The Mitchell Foundation is committed to clean energy in Texas and supports strategic efforts that ensure that the state’s growing demand for power is minimized but met with the cleanest and water-leanest sources of electricity possible. The foundation seeks to invest in initiatives that demonstrate a comprehensive understanding of Texas’s competitive electricity market structure and can leverage that knowledge to create innovative and effective energy policies that ensure reliability and resource adequacy while reducing the environmental and health impacts of power generation.
Texas has a tremendous opportunity to benefit from a new, green economy based on clean energy sources and proven energy efficiency measures. With abundant sun and wind, Texas is blessed with plentiful natural resources for clean energy generation. Our energy and engineering expertise and can-do attitude ensures that the state can capture its potential for increasing energy efficiency and reliance on renewable fuels.
The foundation is convinced that Texas can meet its projected growth in demand for electricity while simultaneously adding new jobs in the state, and reducing air emissions and reliance on constrained water resources. To achieve a clean and water-lean electricity market that emphasizes market drivers and fair prices, the foundation supports efforts that promote demand reduction, renewable resources, and grid and utility business model modernization.
To achieve its strategic goals, the Clean Energy program supports
1. efforts to bring an array of diverse, centrist-thinking communities to bear on clean energy policy issues;
2. policies and innovative mechanisms that increase cost-effective energy efficiency activities;
3. the development of renewable energy markets to help fill the efficiency gap in electricity supply;
4. reduced reliance on traditional coal-fired electricity production;
5. continued in-depth analysis and policy development related to the energy-water nexus.