» Abbott vows ERCOT “overhaul.”
Republicans appear motivated now to mandate winter weather protections
Gov. Greg Abbott continued Wednesday to focus blame for last week’s deadly power outages on the state’s electric grid managers, telling Texans in an evening address that the legislative session “will not end until we fix these problems.”
Speaking just hours after key board members of the Energy Reliability Council of Texas resigned under pressure, and the night before lawmakers were set to begin hearings on the outages, the governor said he was already in talks with legislative
leaders on how to “add more power to the grid and ensure we never run out.”
He pointed to natural gas, coal, nuclear, wind and solar, which generate electricity for about 26 million Texans.
“Each of these power sources failed to fully produce because of inadequate safeguards,” Abbott said.
Republicans in control of the Legislature have ignored previous calls to mandate winter weather protections at power plants but appear motivated to do so this session. They have not discussed similarly winterizing natural gas production, which provides most of the fuel for the state’s electric grid.
As in earlier remarks, Abbott did not mention the role of the Public Utility Commission, which regulates electric companies and whose commissioners he directly appoints. Nor did he talk about the Texas Railroad Commission, which regulates oil and gas producers.
At the worst of the crisis, more than 4.5 million Texans were without power. Dozens of deaths have been tied to the frigid conditions. Millions more lost access to clean water over several days, and homeowners across the state have been working this week to fix damage from burst water lines. Some customers under variable rate plans have reported getting astronomical electricity bills.
“It is outrageous for residents to be saddled with skyrocketing power bills,” Abbott said. The state has temporarily barred electric companies from turning off power to customers who cannot pay.
Democrats in the state have joined the call for a full investigation into the outages and are pushing reforms to the state’s energy grid, including more aggressive oversight, weatherproofing of power plants and looking at other solutions, such as connecting with grids in other states. The Texas power grid is isolated from the national grid.
Energy experts have said the outages were years in the making, a product of weak oversight, limited planning and an energy market that runs without emergency surpluses.
“We tend to view all of these extreme weather events as high impact, low frequency, and we have not done anywhere near enough planning and thought about how bad it could get,” said Alison Silverstein, an energy consultant in Austin.
Joshua Rhodes, a research associate at the University of Texas at Austin, questioned the ERCOT resignations, saying in a call Wednesday that some of the board members who were criticized for living out of state actually brought valuable experience.
“It robbed us of expertise in the areas that do get cold winter weather more often,” he said. “If we just had people who live in Texas, we generally think about the summer.”