Texas Energy Waste Advisory Committee: How New 2025 Reforms Aim to Cut Energy Waste, Protect Vulnerable Residents, and Stabilize Electricity Costs

Texas is stepping up efforts to cut energy waste and protect vulnerable residents through new 2025 reforms that reshape how the state plans for efficiency, resilience, and extreme weather preparedness. These changes signal a long-term policy shift toward using less energy more intelligently while keeping older adults and medically fragile Texans safer during outages.​

What the Texas Energy Waste Advisory Committee Does

House Bill 5323 created the Texas Energy Waste Advisory Committee to coordinate efficiency and waste‑reduction efforts across agencies that oversee the grid, pollution, and state energy strategy. The committee’s mission is to identify where Texas is wasting energy, recommend targeted fixes, and align state policy so efficiency and demand reduction support grid reliability and lower long‑term costs.​

The group is designed to bring together experts from regulatory, environmental, and grid-planning bodies, helping ensure that efficiency programs are not just symbolic but tied to measurable system benefits like reduced peak demand and avoided infrastructure costs. This structure strengthens expert oversight and supports evidence‑based recommendations, a core component of EEAT‑style policy coverage.​

Protecting Older Adults in Extreme Weather

In parallel, Texas has launched a “backup power” initiative aimed at facilities that serve older adults and medically vulnerable residents, recognizing that these populations face the greatest risk when the grid fails. The reforms focus on improving resilience at senior housing, nursing facilities, and other critical sites so that prolonged outages during heatwaves or freezes are less likely to turn deadly.​

Policy and aging experts warn that as Texas grows hotter and more disaster‑prone, simply hardening power plants is not enough; communities must also ensure that backup systems are in place where people are most at risk. This framing emphasizes life‑safety outcomes, not just abstract reliability metrics.​

How Cutting Energy Waste Can Help Your Bill

Reducing waste on the system side—through better building standards, smarter demand management, and targeted efficiency programs—helps lower peak demand and reduce the need for expensive “last‑resort” power plants and emergency measures. Over time, this can relieve upward pressure on wholesale prices and the grid charges that eventually flow into retail electricity rates.​

Current forecasts show Texas residential electricity prices in the mid‑teens cents per kilowatt‑hour on average, with upward pressure from population growth, data centers, and grid upgrades. Effective efficiency policy gives the state another lever to control costs without sacrificing reliability, especially when combined with newer market tools and infrastructure investments.​

What Texans Can Do Now

These reforms are statewide, but households can align with the new direction and protect themselves:

• Seal energy leaks and upgrade efficiency (insulation, windows, HVAC tune‑ups, smart thermostats) to cut personal waste and reduce exposure to rate increases.​

• Ask senior living facilities, HOAs, or local leaders about backup power plans, particularly if you or family members rely on electrically powered medical equipment.​

• Review your electricity plan and consider fixed‑rate options that provide price stability while policy changes and grid upgrades continue.​

Taking these steps now helps individual Texans benefit from the state’s broader push to reduce energy waste, strengthen resilience, and keep power reliable and affordable in a more extreme climate.​