Governor Abbott signed two ERCOT reform bills last month, he said the job was done

“Bottom line— everything that needed to be done was done to fix the power grid in Texas,” said Abbott.

However, Tuesday he sent a letter to the Public Utility Commission with a new list of demands that he says, this time, will regain the public's trust and ensure Texans have reliable power.

Daniel Cohan, Associate Professor of Environmental Engineering at Rice University, says the Governor’s demands will not improve things—in fact he says they may make things worse.

The governor is asking the PUC to incentivize the development and maintenance of natural gas, coal and nuclear power; allocate reliability costs to wind or solar power; establish maintenance schedules for nonrenewable electricity generators; and accelerate the development of transmission projects.

“What’s most frustrating about this is its just blinding ourselves to reality,” says Cohan.

Cohan says the orders favor and subsidize aging coal, nuclear and gas plants—while penalizing and slowing the growth of wind and solar.

“What we need is not to pretend we’re going to get more coal and nuclear plants online, we’re going to get more wind and solar lets figure out how to get this team play better together,” says Cohan.

Cohan says Abbott’s letter also contradicts decisions made by lawmakers during the legislative session-- like penalizing wind and solar sources-- which legislators decided not to do.

In a statement to CBS Austin a PUC spokesperson said:

“Governor Abbott has been consistently clear on his desire for a reliable grid and the 87th Texas Legislature laid out a detailed road map to that goal. While the PUC has been working on many of the items in his directive, this additional clarity is a welcome addition to our process.”