The Lone Star State Doesn’t Have The Leadership To Fix Its Energy Problems Alone

I live with my 90-year-old parents in Houston, in a single-family home. As a family, we’re advantaged when compared to many Houstonians. A few weeks ago, we experienced life-threatening conditions caused by what can most charitably be described as short-sighted physical and financial market design. If I set charity of description aside, Texans suffered and died because of purposeful, short- and long-term gaming of our electrical system and markets.

Lone Star state residents were pawns in an ideology- and greed-based game played by our politicians that the big utilities have long supported.

Fortunately for my family, we made it through unscathed. We have a solar and battery storage system on our house. The battery was able to keep our air handler running enough for our gas heat to keep the house at 50 degrees and the refrigerator on. Bundled up and in reasonably good health, my parents survived.

Too many others did not. Adults and children literally froze to death in their homes in Houston and Austin.

What was it like to endure four days of power outages? Lonely and terrifying. Until now, I’ve been privileged enough that I have never faced a situation out of which I could not walk, drive, or fly. I learned the hard way the reality faced by most people in our society who do not have that same ability to leave a bad situation. In household after household, people were faced with deciding whether to freeze or risk exposure to COVID in crowded shelters, warming centers or homes of neighbors, some burning their furniture for heat.

Over the four days of the Texas electricity catastrophe, we lost internet and cell service part of the time. But in many ways, that did not matter. There was no useful information being provided. Nothing approaching effective crisis communication. Normally, I get incessant weather, abduction, and other texted alerts. But between Monday, February 14 and Thursday, February 18, the days of semi-continuous power outages, I received just three text messages. Two warned me about freezing weather, and one notified me to boil my water. Ever tried boiling water with an electric stove in a power outage?

What they did not tell me was:

• When the power would come back on.
• When the power would go off again.
• How to drain my water pipes so they would not freeze.
• That water pressure was getting dangerously low and how to help keep it at a safe level.
• When water pressure would return.
• When the boil water order might be lifted.
• Where emergency warming shelters were located — a scary idea during the pandemic, but better than freezing to death.
• A number to call to find where warming shelters might be if I could not access the Internet.
• Maps or other information about access to bottled water, food or other necessities within driving or walking distance.

While Senator Cruz was boarding his plane to Cancun, Attorney Genal Paxton was attending meetings in Utah, and Governor Abbott was not to be found, millions of citizens had to guess at basic survival information.

Now, some libertarians might say that people should be prepared for this kind of event. But how were people already struggling during this recession supposed to stockpile for emergencies? How is it that we expect individuals to be able to do what our government and corporations have shown they are unable to do? Self-sufficiency is an important ethic, but it can’t be the sole public policy for emergencies.

As we sort through the information (and disinformation) after the blackouts, we learn that the Texas grid came within a few minutes of a complete collapse. That would have plunged the state into an electrical power and cellular communications blackout for, at a minimum, several weeks. Weeks where no hospital, ATM machine, fire department, cancer center, grocery store (except for H-E-B!), homes, businesses or police departments would have had power. Think about that for a few minutes.

The death toll from the sick and infirm, from violence — both criminal and vigilante — starvation, and accidents would have been unimaginable. We would have seen Martial Law imposed for far longer than the blackout period. The rest of the US economy would have staggered under the loss of Texas’ energy output.

Only the foolish will brush off this worst-case scenario. We came within minutes of having to live it, and elected leaders have to account for years of under-preparing in the face of ample warnings. We elect and pay these officials to run public infrastructure. Of course we don’t want them to infringe our rights, but their job is to ensure that the machinery of our modern civilization functions.

There’s no getting around the fact that Texas’s leadership failed disastrously, and they were within minutes of failing catastrophically.

What we got instead were pronouncements from politicians who were in full, “cover my butt” mode, blaming the Green New Deal for somehow causing their failures. This is ideology running away from reality. It’s stupid and does nothing to prevent Texas from experiencing such a catastrophe again.

As someone who has worked in the energy business for decades, including a tenure at Shell, I see a few foundational facts about what really happened. :

• When the power would come back on.
• Central thermal (coal, gas, and nuclear) failed. Plants failed due to frozen valves, frozen coal piles, frozen controls and inadequate gas supply.
• Natural gas fuel supplies failed. Pipelines froze. Compressor motors lost power. Wellheads froze.
• Wind turbines froze. Wind turbine blades iced up, which caused them to cease operation. Wind speeds were (typical for winter) low.
• Solar panels were not operating. It was nighttime.
• About 14% of thermal generation was on planned outage and could not be brought back online in time for the crisis.
• An unspecified amount of transmission line failed due to icing.

Texas has a total of 107 GW of power generation. Of those, there were unplanned outages of 25 GW of natural gas plants, 6 GW of coal plants, 1 GW of nuclear plants, and about 3 GW of wind plants.

Anyone who would read those numbers would clearly see that thermal power plants, not renewables, caused the massive crisis and requirement to shed 20 GW (30%) of electrical load. But why did Governor Abbott, Rep Dan Crenshaw, former Governor and DOE Secretary Perry, Secretary of Agriculture Miller, and other “leaders” falsely claim that wind power was the main culprit? While people were freezing to death in their own homes, these elected officials decided to play politics with our lives, our businesses, and the state’s economic future by lying about the cause of the problem and seeking to misdirect action. We came within minutes of dispensing widespread loss of life, savaging Texas’ economy, and mauling the rest of the US economy.

Even still, the costs are staggering. Hurricane Harvey inflicted over $20 billion of insured damages on Texas. According to the Insurance Council of Texas, our elected officials’ negligence has inflicted a higher insured cost from the blackouts. Total insured and business losses are now estimated at $129 BILLION. Normally, that is about what we pay for four years of electricity in Texas. We incurred that expense, driven by costs of electricity and blackouts, in seven days.

And it’s not like these officials weren’t warned. For years, scientists have told us that weather patterns are growing increasingly extreme and varied.

Even as a person living in relatively advantaged conditions, I am shaken. Had we not had our own battery power backup system, my family could have seen a very different personal outcome. Far too many did.

Texas will now supposedly spend billions to “fix” the problem. Based on their past performance and their recent statements, our “leaders” will spend those billions on rebuilding the 20th Century, centralized power systems with 1950s technologies. They’ll waste the opportunity to address their decades of mismanagement by reverting to propping up the very systems that failed us. It’s a sure-fire recipe for continued failure, misery and economic destruction.

We shouldn’t let them try to solve this growing new problem with yesterday’s solutions. Get the power out to the distribution system. The solar array on my house was more reliable than the ERCOT grid and central generation. (In fact, we were feeding back into the grid at one point, providing $9/kWh power to the grid at a cost to the power company of $0.13/kWh.)

If we instead decide to use 21st-century technology to reimagine our electric power and energy system, we can have a cleaner, more reliable, decentralized energy system for the same price tag. No, we will not close all the fossil power plants in this decade. However, we can start the transition, and quickly make the system more resilient against the threats of extreme weather, hacking, terrorism and fuel shortages. And we can do this for a lot less than the $129 Billion in added expense which the current power system has burdened us with.

It is time for our politicians to stop the dangerous false tropes and work to lead us into a more secure, safe, and vibrant energy future. One where my family and all others can feel safe and secure, where people do not freeze or die of heat stroke in their homes. Where the air is safe to breath. Where good jobs in the energy industry are not simply retained but are multiplied. If Shell and BP now have the courage to take this path into the future, our elected officials surely can. After all, our lives will hang in the balance.