The renewable energy company that developed and operates wind farms in Webb County approached the Commissioners Court on Tuesday requesting another tax abatement for a new solar energy project in the area.
The court voted for their attorneys to meet with the company to discuss their proposal.
Bordas Energy plans to build three solar energy projects across Webb County. One near Uniroyal Drive and Interstate 35 would be a 150-megawatt project with an expected cost of about $140 million.
Another, called Corazon, would be larger, a 200- to 400-megawatt project expected to cost about $190 million. This project is the farthest along, with Bordas having finished the engineering, plus their financing partner is in place, said Dan King, president of the company. Corazon is off Highway 59 near Ranchitos Las Lomas.
The third project would be near Oilton off Highway 359, a 200-megawatt energy producer estimated to cost about $190 million.
These projects would be smaller in scale than the wind farms in east Webb County, with solar panels and glass taking up 1,500 to 2,000 acres of space, King said. The wind farms, on the other hand, have been built on 25,000 acres of open land.
If everything goes as planned, these solar energy projects will be finished in 2021 and 2022, King said. He argues it would not be possible to complete these projects without a tax abatement from the county since property taxes in Texas are relatively high.
For better or worse, they’re competing with other similar projects across the state that receive property tax abatements, he said.
“When we go to sell our power, we’re trying to get to the lowest price we can and have the cost be as competitive as possible. We need the tax abatement in order to do these things,” King said.
Many economists argue that economic development deals are ineffective, or at the very least overused. Questionable deals such as Wisconsin’s $4 billion incentive to bring a Foxconn plant to the state and Amazon’s nationwide competition to bid for its second headquarters brought this argument to the forefront.
County Judge Tano Tijerina admitted that tax abatements can be tough for the public to swallow, but he believes they lead to investments in the county that would never occur otherwise.
Bordas’ wind energy projects have brought in about $7.2 million in tax revenue to Webb County over the past 10 years, and around $11.7 million to Webb Consolidated ISD.
The county’s revenues could have been closer to $12 million had a portion of the taxes not been abated, but in the end it’s money they would have never received, Tijerina believes.
“It’s a rural area. More than likely they probably would not have done the project …” Tijerina said. “I think sometimes people need to look at it a different way.”
From 2010 through 2019, Bordas Energy built windmills on thousands of acres in east Webb County near Oilton, Mirando City and Bruni. This project was built in five phases called Cedro Hill, Whitetail, Javelina I, Javelina II (Albercas) and Javelina III (Torrecillas).
The combined appraised value for these wind farms is about $800 million this year.
However, because they entered a tax abatement agreement with the county, their combined taxable value was only about $485 million in 2019.
Each phase of this project has received a 10-year property tax abatement with the county. Years 1-5 are a 60% abatement, and years 6-10 are a 40% abatement. These abatements are staggered since each phase began a couple years after the other.
In total, Bordas employs 39 people for their wind energy projects in Webb. King admitted that they’re not big job producers but argued that the salaries are high for the area at $39,000 on average.
