Courtesy of Bastrop Advertiser
Feb. 25, 2021
By Bill McCann
When I was a teenager, we lived in rural Western Pennsylvania and were used to snow and sub-freezing temperatures. We could handle it easily, except for the time we couldn’t. A surprise snowfall paved the dirt road that twisted up a hill to our house. Days of near-zero temperatures froze our shallow well just as we finished filling our only bathtub.
Mom had called the delivery man to replenish the fuel oil to run the furnace. His truck couldn’t navigate the hill. When the oil ran out, we spent days huddled in front of a small wood stove with two dogs and heavy blankets. As my brother and I collected wood for the stove and snow for water, he said, “Now I see what it must be like in poor countries.”
Many Texans had it much worse last week when Texas became a temporary third-world country. Winter storms hit in succession. As temperatures dropped, winter peak power demand hit a record high. Some fossil-fueled power plants couldn’t handle the single-digit cold and shut down. Natural gas wells and gas pipeline equipment froze.
The state power grid operator, the Electric Reliability Council of Texas, ordered utilities to pull the plug on many customers to avoid the collapse of a grid that serves about 90% of the state’s electric load. They were supposed to be rolling blackouts, but for many people the blackouts never rolled. At least 4 million customers lost power. Several friends lost power for five days. People smashed and burned furniture in fireplaces to keep warm. Some ran vehicles in closed garages or fired up grills indoors for heat – and died of carbon monoxide poisoning. Several froze to death.
Water shortages followed the power outages. Electric pumps stopped. Water froze in pipes. Pipes burst, flooding homes and businesses. An estimated 14 million customersended up without water or with potentially tainted water. People stood in lines for food and water. It never should have gotten that bad.
Texas Gov. Greg Abbott – and conservative, climate-change denying TV talking heads – tried to make renewable energy a scapegoat by blaming frozen wind turbines. Abbott walked back that falsehood after ERCOT officials said the problem was mainly natural gas facilities. Social media posts also showed wind turbines operating in Alaska and even Antarctica because they were winterized to cope with cold temperatures.
Winterizing is a key issue in Texas, which doesn’t often see such Arctic blasts. Republicans don’t like regulations, even when they protect human health and welfare and ultimately save billions of dollars. Texas Republicans especially don’t like regulating the energy industry. They like the industry to make loads of money. Two decades ago the Texas Legislature deregulated the electricity market into a complex, bizarre system where companies could make loads of money in times of high demand.
Deregulation supporters said competition would keep electric bills down. But with the state’s historically lax regulatory system, plant owners sometimes short-changed reliability and failed to make needed upgrades to protect their facilities from the cold. Federal and state studies following blackouts during deep freezes in 1989 and 2011 cited failures to winterize as a key problem. The reports gathered dust.
After fumbling his attack on renewables, Abbott blamed ERCOT. He should have blamed himself and the Republican Legislature. A three-member Texas Public Utility Commission oversees ERCOT. Abbott appointed the commission members. The buck stops with him.
Abbott and other elected officials have promised an investigation. If past is prelude, they will find a scapegoat like ERCOT. They may fire people and promise change. But they won’t sufficiently address root causes. Cold weather will be gone. They will hope we have forgotten about the time Texas became a third-world country. And might again.
