting to lobby to let the program run through 2025, arguing that ending it with so little warning endangers an industry that has created more than 100,000 jobs statewide.

Why are we killing off a program that has been remarkably successful in providing clean renewable energy to Texas?  It couldn’t have anything to do with the oil and gas industry’s influence over the Tea Party dominated Legislature, could it?