The following can be attributed to Tony Bennett, president and CEO of the Texas Association of Manufacturers:

The House State Affairs Committee will hear testimony tomorrow, April 19th, on CSSB 2012, related to the electricity market and performance penalties. The Texas Association of Manufacturers (TAM) and its members have grave concerns about the Public Utility Commission’s proposed Performance Credit Mechanism (PCM), an unproven plan that will require consumers to pay billions in additional costs every year to existing generators. Any implementation of PCM must include strong guardrails to ensure reliability and cost efficiency standards for both business and residential customers, provisions that are included in Chairman Todd Hunter’s more robust version of SB 2012 being heard in committee tomorrow.

While TAM opposes the PCM, we support the emphasis on strong performance penalties, a requirement that reliability must be measured and balanced against cost, and an annual cap of $500 million on performance credits for generators across the ERCOT market.

We appreciate Chairman Hunter’s leadership and the Committee’s attention to these critical issues.

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