It shows in the housing. Prior to runaway housing costs(2018 or so), you could get a house in El Paso that almost looked like something out of Scarface for under 300. It's gone up quite a bit now, but still cheaper than much of the nation.
Yeah there’s been a ton of growth in Monterrey, it feels very new and modern like all the development in Austin. I’m very optimistic about northeast Mexico.
Texas depends on immigrants to grow its economy… Immigrants in Texas' workforce contribute $119 billion to the Texas economy annually in personal income, making up nearly 1 in 5 of all wage dollars in the state.
Further, immigrants make up significant shares of workers in industries like construction (37%), business services (23%), and manufacturing (26%). Immigrants make up even larger shares of more specific essential industries, like 53% of landscaping services, 47% of building services, 42% of meat processing, 22% of restaurant and food services, and a third or more of several manufacturing industries, including those that produce plastic products and electrical products.
I’m not sure what you had in mind when you said the average Texan doesn’t benefit. It seems like they do, since the average Texan lives in a home, comes in contact with landscapes, and uses … products.
I’m thinking like someone who lives in Texas and comes in contact with immigrants. Guest workers, first and second generation Americans. It’s impossible to live in any sizable city in Texas and not see that immigrants are essential to Texas’ economic success.
Cheap/clean energy and Texas don’t seem to line up. They have an oil and natural gas monopoly that goes all the way up to their elected officials. It’s literally why they had that massive grid failure. It wasn’t a capacity issue it was just greed.
Texas exists at the crossroads of both the Midwestern Wind Belt (actually, it gets SE coastal wind too) and the Sun Belt. Also, it has large open areas that are sparsely inhabited, pretty much ideal for building large renewable power plants. The only challenge is paying for transmission.
There's a huge oil & gas industry too, but that energy is more easily exportable (see e.g. Freeport LNG), which can put a floor on prices.
Texas nevertheless enjoys an abundance of renewable energy sources. They have more than any other state including California and are adding more faster than any other state. Their renewable fraction is still not as high as California, because they use so much more energy, but their absolute numbers are very high. Texas also has a natural advantage that their solar resources are far to the west of their population centers, so their "duck curve" looks a little more tolerable.
> To cover debt incurred due to high natural gas prices, utilities outside Texas have had to raise prices. Oklahoma Natural Gas is charging customers up to $7.80 per month for the next 25 years to securitize its costs of $1.4 billion during the crisis.[133] The natural gas industry reaped a windfall profit of $11 billion during the crisis.[22] Texas gas utilities were permitted by the Railroad Commission to issue bonds to cover what they paid to suppliers, to be paid off by customers. Municipal gas companies have also added surcharges to bills
Texas produces the most wind power and the second most solar power of any American state. The most recent power shortage in September was caused by low evening winds; the US DoE responded by allowing Texas to temporarily exceed emissions limits from their gas plants: https://www.ercot.com/about/legal/doe202c
