The previously unreported video stands in contrast to Talarico’s claim that he supports his state’s fossil fuel industry
Texas Democratic Senate nominee James Talarico led a student protest calling for the city of Austin to divest from a coal-fired power plant that remains the city’s single largest power plant and provides it with 10 percent of its electricity, previously unreported video footage unearthed by the Washington Free Beacon shows.
Talarico was one of three speakers at the October 2009 “Rise Up Against Coal” press conference, where he called on city leaders to phase out the plant, the Fayette Power Project, in favor of solar energy. Talarico, who introduced himself as “Jimmy Talarico,” a University of Texas at Austin student government representative, touted a student government resolution he helped pass endorsing a plan for the city to divest from the plant.
“It was a great success for environmentalists on campus … and also students who want to pay less with their energy bills and who want a sustainable economy and a Green Collar Economy when they come out of college,” he said, according to video footage posted at the time by an account affiliated with the left-wing environmental group Public Citizen. Following the press conference, Talarico and the other students said they would enter Austin’s city hall and directly lobby leaders to implement a “clean energy portfolio,” a plan that would lead to the shutdown of fossil fuels.
Talarico’s “Green Collar Economy” remark appeared to be a reference to a 2008 book of the same name by Democratic political operative Van Jones. It was one of the first public pushes for a “Green New Deal,” with Jones calling for “transitioning from a pollution-based economy to a green economy.” Former vice president Al Gore—a top proponent of Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez’s (D., N.Y.) more recent Green New Deal proposal, which experts say would cost $93 trillion—praised the book for illustrating “the best solutions for the survivability of our planet.”
News of Talarico’s anti-oil student organizing comes as the Democrat runs for Senate as a supporter of Texas’s enormous oil and gas industry. On his website’s “Energy & Environment” section, Talarico touts the state’s status as “the energy leader of the world” and says he wants to “add to Texas’ hundreds of thousands of oil, gas, wind, and solar jobs.” Last month, meanwhile, he released his “New American Dream” economic agenda, which calls to “partner” with the oil and gas industry as part of an “all-of-the-above” energy approach.
Those positions stand in stark contrast to Talarico’s work at the University of Texas at Austin and in the State Legislature, where he represents a portion of Austin.
Talarico, for example, introduced a March 2021 bill to “ensure every public school student in Texas has a strong science-based understanding of human-caused climate change and its consequences,” something he said would “inspire a new generation of climate activists.” That same month, he introduced the Texas Climate Action Act, which would have required the state to cut its carbon emissions in half by 2030 and by 90 percent by 2050, figures that are nearly identical to Ocasio-Cortez’s Green New Deal. A year and a half earlier, in September 2019, Talarico marched in a “Youth Climate Strike” in which Texas students walked out of class to march to the Texas State Capitol as part of far-left Swedish climate activist Greta Thunberg’s “Fridays For Future” movement, the Free Beacon reported.
“So proud to stand with our young people during their Youth Climate Strike at the Texas Capitol,” Talarico wrote at the time in a Facebook post that showed him posing with two young girls. “Students around the world are walking out of school to save our planet. It’s time for the grown-ups to follow their lead. #ClimateStrike.”
In a statement to the Free Beacon, Talarico campaign spokesman J.T. Ennis dismissed the video as a 17-year-old distraction. He did not address Talarico’s views on coal power.
“James went to public schools funded by the oil and gas industry and knows how essential oil and gas is to Texas’ economy—it’s why he supports an all of the above energy strategy, supports LNG production, and backed legislation to support the oil and gas industry in the Texas legislature,” Ennis told the Free Beacon.
The Fayette Power Project remains Austin’s largest single source of electricity, generating enough to power roughly 900,000 homes. Austin Energy, the public utility that provides power in the city, uses about a third of that power, while the remainder is sold to other parts of the state.
Because Austin Energy is a 50 percent owner of the plant, activists have called on the utility and city leaders to divest from and retire it. The city has come close to moving forward with such plans. In 2014, it reached a settlement with the Sierra Club to shutter its portion of the plant by 2022. Two years later, in 2016, it passed a resolution to shut the plant by 2023, and in 2020, the Austin City Council reaffirmed its commitment to close the plant in the near future as part of its net-zero plans.
But the city has failed to act on those plans, and the plant remains in full operation, providing Austin with 10 percent of its power supply, according to Austin Energy’s latest annual disclosures. Without that power, Austin Energy would likely have to pass millions of dollars in costs to customers, the Texas Tribune reported in 2023. “If Austin sold out of that coal plant, it might not be able to replace that energy with anything less expensive,” Ed Hirs, an energy economist at the University of Houston, told the outlet at the time.
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