Texas had a rough winter in 2021.
I've lived in Texas for 30 years and I've never seen this much snow.
We're seeing basically the winter version of Hurricane Harvey
With temperatures below freezing, Texas' power generators that were supposed to provide
electricity to millions, stopped working.
At the height of the crisis, more than 4.5 million customers across the state didn't have
power. Then the water systems stopped working.
In Dallas, families forced to use a fire hydrant for fresh water.
Three million people still without reliable water.
Countless others waiting for repairs.
The problem so bad, leaders are urging out-of-state plumbers to help by waiving
restrictions. The freak winter weather caused neighboring states such as Louisiana, Oklahoma,
Arkansas and Kansas to institute rolling blackouts, according to an analysis
by nonprofit Climate Central, the U.S.
has faced a 67 percent increase in weather-related power outages since 2000.
Experts warn climate change will lead to more frequent extreme weather.
Can the U.S. handle it?
As temperatures dropped to single digits in mid-February2021, demand for
electricity hit a record high throughout Texas.
With surging demand, supply ran short, causing the state's electric grid operator to
implement rolling outages.
These power outages extended for days at a time, leaving residents to survive harsh
conditions without any heat or power.
The natural gas supply system is not sufficiently robust against cold weather.
It is not delivering the gas we need.
That's the fundamental problem.
We have five main fuels for electricity in Texas coal, gas, nuclear, wind and solar.
And they're all having problems.
We have a nuclear power plant offline because of waterpump froze.
We have coal plants offline because equipment froze or the coal piles froze.
We have some solar panels covered in snow.
We have some wind turbines coated in ice.
Texas Gov.
Greg Abbott and conservative politicians blamed frozen wind turbines and renewable
energy as the source of the problem.
In 2019, wind energy provided more than one-sixth of Texas' total power
generation, according to the U.S.
Energy Information Administration.
As politicians blamed each other, ordinary Texans suffered.
People lost power for days at a time.
People had no access to water.
Shivering in the cold, some resorted to turning on their cars in the garage for heat then died due to
carbon monoxide poisoning.
In 2011, a similar deep freeze caused widespread power outages in the state.
A study by the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission and the North American Electric
Reliability Corp.
found Texas power generators were reactive as opposed to being proactive in their approach to
winterization and preparedness.
But despite recommendations to winterize and weatherize its power plants, these measures were
not made mandatory.
After the events 10 years ago, there were a set of best practices that were made, but they were made
voluntary. And so they weren't made compulsory, powerplants didn't have to winterize.
I'm not even sure there was much said about the natural gas infrastructure that supplies, you know,
50 percent of our power plants down here.
If we get the same weather next week or two weeks from now, we're going to have the same result.
An analysis by nonprofit Climate Central showed the U.S.
has faced a 67 percent increase in weather related power outages since 2000.
In 2017 and 2018, more people experienced longer power outages due to
an increased number of hurricanes, wildfires and severe storms, according to data by the
U.S. Energy Information Administration.
America has a rapidly aging infrastructure.
Most of today's power grid was built in the 1950s and 60s with the hopes it would last for
50 years. And while there have been updates since then, nearly 70 percent of
transmission and distribution lines are more than 25 years old, according to the Department of Energy
An aging iInfrastructure designed to the climate of the past.
At the same time, the climate system is more volatile.
The population has grown, our demands of the system has grown.
So our grid is just increasingly stressed.
When natural disasters happen, people are often paying the price.
One woman in Texas filed a class action lawsuit against Texas power provider Griddy Energy
after she was charged $9,500 for electricity during the week of the storm.
On average, her monthly bills range from $200 to $250.
There's been tremendous progress in academia on better modeling, the climate uncertainty on demand
and supply. But I think we need a closer partnership with our infrastructure operators
to sort of make sure that these great social progress that we make that right away, most of it
is federally funded, is better integrated into planning and design of our systems.
Texas Gov. Greg Abbott called on state lawmakers to mandate the winterization of generators and power
plants. He said what happened in Texas was completely unacceptable.
On March 3 2021, the president of Texas's power utility company
ERCOT was fired.
Several ERCOT board members and the public utility commissioner for the state also
resigned.
Decause of the deregulated market, there's no cost recovery mechanism for generators
needing to weatherize or winterize.
Whereas in other markets where they they are vertically integrated, there's a cost recovery
mechanism for them to do so.
And so I think that's why it probably didn't happen in the past.
They would make the argument that they haven't gotten proper incentives in
their pricing to weatherize.
I think we we've heard that a lot already.
You know, that it market wasn't before this event giving them sufficient
revenues to to incent, you know, what the pricing that extra cost on on their plants,
Texas's grid enables it to avoid federal rules and regulations.
There are also two different commissions that control over its main energy sources.
The Public Utility Commission regulates the power plants, while the Texas Railroad Commission
regulates the oil and natural gas industry.
Texas lawmakers are now discussing putting the Railroad Commission under the control of the PUC to
allow for more centralized control.
Senator John Cornyn is now calling on the federal government for funding to help Texas weatherize its
infrastructure, saying it's not just a Texas issue.
He said he is currently working on legislation to weatherize the Texas electrical grid by creating
a new federal grant program at the Department of Energy.
More than 70 percent of Americans say it's more important to develop alternative energy
sources like solar and wind power than to produce more fossil fuels.
But research shows fossil fuels still dominate U.S.
energy consumption.
Most of the energy used in the U.S.
comes from coal, oil and natural gas.
The question remains on how the U.S.
will transition to cleaner energy while keeping a healthy balance of its existing energy sources.
Scientists and advocacy groups are calling for a decentralized power system that would allow
communities to generate and store their own power when emergencies hit.
By using renewable sources like wind and solar microgrids can be one solution to
provide power to people.
It's one reason why generator sales have surged in California after natural disasters like
wildfires. My worry is that there will be an equity issue there because, you know, if we have
people who can afford it, they have more power.
But those that don't, I mean, that's you know, that's just increasing some of the some of the
issues that we have in our society.
Texas, Texas isn't known for, you know, acting on things like climate change and in
this and the other. So but if we believe that climate change is going to increase weather
variability, that doesn't just mean hotter, drier summers in Texas.
That that can also mean like these more winter weather events.
And so we need to do a better job planning for them.
If you don't plan for something, you're not going to be ready for.