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Hi, everybody.

Thank you for joining us for this edition of On the Record.

I'm Randy Beamer.

This coming Monday, the CPC Energy Board of Trustees is going to vote on a plan that really sets the direction in terms of how our power is going to be generated for the next decade or more.

And joining us to talk about that is the CEO and president of CPS Energy, Rudy Garza.

Thank you very much for coming in.

Randy, thanks for having me.

Again.

This vote is about the board of trustees deciding one of nine different portfolios that were outlined.

And it looks like portfolio two is going to be approved, and that is cutting back on the coal plant, shutting Jake Spruce one and and what else?

Not as much wind and solar as some had wanted.

Well, look, the reality is CPS energy is number one in solar in Texas, number five in the country and number two in wind.

So we are as committed as any utility in the state of Texas on our renewable portfolio.

What portfolio?

Really the the RAC and ultimately the board.

Great advisory.

Committee advisory committee will ultimately consider really the execution on two different portfolios, a blended portfolio, which is what the second portfolio, you know, really amounts to and a more renewable heavy portfolio that created some date certainties on moving away from natural gas as well.

And so what what portfolio two really does is allows us to keep natural gas in the mix over a longer term while new technologies are developing technologies such as geothermal.

I'm still trying to get a battery storage project under contract.

And so battery storage for will play its role and will continue to invest in in solar production and wind.

You know, I like coastal wind and like coastal wind better than West Texas wind because of the time of the day it blows up, but it also allows us to move the Spruce two unit from coal to a natural gas unit, which really deals with all those assets out there.

They still have a long, useful life left.

So it's it's the right portfolio from a from a financial aspect.

And just to outline exactly what I mean is Jake Spruce, the old coal plant, No lake southeast of town that's going to be closed by 2029.

Well, so the sequencing is what comes next, because remember this, we've also got 250 year old, really old gas steam units that we got to shut down as well.

So those we'd like to shut down first while we're working on our plan to convert Spruce two, We've got to shut down Spruce one by no later than the end of 2027, because by 2028 we'd have to invest another $150 million of environmental controls, which doesn't make sense for 30 year old coal and.

Some of the spruce to convert that natural gas, but also the possibility of using hydrogen as the prices drop.

Explain to us what that means.

Well, so hydrogen is a technology.

How you use hydrogen to blend with with regular natural gas has been something that, you know, industries across the country have been working on.

Texas will be a hub for hydrogen development, primarily because they're industrial, you know, along the coast have a need for use of hydrogen.

Our usage would be a byproduct to that.

But the great thing is the technology that we would convert spruce to number one, it'd be a super efficient unit and it's convert its convertible to blend hydrogen in which lowers the emissions profile.

Lowers the emissions.

What about the cost?

That's expensive.

You know, where does where does it come from?

People under the cost of hydrogen, you know, it's still a little more expensive than than traditional natural gas.

So as that technology develops, the costs will come down with it.

And you get to scale.

If everybody starts using hydrogen in that manner, then the costs will come down.

So that's why it's important.

You know, the P2 portfolio really provides a maximum flexibility to allow time for some of those technologies to develop.

And as we talk about production and of course everybody wants to know about their bills, where are we going to see that the Rate Advisory Committee has been meeting and talking about rate structure and whether businesses are going to pay that discounted rate as much as they have been.

Where are you in that process and when will you adopt that?

Well, we will.

We're just kicking that off in February.

We will start that conversation with the rate advisory committee.

Ultimately, as we talk to our board and ultimately city council about the potential need for, you know, additional rate support.

We would include that element of rate restructuring as part of that conversation.

Now, I will tell you that, you know, today the business community picks up a little bit more cost, you know, so that the residential customers, you know, pay a little less.

And it's within reason.

You know, it's a little it's not equal, but it's not equal.

Right.

So when you start talking about rate structure and how you help those who are least able to pay, you know, what you really get into is that conversation inter class.

So how residential rates are structured within the residential class, that's really, I think would ultimately be the focus of this conversation.

And then how you incent, how you create rates for businesses to go out and buy their own renewables, for instance.

We've got to work on that.

How you incentivize businesses to use less, you know, of our product and be more efficient, we can do that.

But it really is looking at the business class, business customers as a class, looking at the residential customers as a class, and figuring out how to how to tweak the rates from a policy stance.

We're still in the winter winter storm.

URI was in February where the megawatt hour cost went from $50 up to 9000.

Now the legislature cut that to 5000, you said, capped at the last session.

Have we come close to that?

And is the legislature you're going to address that as well as other issues you want this session?

We have not really had an issue with prices getting up to that cabinet may have happened a couple of times.

When wind drops off the table and you got to kick on some you know, some older plants, you know, every now and then you'll see that price spike.

But the problem isn't when it does that for 15 minutes, 30 minutes, couple of hours in the day.

The problem is, like, Gary, that you jacked that price up to 9000 or 5000 for days on end.

That's when it creates a pretty significant point.

So you built in contingency where if it goes up to 5000, we're okay.

We're pretty much the same in terms of rate.

Well, I'll tell you, this past winter cold snap up for Christmas, all of our generation was available.

You know, we did see some gas supply issues that we've kind of worked through over the first day of it.

But overall, we had plenty of power for for for our customers.

And that's the key.

It's we got to have enough resources so that we don't have to worry about being exposed to too high market conditions.

And how did wind and solar perform in that?

Because winter storm Uri, that was a problem.

And people said, Oh, it's not enough, but this time it did a little better.

Well, I'll tell you, the first day when really did well, solar did pretty well because we didn't have rain and we didn't have precipitation.

So it was it was sunny.

So during the day works great.

The first day was a little better than the second day in terms of renewable, renewable, showing up.

But then about 6:00, you see those resources starting to come down and you got to have natural gas pick up.

And actually as part of our presentation to council last week, we showed them, you know, how that that performance looked and what the impacts of prices were.

All right.

Well, thank you very much.

I'd like to have you come back some time to talk about more about the rates as well as how power gets around Texas and whether the legislature addresses that.

And as they do that, I'd like to have you come back, sir.

Thanks very much.

Rudy Garza, president and CEO of CPS Energy.

Thanks.

Thank you, Renee.

Right now, chances are you either know somebody who has COVID or the flu or RSV or have had it recently, as we are still in the throes of what is sometimes called a triple Democrat, to talk about what the truths of the myths of all of this and the reporting on it is Larry Schlesinger, who is president and CEO of Texas Biomed, and do a lot of research on this and the vaccine.

Thank you very much for coming in.

First of all, some of those somewhat, I think, too highly publicized myths about what is going on, what COVID is blamed for and what the virus I'm sorry, what the vaccine is even blamed for deaths attributed to COVID.

Some people say it's not really that or it's to the vaccine.

Tell us about that.

Yes, well, almost every day now, if there is an unexpected death or a challenge with football player as we know about, it's attributed to the vaccine, for example, and it's absolutely false.

This is has nothing to do with COVID 19.

COVID 19 is still with us and is a serious virus heading forward is going to be with us.

It's estimated that there is still in this country 4 to 500 deaths a day due to COVID.

And this is truly proving viral infection leading to a bad outcome in the most vulnerable populations.

Actually, if you annualize that, that's great.

More serious than, let's say, an influenza outbreak.

So we're still having challenges with COVID, not like we used to.

And the virus continues to evolve.

How tough is it to knock down these rumors and pseudo science explanation is that are really viral as well?

I think it's very hard.

The social media really picks up on a lot of these stories, and I can't get out there enough to talk about the fact versus fiction.

The data are out in this country.

1.1 million people have died of COVID 19.

It is now.

COVID, not with it.

No, you're right.

Of COVID 19.

And the vaccine is now estimated to have saved 3.2 million lives in this country.

It saved about 20 million hospitalizations and over $1,000,000,000,000 to the health care industry.

Just like history, vaccines prevent death hundreds of millions of lives as a result of vaccination.

So this vaccine has been very useful.

Another myth is that the vaccine is causing these mutants that we talk about, these variants that cause it's true that vaccination or therapy can put some pressure on a virus.

But these viruses are evolving because the virus is still in the community.

If we had no vaccines or treatments, the virus would still evolve.

The new strain, the XP 1.5 would still be with us because we're infected with multiple strains that evolve over time and this virus really adapts.

So it's not due to the vaccine.

How about you are working on vaccines?

You have been and where are you in coming up with the vaccines that are so-called hybrid that are working on the different strains?

Right.

So a couple of things.

They are one, we continue our work with the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation.

We have about five places in the country.

We've tested now over 300 new antibody combinations to treat COVID 19.

We're part of the Dream team.

Scientists at the Institute over $500 million of the new money and academic institutions around the country on new antivirals for COVID 19.

Right to Texas.

Biomed right here, right here.

Not not all of that money, but right in that dream team.

In addition, we have a group at the institute working on what's called a live attenuated vaccine, using a new approach for COVID 19.

What is the goal of the next generation more durable that is longer lasting than morini and broader, that is able to handle mutants better or variants better as they evolve over time?

But when you use the word live and vaccine, some people are going to hear that and go, Oh, I don't want that because there's the live virus that's going to be put in me and I can get it from.

I have news for you live Attenuated vaccines have a much longer history than RNA vaccines.

The smallpox vaccine, yellow fever vaccine and others are live attenuated vaccines.

And these are vaccine that have been rigorously tested to not cause disease.

But what they do is they educate the immune system so that we're prepared for if we get the virus.

It's a very established technology, but the goal is we need a broader acting vaccine so we don't have to consider what do I have to take three or four vaccines a year?

M RNA vaccines are shorter.

They're not going to be the end result.

How about the resistance to the vaccines right now, especially with the political climate and people, you know, assigning one group to No, that's not going to happen to yes, you need to have this.

How many people are actually getting the vaccine right now and it's dropping or increasing?

No, it's it's really not good at all.

The best way to protect yourself is that Bivalent vaccine, the current vaccine that's out there and the uptake is estimated to be only 15 to 20%.

So this is really too low.

And part of the reason I'm with you today, Randi, is to really emphasize the protection that vaccines afford and the fact that they're not causing all these other deaths that are not due to COVID 19 and they protect you from a serious infection.

4 to 500 deaths a year if it's your family, if someone's dying in your family, this becomes quite serious.

And I want to protect those individuals in our community from COVID and.

Long COVID even.

I guess what we wouldn't consider long COVID at one of the effects, because a lot of people that I've talked to talk about the fatigue, even if it was a semi mild case, they're fatigued for weeks.

And so we're talking about vaccines prevent the high percentages of long COVID from occurring, from true infection.

The side effects people worry about from the vaccine are several fold greater from the virus itself.

Long COVID is estimated to occur in ten to probably closer to 20 or 30% of people with COVID 19.

Today, over 200 symptoms have been associated with COVID 19.

So you don't want this virus, you want to avoid it.

And right now people are getting COVID 19.

We still need to take protective measures.

When you talk about the vaccine, people wonder, okay, well, how often do I need to get a a booster?

Is it going to be a one year shot?

Now, I got a you know, a shot a few months ago.

Right.

What are you telling me?

What do you tell doctors?

I tell them, let's be shortsighted.

Get the Bivalent vaccine.

Let me keep the message simple.

Get the Bivalent vaccine.

It will protect you going forward.

We need to really transform infectious disease research and development and develop a quicker, more nimble strategy to bring broader acting vaccines.

So it might be once a year or less.

Rather than the concern right now, how many do I have to take?

I say take the Bivalent Texas Biomed is positioning itself to be part of the solution.

We are working closely with industry partners and with governmental partners to really transform the way we do infectious disease research development that is new therapies and vaccines.

They need to come faster.

We need to have them more available for the public.

Texas Biomed is a unique enterprise in the private sector.

With our talent, our resources and our nimbleness, we're able to produce for our partners in a very transparent way and quicker.

And people are taking notice.

If I believe in vaccines or I get a vaccine as much as we should, should I not worry about it until the next fall?

So right now you're concentrating on the people who just haven't had it.

I'm concentrating on people because I want to keep my message simple.

The mRNA vaccines, whether it be Moderna or Pfizer, are typically lasting somewhere in the ballpark of 4 to 6 months, and that keeps being studied today.

So they're not long enough, in my opinion.

We need different platforms.

That's why I emphasized other types of strategies.

But there are new strategies.

Some of my colleagues are producing different ways to deliver the vaccine, but we're still challenged by money and regulatory agencies and slow down.

We're already experiencing some fatigue.

Money starts getting tight and then we don't learn from history and we're not prepared for the next.

And now you talk about different ways of, you know, getting the vaccine to people where we're talking about inhalers, things like that.

So there is these what are called mosaic nanoparticles fancy, but these can be delivered in different ways through the nose or in the lungs or systemically through the skin.

But these look like they're more durable.

And now people are starting to put a bunch of different proteins from the virus into these vaccines so that the the immune response is broader and can actually better protect against the next variants that comes along.

And how about the flu with this?

You can get a vaccine, you can get both vaccines at the same time.

People wonder, I don't know if I do that.

Sometimes I don't feel well if I have the flu vaccine.

Yeah, there's no problem with getting that to other than, yes, there are local reactions.

And you know, some people have more fever for a day or two than others.

So you may want to separate them for a little while if you're more comfortable with that.

But there's no reason to wait too long with getting these vaccines because influenza is out there.

The good news is influenza and respiratory syncytial virus right now is on the downswing.

It's COVID 19 now that it's looking like it's serious.

But getting both, particularly in children, can be particularly serious.

And we're about out of time, but what's the latest on that Utah XB one or whatever?

Looking ahead, what strains are out there that are going to come to us and hit us harder?

Are they tougher strains or is.

So the the good news is most of these variants that are happening all the time or actually not doing anything to change the course of COVID 19, this particular strain is found to be particularly adaptable to how it infects us.

And so it's very transmissible.

It's causing more infection, particularly in the Northeast.

It's taking over.

Every once in a while these variants are occurring and they're not going away.

We need to protect ourselves with the vaccine.

We need to take proper protective measures in congregate settings, everything you've been hearing about.

But I'm focused on more hope for the future.

Well, thank you very much.

We could talk about this more.

I'd like to is as this develops.

But it's great to see that Texas biomed right here in San Antonio is working on that.

So the bottom line is get the vaccine if you haven't had it.

Absolutely.

Thanks very much, Larry Schlesinger, president and CEO of Texas Biomed.

Appreciate it.

My pleasure.

On Reporters roundtable this week, the legislature is back in session up in Austin, a session that has only once every two years.

And the man who knows all about it in Sanford now, one who is the editor in chief of the San Antonio Current.

Thank you very much for coming in.

It was very kind of you.

Well, I know all about, you know, going over overbilling you.

Maybe.

But tell us, there are so many different priorities.

According to which different leader you you're listening to, what are the priorities that we should be watching that actually might be accomplished this year?

Yeah, that's that's the question.

Always with the Texas legislature, what will they actually get accomplished versus how much of it is priorities that they have this performative stuff.

Right.

Well, I think it's pretty clear.

We heard Greg Abbott during his inauguration and Dan Patrick both talk about school choice.

We saw the lead up with Abbott, you know, and a lot of this this book banning fervor and getting parents riled up about, you know, how he's going to investigate porn in schools and stuff.

Again, this is basically performative and it's trying to get people worked up in culture.

School choice for the base of the Republican Party.

How much of this session is going to be a Greg Abbott campaign for president session?

Well, I guess it depends on whether you're convinced he's running for president, but he certainly seems to be in the performative sweepstakes with a photo finish with our good friend Ron DeSantis down in Florida.

The two of them certainly seem to be making those kind of proclamations.

And on that specifically, the border issues, Dan Patrick has said that border issues going to be a priority as well as the governor.

What do you think will be looked at there?

Well, I think they're going to need more money if they're going to continue operating operation Lone Star, sending troops and whatnot down there to the border.

And again, I think that's largely performative.

If you look at a lot of the the numbers in terms of what they're actually accomplishing down there.

But there's a lot more money in terms of surplus or expected surplus in the $33 billion range.

They actually can't spend that much money constitutionally.

So do you think they'll be spending a few billion on that?

And I think I think it's likely we're going to see a push for that.

But I also think if you look at what's been articulated that property taxes.

Right.

Are going to be at the top of the agenda.

Abbott, during his inauguration, said he wanted to see the largest property tax cut in the history of the state.

Dan Patrick has kind of said, well, you know, within reason, you know, let's keep make it something sustainable.

And I do think there's been enough anger over that issue and enough I think there's enough interest on the Democratic side, you know as well to see something accomplished on property taxes.

How about power grid?

Because that was one thing that they weren't on the same page, it seemed like last fall.

But now Abbott and Patrick are.

Yeah, I think they are.

I mean, I think the big question here is, you know, if you if you talk to people who know anything about the power grid, if you talk to people that know anything about, you know, electrical generation, they will tell you that we didn't really fix it last session.

Right.

That we just sort of slapped a Band-Aid on it.

The real question, I think, is going to be, who do you hold accountable?

Right.

Last time, the big the big the big issue was that you said, okay, we're going to do this, this and this, but, you know, are you going to hold people accountable for price gouging?

If you're going to hold people accountable, they can't keep the lights on.

And I think the question is going to come back to, you know, these are big donors.

These are big companies, utilities, gas companies, etc.. Are are are we going to see some teeth in the regulations?

Aside from regulations, Dan Patrick wants legislation that would allow more natural or would press for more natural gas plants to be built.

So it doesn't sound like regulation is at the top of the list.

No, it certainly does.

And again, what are the other ones I think is interesting here.

It's, you know, rubber meets the road kind of issue is school safety.

I mean, Abbott said, you know, school safety is going to be there.

We're going to deal with it.

But during his inauguration and during during the lieutenant governor speech, neither of them mentioned you have all day, interestingly enough.

Yeah.

And, you know, and I think they're going to try to pass some tough on crime legislation.

Both Abbott and the lieutenant governor have said that they'd like to see mandatory sentences for people caught with guns while they're committing a crime.

But will we really see anything to sort of, you know, rein in distribution of firearms or or, you know, change the way, you know, schools monitor things?

You know, that's I think that's unlikely.

There's another push to kind of limit what D.A.s can do.

District attorneys and judges say in a Bear County where there haven't been pursuing the lower level crimes, but they want to be able to recall DA's and judges.

I don't know how successful that's going to be, but I mean, we've just increasingly seen over the past few sessions that there's been this flash point over local control.

Right.

The funny thing is the Republicans constantly talk about how, you know, it should be down closer to the ground.

We don't want we don't need people on high telling us how to run our you know, run our state.

But in in turn, as the big cities get bluer in Texas, we've seen this sort of local control issue and a lot of head butting.

And I've certainly seen, you know, Mayor Nirenberg and others from, you know, big Texas cities saying they're going to stand up and they're going to, you know, speak up for themselves.

One last since you want to get to or about out of time.

But marijuana, they're not going to touch legalizing or decriminalizing, but at least medical marijuana is going to be a big issue.

We'll see how that plays out.

I mean, I think there are some interesting telltale signs.

For example, the Department of Public Safety just announced that they're allowing more people to apply for licenses to become legal sellers of medical marijuana in the state, which some people say suggests that they're anticipating that there might be some change in the legislature.

There have been complaints that the way it's structured right now is too limiting.

It is one of the most limited medical marijuana programs in the you know, in the country.

And a lot of states are moving ahead of us.

You can look at the sales in tiny towns on the border in New Mexico since they legalized.

And people from Texas are going over there to get marijuana.

And, you know, I mean, that's an industry that that, you know, if we get a late start on it.

Thank you very much.

Sorry, We're out of time, Sanford.

Now an executive editor or editor in chief, I get to promote you or demote you each time at the San Antonio Current.

You can check it out online as well as in an actual paper form.

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