A Texas energy newsletter previews the state's energy agenda heading into the 2027 legislative session.

House Bill 5200 would have required ERCOT to evaluate grid-enhancing technologies, including sensors, software, and advanced conductors that raise the capacity of an existing transmission line. It passed the House 128-0 in 2025. The Senate never gave it a hearing.

Its author, State Rep. Rafael Anchía (D-Dallas), says no senator would carry it, and he plans to refile it for the session that opens Jan. 12. Lawmakers return to Austin as the large-load queue tops 400 gigawatts, mostly from data centers, and Gov. Greg Abbott has frozen data center development.

On this week's Energy Capital Podcast, Joshua Rhodes talks with Anchía, who has represented House District 103 since 2005, about how a bill becomes Texas law and what the 2027 session holds for the grid.

**How a Texas bill dies.** About 1,200 of the 8,700 bills filed in 2025 reached the governor. Anchía calls the process "a mechanism designed to kill legislation" and tells advocates to build coalitions between sessions.

**SB 6's price of entry.** The Texas Public Utility Commission's rules under SB 6, the 2025 large-load interconnection law, require a $100,000 study fee for large-load connection to the grid and $50,000 per megawatt in security.

**Predictable rules.** Anchía, once skeptical of Texas's competitive market, says it works when the rules stay predictable. He names what undercuts it: shifting tariffs, threats to re-regulate, and favoring one fuel over another.

**Upgrades and new lines.** He supports the 765-kilovolt lines the PUCT began approving in August. Utilities such as Oncor recover new-line costs more easily than upgrade costs, he says, so he wants grid-enhancing technologies made a condition of new builds.

**Winter risk after Uri.** Experts tell Anchía that a severe winter storm worries them more than summer peaks. He wants proof that the Railroad Commission's 2022 gas weatherization rules will hold through a storm.

**The 2027 list.** Anchía expects bills will be filed requiring data centers to disclose their energy and water use and ending their taxpayer subsidies. He also wants a temporary fund, modeled on the old System Benefit Fund, to help the Texans least able to absorb price shocks pay their electric bills.

Also covered in the full episode: his two decades in the House, from deregulation through transmission line buildout; his predictions for the Nov. 3 Texas House and statewide races; and what a change in control of Congress would mean for Texas energy.

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**Joshua Rhodes:** Chairman Anchía, welcome to the Energy Capital Podcast.

**Rafael Anchía:** Josh, thanks for having me.

**Joshua Rhodes:** Absolutely. Before we get into any substantive policy positions, I wanted to get a little civics lesson, because I don't think we do civics enough. It's been a long time since I've listened to Schoolhouse Rock's "I'm Just a Bill" in terms of how a bill moves through Congress.

**Rafael Anchía:** I will literally sing that song for you, by the way. I love that song.

**Joshua Rhodes:** That would be great. If we have time, we'll get a rendition. Maybe we can get a harmony going.

**Rafael Anchía:** Love it.

**Joshua Rhodes:** For someone who doesn't follow the Legislature closely, can you walk us through how an idea becomes a law in Texas? Who typically comes up with it, who writes the bill, what happens once it's filed, how it gets through the chambers, and ultimately how it gets to the governor's desk? What's the life cycle of a bill in Texas?

**Rafael Anchía:** For sure. I always let people know that, despite what we learned in Schoolhouse Rock, the legislative process is not a bill-passing machine. It is not—

**Joshua Rhodes:** Okay.

**Rafael Anchía:** —a mechanism designed to pass legislation. It is a mechanism designed to kill legislation. When the bill says, "I think I'm going to be a law someday, I hope," usually it ends up in a pool of blood on those steps, not jumping for joy being signed. People often think, "Wait, isn't it designed to pass bills?" There's only one way to pass a bill. There are a million ways to kill one.

Ideas come from everywhere: constituents, cities, agencies, advocates, industry, legislative studies during the interim period, and often a member's own life experience. What we do first is send a draft to the Texas Legislative Council. They're a nonpartisan group of lawyers who make sure your idea actually fits into an existing place in state law, has all the relevant definitions, and makes sense. They send you back a draft, you iterate on it, and eventually you get something ready to file.

The prefiling period starts right after the November election, on Saturday, November 8. People who want to file a red-meat bill will literally wait in line at the clerk's office to be among the first to file it, then put out a press release and do some media around it. The session does not begin until January 17, 2027. We meet for 140 days during odd-numbered years. There are 150 of us in the House and 31 senators. Don't know how they came up with 31, but our founding mothers and fathers who drafted the structure of our government said 31.

When you file a bill you're excited about, the first gating item is that the speaker has to refer it. I'm a House member. On the Senate side, the lieutenant governor is the presiding officer, and the presiding officer needs to refer the bill to a committee. Then the committee chair decides whether it even gets a hearing. If it gets a hearing and things go well, the chair decides whether it comes up for a vote, and then the committee members vote on it. Most bills don't get out of committee, so getting out is a big deal.

Then it goes through a procedural committee called the Calendars Committee, which places it on the agenda for the floor, and we vote on it. You think you're done, but you're not, because it has to go to the other chamber, the lower chamber as I call it, which is the Texas Senate, and the process starts all over again. If it gets through that process, it goes to the governor for signature. So again, I point