You are correct about Texas not wanting the Federal gov't to have much control over their energy grid and that is a large part of the reason that we are not connected to other parts of the national grid.

Back a few decades ago when Clean Air regulations came into play (Texas was not on the national grid at the time) Texas used their control of the Texas grid to allow grandfathering in of most of the dirty coal generation plants with no requirements that they meet federal standards. Texas mined lignite for many of their plants and bought coal from Wyoming's Powder River Basin for others. New plants under construction had to meet the new standards but old plants could keep on rocking along spewing their ash and pollutants all over the state and everyone downwind. Supposedly it was allowed because utilities argued that it was too expensive to bring them into compliance.

What a joke. This is the same state where a chicken billionaire walked the floor of the legislature passing envelopes of cash to representatives and at the time said that this was just the way to do business here.

And after last year's winter break-down they crafted a handy way to pass all the costs of electricity related to their failures to do simple maintenance and upgrades on to Texas taxpayers while at the same time lobbying and winning property tax reductions which conveniently enough, finances a large part of the state's operations. People keep voting for the same old losers and then griping when it bites them in the ass.

So many parts of Texas are broken and dysfunctional that it is sad but funny to hear someone say they want to move here for any reason. We used to be great but the clowns are driving the short bus here now and everyone wants to ride since it's cheaper than the last place they lived, maybe.