For Texans Renewables Are The Future, And Coal And Fracking The Past

Renée Cross, Mark P. Jones, Ramanan Krishnamoorti, and Pablo M. Pinto


Texas is far and away the largest U.S. producer of oil and natural gas, owner of the country’s richest oil and gas play (the Permian) and the home of the energy capital of the world (Houston). Yet, far from being bullish on fossil fuels, Texans view renewables as the most promising sources of energy for the United States as they look ahead, and conversely believe the country should be shifting its reliance away from fossil fuels, especially oil and natural gas produced by fracking.

The Hobby School of Public Affairs at the University of Houston conducted a representative survey of 1,329 Texans 18 and older between January 12 and January 20. In the survey the respondents were asked if they favored expanding, reducing or maintaining at the present level 10 different sources of energy in the United States: coal mining, ethanol and other types of biomass, geothermal power plants, hydroelectric dams, hydraulic fracturing (fracking) for oil and natural gas production, nuclear power plants, offshore conventional oil and natural gas, onshore conventional oil and natural gas, solar power plants, and wind turbine farms.

An absolute majority of Texans favor expanding four energy sources, all renewables, as the country looks toward the future. The most popular targets for expansion are solar power plants (69% want to expand them as a source of U.S. energy) followed by wind turbine farms (63%), geothermal power plants (58%), and hydroelectric dams (56%). 

The expansion of U.S. reliance on solar power plants is favored by an overwhelming majority of Texans who identify as Democrats (83%), but also by three-quarters of Independents (77%), and even 50% of Republicans. In a similar vein the expansion of U.S. reliance wind turbine farms is favored by 82% of Democrats, 64% of Independents, and by two-fifths (44%) of Republicans.

In contrast, a plurality of Texans believes the U.S. should be reducing its reliance on coal mining (50% want to reduce U.S. reliance on it as an energy source) and reducing its reliance on fracking for oil and natural gas (42%). Conversely, only 19% and 27% of Texans believe the country should be expanding its reliance on coal mining and fracking for oil and natural gas respectively.

More than three-fifths (64%) of Democrats want to reduce U.S. reliance on the use of fracking to produce oil and natural gas compared to only 9% who want to expand fracking. In contrast, almost half (47%) of Republicans want to expand the use of fracking, compared to less than a fifth (17%) who want to reduce the country’s reliance on fracking. Independents are relatively equidistant between these two extremes with 28% favoring an expansion and 42% a reduction of fracking.

Other energy sources such as onshore and offshore conventional oil and natural gas and nuclear power plants have a roughly equal three-way split among those Texans who want to expand, reduce, and maintain the country’s energy matrix’s reliance on them.

Responses from the survey reflect a convergence of public opinion in Texas with the rest of the nation on issues of sustainable energy, carbon management and support for policies aimed at mitigating the impact of anthropogenic greenhouse gas emissions on climate change. A December 2020 report by the Hobby School of Public Affairs and UH Energy, shows that Texans, just like respondents around the nation, believe that the government should promote, incentivize and subsidize carbon management technologies and that oil and gas companies should embrace those technologies. Texans are getting ready for a greener economy and express a willingness to pay for cleaner energy sources. They are concerned about climate change but realize that the transition to a sustainable future will not happen overnight. It will require a joint effort by government, consumers and producers of energy (including oil and gas) to identify sound policy changes and environmental stewardship practices.


Renée D Cross is the Senior Director of the Hobby School of Public Affairs at the University of Houston. Renée worked as the district director in the office of a state representative for two years before joining the staff of the University of Houston Center for Public Policy as a researcher. Now with the Hobby School of Public Affairs for 21 years (the Center for Public Policy is one of several entities housed within the Hobby School since 2016), Renée serves as the School’s senior director. Her academic interests include Houston and Texas government, politics, and history; urban politics; and civic engagement and voting. In addition to serving as the course instructor for the School’s internship programs, Renée teaches upper level political science courses such as Texas Politics, Urban Politics, State and Local Government & Politics, Campaign Politics, and Participation & Democracy in American Politics at the University of Houston and the University of Houston-Downtown.

Mark P. Jones, Ph.D., is the fellow in political science at the Baker Institute, the Joseph D. Jamail Chair in Latin American Studies and a professor in the Department of Political Science at Rice University.

Dr. Ramanan Krishnamoorti is the chief energy officer at the University of Houston. Prior to his current position, Krishnamoorti served as interim vice president for research and technology transfer for UH and the UHSystem. During his tenure at the university, he has served as chair of the UH Cullen College of Engineering’s chemical and biomolecular engineering department, associate dean of research for engineering, professor of chemical and biomolecular engineering with affiliated appointments as professor of petroleum engineering and professor of chemistry. Dr. Krishnamoorti obtained his bachelor’s degree in chemical engineering from the Indian Institute of Technology Madras and doctoral degree in chemical engineering from Princeton University in 1994.

Pablo M. Pinto is an Associate Professor and Director of the Center for Public Policy at the University of Houston’s Hobby School of Public Affairs, and the co-editor of the journal Economics & Politics. Pinto is a UH Energy Faculty Fellow, a non-resident Scholar in the Latin America Initiative of the Baker Institute at Rice University, and adjunct research scholar for the Saltzman Institute of War and Peace Studies at Columbia University. Pinto’s areas of expertise are international and comparative political economy, comparative politics, and quantitative methods. Pinto holds an M.A. from Aoyama Gakuin University in Japan, and a Ph.D. in Political Science and International Affairs from the University of California, San Diego. He received a Law Degree from Universidad Nacional de La Plata, Argentina. Prior to joining the University of Houston in 2014, Pinto was a member of the faculty of Columbia University. He taught at the Escuela Nacional de Gobierno in his native Argentina, and the Universidad Nacional de La Plata, where he founded and directed the Department for Asia-Pacific Studies. He also worked as Chief Counsel for Toyota Argentina.

UH Energy is the University of Houston’s hub for energy education, research and technology incubation, working to shape the energy future and forge new business approaches in the energy industry.

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