By Todd Lassa
The Texas legislature has begun a comprehensive investigation on What Went Wrong, a week after a severe winter storm pushed its power grid within “minutes from failing” with three hearings by four state House and Senate committees.
More than 13 million state residents suffered no heat and electricity in sub-freezing temperatures as the Electric Reliability Council of Texas issued rolling blackouts to prevent a total collapse that experts say could have left the state without power for months.
Critics of Texas’ independent streak blame a policy that prevents the state from “borrowing” energy from neighboring states, in order to avoid federal regulations. Equipment at natural gas, coal and nuclear facilities became frozen and broke down, Time magazine reports, adding that after the last Texas freeze that caused blackouts, in 2011, federal regulators recommended the state weatherize energy equipment, including pipes, valves and other things necessary to keep the grid operating. When power in the state was back up again, many consumers were hit with energy bills of $10,000 and more, the result of unregulated price spikes by ERCOT for energy providers.
Perhaps trying to divert attention from the real problem that was affecting millions of Texans, Republican Gov. Greg Abbott blamed the state’s wind turbines that failed due to iced-up windmill parts and solar panels that collect no sunlight when it’s not sunny. (34 gigawatts were down in Texas on February 15, with wind representing just 4 gigawatts of that total.) Fox News’ prime time commentators directed blame to the “Green New Deal” proposal by U.S. Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, D-NY, to combat climate change, even though it remains only a proposal.
The energy crisis in Texas draws comparison with rolling blackouts in California last summer and fall, which were the result of extreme weather on the opposite end of the spectrum. California’s “first rolling blackouts in nearly 20 years,” according to the Los Angeles Times, affected less than half a million homes and businesses on August 14, for between 15 minutes and 2-1/2 hours at a time, with 321,000 more customers experiencing eight-minute to 90-minute blackouts the next evening.
Extreme heat and forest wildfires across the state caused the blackouts, and because neighboring states also suffered record high temperatures, California was not able to buy power from them.
California energy officials “didn’t line up the right sources and didn’t take climate change” causing the extreme temperatures “into account,” according to the LA Times.
As usual in politics, it comes down to following the money. Either state could proceed at considerable cost building out renewable energy sources with the hope the burgeoning industry will create new jobs, or continue to protect relatively cheap, relatively reliable fossil fuel sources and maintain that industry’s level of employment.
It raises the issue of regulation vs. de-regulation – and even the question of what regulation is for a public utility.
Fortunately, we have a left-column pundit from Texas, and a right-column pundit from California, to sort this all out.