Cold as Ice
Hell freezes over Texas
Y’all are Cold as Ice
Over the last few days from Feb 14th-17th, Middle America has suffered the effects of massive cold spell, Cold Wave Yeti. This cold wave is the product of a polar vortex that dislodged from its usual Claussian residence in the Arctic and dipped down through Canada, across the Midwest, and settled over Texas. Yeti’s extremities reach all the way across the Rio Grande River into Mexico. It’s truly a cold spell for the ages, with parts of Nebraska, Iowa, both Dakotas, Oklahoma, and Texas all setting record low temperatures on February 15th. Texas may have suffered the worst of the cold wave: it’s the furthest South and perhaps least prepared for extreme cold, snow, and ice. But a polar vortex that was a grimly borne bout of unpleasant weather in other states across the Midwest has turned into a complete disaster for the Lone Star State. The reasons are varied, but there are some common denominators behind the reasons, beginning with a lack of foresight.
You’re willing to sacrifice our lives
On February 10th, the Washington post ran a story that accurately predicted the coming cold wave from the Arctic. The Post’s Matthew Cappuci noted 5 days in advance that “Cold air should creep through Texas Monday or Tuesday”. National Weather Service Houston advised people to “be prepared” and do what was possible to protect the 3 p’s “people, plants, and properties (pipes)”. Whatever steps may be taken to stop pipes and water freezing at home, those steps are of little use if grid level supply pipes of thermal heat and water freeze over. Furthermore, most gas and water consumers have no control over whether or not base power and water supply is available.
As Professor Daniel Cohan of Rice University in Texas noted, Texas’ grid manger, Electric Reliability Council of Texas (ERCOT), plans every year to conduct scheduled maintenance on a subset of natural gas plants. Just like other years, this maintenance takes place during winter, when energy demand is usually lower, relative to summer energy demand peaks during heat waves when air conditioner use skyrockets. This year, the scheduled maintenance coincided with the anticipated onset of the polar vortex/Cold Wave Yeti. ERCOT estimated scheduled maintenance would lessen grid capacity by 4 gigawatts, no small amount during high demand scenarios. Professor Cohan criticizes the decision to allow scheduled maintenance to continue, given the foreknowledge of coming cold wave. This planned maintenance virtually guaranteed there would be a shortage of energy supply, right as demand for thermal heating peaked at the apex of the cold wave.
You Never Take Scientists Advice
Polar vortexes are not some unheralded phenomenon in the American plains. Over the past decade, the term has seen a surge in usage, as the instances of Arctic air plunging into the contiguous US have been fairly regular occurrences. The term has seen increased use by meteorologists, and seems to have entered public consciousness. Professor Stefan Rahmstorf of Potsdam University notes that polar vortexes dipping into North America and Eurasia have increased in frequency from 1979–2019. In other words, good governance regarding energy and grid resilience should consider the potential for extreme Arctic cold waves and appropriately weatherize energy and water sources, pipelines, and circuitry to ensure a functioning energy system even in extremely cold weather.
While it’s true that ERCOT, Texas’s grid operator had a “Winter Peak Plan” that estimated the grid would be able to supply 67 GW of electricity, it’s a bit odd they didn’t reverse the planned maintenance that reduced potential supply by 4 GW, given the incoming polar vortex. I’m not an energy expert, but it seems like something that states should be prepared for, given the relative increase in frequency of these extreme cold events (indeed other states have appropriately weatherized energy producers and grids for extreme winter cold).
Counterintuitively, some climate scientists research has indicated that the phenomenon of polar vortexes escaping their Arctic confines and diving into North America and Europe may have a climate change root. In its usual state, the polar vortex is a ring of high-speed winds in both the upper troposphere and stratosphere. The tropospheric winds make up the Arctic jet stream, with a matching jet surrounding Antarctica and the South Pole. Both of these jet streams are caused by the temperature gradient between the warmer mid-latitudes (think China, USA, Europe, New Zealand), and the colder polar regions in Northern Canada, Russia, and Scandinavia, and Antarctica. Hot air flows towards cold, and in the northern hemisphere, as it flows from South to North, it tends to bend Eastward (due to the Coriolis effect, which I won’t hazard explaining here).
As Professor Jennifer Francis, formerly of Rutgers and now of the Woodwell Research Institute described in a 2012 paper with co-author Stephen Vavrus, climate change may be altering the usual functioning of the Arctic jet stream. As the planet warms, thin sea ice and snow melt in the Northern hemisphere. With less snow, less sunlight is reflected to space and more heat is absorbed, causing the areas with the most snowmelt to show the largest temperature increases relative to their historical average. The theory, first postulated by Judah Cohen in 2005, proposes that as snow and ice melts and the Arctic warms, the temperature gradient between the mid-latitudes in the Northern hemisphere and the Arctic are reduced, slowing the atmospheric flow of hot air poleward. As the flow of air slows, so does the jet stream, causing it to get ‘stuck’ in undulating wavy patterns that ‘sit’ over continental landmasses and lead to long-lasting weather events, like the polar vortex gripping Texas and the Midwest currently.
Unlike Einstein’s theory of relativity, the periodic table of elements, and anthropogenic climate change generally, the idea that climate change is causing jet stream disruptions that lurch the polar vortex towards the equator isn’t *established* science. In fact, it’s a pretty contested idea, with some research supporting the concept and some against. Professor Rahmstorf notes that some research has linked climate change caused Arctic warming to polar vortex disruption. Others, like Prof. Screen of the University of Exeter argue that events like the polar vortex foray into Texas may just be part of natural climatic variability, absent any human caused climate change forcing. Whether Arctic jet stream waviness and associated polar vortex plunges are climate change caused or not, recent recesearch suggests they are increasing in frequency. Whatever the cause, this most recent polar vortex excursions caused parts of Southern Texas to be colder than parts of Alaska.
Today, You’ll Pay the Price
On Monday February 15th, a polar vortex of the sort anticipated by both climate scientists years in advance, and meteorologists the week before unleashed hell across Texas. As cold engulfed the state, heating and electricity demand skyrocketed. Unfortunately, there wasn’t enough supply to meet the demand. In addition to planned maintenance of gas plants that reduced peak energy capacity by 4 gigawatts, a series of other failures and cutbacks doomed the Texas energy grid. Texas grid operator ERCOT had planned on having 67 gigawatts of energy supply available for a peak demand event (including the potential for 9.5 Gw of power outages); energy demand peaked at 69 gigawatts, more than ERCOT had anticipated needing.
You hope it’s all foretold
How much energy supply was available in Texas to help citizens brave polar vortex Yeti? The peak shortage of energy supply to demand reported by ERCOT was a whopping 34 gigawatts, or over 40% of thermal heating capacity in the state! Professors Jesse Jenkins and Larry Cohan broke down the shortage by energy type. Jenkins notes ERCOT had counted on wind to provided 6 GW of energy for a peak event, and wind power came up short 2 gigawatts short of that goal. Despite outcry from numerous Texas Republicans about the problems with renewables, the 2 gigawatt wind shortfall was only a small fraction of the larger shortage of 34 gigawatts relative to ERCOT expectations for a peak winter event. As confirmed by ERCOT, frozen wind turbines were “the least significant factor”. In the later days of Cold Wave Yeti, wind power actually exceeded expectations for the cold weather. Building on the case for renewable energy resilience, solar power far exceeded ERCOT expectations for a peak winter event, with 3,000 MW of supply when only 300 MW were anticipated for a peak storm event. Said another way, the sum of renewable energy supply *actually exceeded* expectations for a peak winter event by a whole gigawatt!
The real story of insufficient energy supply in Texas came from thermal heating, an energy grid nexus supplied mostly by natural gas, but also by coal, oil, and nuclear. Professor Jenkins notes that thermal power was a massive failure, with 25–30 gigawatts of a total of 70 GW thermal plants in ERCOT failing. A combination of frozen pipes and fuel shortages “forced a number of natural gas plants offline”. Per The Texas Tribune, “nearly half of the state’s natural gas production has screeched to a halt due to the extremely low temperatures, while freezing components at natural gas-fired power plants have forced some operators to shut down.”
Contradicting the assuredness of nuclear advocates in nuclear power’s resiliency, at least 1.2 gigawatts of nuclear power failed in Texas during the polar vortex, per the nuclear regulatory commission. Most of the remaining 25–30 gigawatt shortage was from natural gas power outages. The sum of these factors led to 10.5–16.5 GW of “emergency local shedding”, more commonly referred to as rolling blackouts, to account for power shortages relative to expected peak demand. ERCOT implements “local shedding” to avoid the possible shutdown of the whole grid. By one estimate, they were mere minutes away from this nightmare scenario of a grid-wide shutdown unfolding. The shortages and blackouts that did occur due to “local shedding” left millions of Texans without power in one of the coldest winter streaks on record.
Texas has seen it before
As the idiom goes, this isn’t Texas’s first rodeo. Back in 2011, the polar vortex (an Arctic air mass in the day’s nomenclature) destabilized and extended its bitter cold reaches down into Texas. ERCOT — recall, the Texas energy grid manager — cut power to over a million people during that similarly freezing cold wave. At the time, temperatures were much colder, roads became unpassable, and power facilities shut down due to the cold. Remarkably, Texas wound up importing power from Mexico to meet their surging energy demand.
In response, energy plant operators in ERCOT areas attempted to analyze what went wrong in a document titled, “Winter Weather Readiness for Texas Generators”, which discussed how to be better prepared for the next big freeze. The document noted that power generation issues “were mostly attributed to frozen instrumentation due to convective heat losses greater than instrumentation design”. Similarly, a federal report on the 2011 polar vortex/grid fiasco from FERC, the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission, recommended ERCOT necessitate winter weatherization, as did the Texas state legislature with a 2011 bill “demanding the utility commission prep winter weatherization”.
Did ERCOT or Texas governance learn from their mistakes and adjust instrumentation design for the possibility of more polar vortexes or cold waves? Seemingly, no action was taken in the 10-year interim. The senior director of ERCOT is quoted in Bloomberg on the Valentine’s Vortex of 21, “The main factors: Frozen instruments at natural gas, coal and even nuclear facilities”. Remarkably, even though Texas, it’s citizens, it’s government, the federal government, and grid manager ERCOT had seen this problem before and identified things to improve, little was actually done to improve the resiliency of the power grid or water grid for the possibility of more polar vortexes assaulting the state. Scientists research on polar vortexes appears to be similarly unheeded. Unsurprisingly, Texans are suffering the devastating consequences of a failed energy and water grid, shivering themselves to sleep bundled up with their kids and dogs.
Cold Happens all the Time
Despite what the floundering of Texas’s energy grid might lead you to believe, cold has, in fact, occurred without catastrophic power outages and blackouts around the world. Other States across the Midwest successfully navigated this (and many other) polar vortexes without their grids getting compromised. Cold waves, polar vortexes jailbreaks, and general winter weather below freezing are regular occurrences around the world that don’t provoke massive grid failures. Texas with its independent energy grid and grid manager (ERCOT) was unable to handle a wave of below freezing temperatures and cold that it had not only experienced before, but other states and countries routinely navigate without issue.
You’re blacking out the poor
Worsening matters, many millions of Texans also had their water pipes freeze and/or burst. Richer people hoping to escape to hotels that still had power and water were forced to pay skyrocketing prices, a ‘luxury’ not afforded to the poor who couldn’t afford the rates and had to survive the freezing temperatures at home. Some families tried to stock up on water and firewood after losing power, but many local stores were empty and grocery stores were closed. Many hotels didn’t have room anyway. One family rushed a choking toddler to the hospital over unplowed roads after their power went out and their pipes burst.
Like many natural disasters in US and world history, the poor, who are disproportionately minorities, were disproportionately effected by blackouts. While this writer doesn’t have any empirical data from ERCOT, other regulators, professors, or inspectors to back up this assertion, it was possible to compare and contrast NASA satellite imagery of the blackouts with racial dot maps of where people of different races live. In the below image, I’ve placed the NASA satellite imagery of Houston during the blackouts side by side with a racial dot map of Houston.
In the map on the right, each dot corresponds to the home of one American. Blue dots represent White people, green dots Black people, red dots Asian Americans, and orange dots Hispanics. I’ve ellipsed the areas in the map on the left that saw power outages on Feb. 16th, and ellipsed the corresponding areas (to the best of my ability, it’s not perfect) in the racial dot map of Houston. If you look closely, about 12/13 areas that lost power had large populations of minorities. This writer has no idea how power outage decisions were made. As mentioned, the Texas grid was minutes away from total shutdown, hasty decisions were likely made. Which areas would be the ones to lose power on account of planned rolling blackouts? Which areas lost power because of frozen pipes? Was it the case that whiter neighborhoods had gas pipes that were more winterized in the Houston metro area? While these questions are at present unanswerable, the fact that you can see the racial disparities in power shutoffs from space suggests that environmental and structural racism are playing some role, and should be investigated further.
You Leave the Grid Behind
The power shortages due to frozen pipes led to 4.3 million electric customers (way more people) going without power in Texas on Monday, by far the worst in the nation. Frozen natural gas pipes, frozen thermal pipes from coal oil and nuclear, and frozen wind turbines made up vast majority of the shortage, with planned maintenance on some facilities worsening the power shortage. Tragically, this has left millions of Texans freezing to death in their homes, or forced into crowded, heated buildings in the middle of a deadly pandemic. Professor Jenkins graded the ability of fossil generators to supply heat an “F” as, only 50–60% of capacity was able to actually produce energy.
Looking at the above map, one is left wondering why the Texas grid failed so catastrophically, given the polar vortex covered most of the Midwest. Most other Midwestern states didn’t experience any power outages. Why did Texas fail so badly where other states had no failures?
Most of Texas relies on ERCOT’s power grid that is separate from the two major grids servicing the East and West of the US and Canada, the Western Interconnection and Eastern Interconnection, respectively. Incidentally, the areas of Texas that didn’t lose power were by and large the Westernmost and Northernmost parts of the state that were connected to the other interstate grids; they had the lowest rates of power outages in the State. Conversely, the parts of the state managed by ERCOT are isolated from the rest of the country, with no grid connections to other states. As such, Texas has no means of importing power from other states.
In the words of Professor Cohan, “Texas has chosen to operate its power grid as an island”. No man is an island unto himself, but perhaps the Texas grid is. Other states can import natural gas and power from neighboring states via the Eastern and Western grids; Texas is truly alone when suffering power outages such as the one this past week. The reasons for this isolation date back to the 1930’s and, of all things, the “New Deal” era. Roosevelt’s Federal Power Act of 1935 sought to create a Federal Power commission which would oversee and regulate interstate electricity sales, with a chief objective of “of protecting customers from economic exploitation at the hands of monopoly utilities.” Texas’s fierce independence streak, disdain for government regulation, and secessionist proclivities all meshed together to cause Texas to disconnect from the national grids. As noted, when a 2011 polar vortex blasted Texas, the state used its three grid connections with Mexico to import power, because it didn’t have any with the rest of the United States. In addition to frozen pipelines and planned maintenance, planned isolation from the national grid due to ideological opposition to regulation played a large role in millions of Texans losing power and risking freezing to death.
A key piece of the puzzle for why more than 4 million Texans lost power was the state’s ideological opposition to regulation, regulation that this week and historically has prevented pipe freezings and allowed for power transfers over state lines. The consequences were deadly.
Yet Throwing away Common Sense
As the polar vortex descended on Texas, information regarding the cause of the blackouts (frozen pipes, maintenance, gas shortages, general knowledge about the Texas grid’s isolation) was all readily available to anyone willing to do a cursory analysis. Indeed, ERCOT released multiple updates about the status of the grid, frozen thermal pipes, power supply expectations and failures. The also publicly released data on expected and delivered wind and solar energy supplies throughout the polar vortex. It was not hard to find.
Despite the ease of access to data on gigawatts of energy provided by type, Republicans in Texas and around the country either failed to look, or had looked and lied about the cause. In an early interview, Texas governor Gregg Abbott stated that frozen natural gas pipes were to blame for the power outages and freezing Texans. Shortly after, Governor Abbott went on Fox News and blamed wind and solar for the power failures sweeping across the state, a statement that his own energy grid manager ERCOT refuted with numerous press releases clearly pinning the fault on widespread natural gas failures. Somehow, in between the interviews, Abbott managed to ‘forget’ that the state was short about 30 gigawatts of natural gas and only ~1 gigawatt of renewables, and then blame renewables for what was largely the fault of frozen natural gas, coal, oil and nuclear pipelines.
The Texas Governor wasn’t the Lone Star of the ludicrous, easily debunked ‘blame renewables’ drama. Both of Texas’s Republican national senators got involved in the ‘deflect blame from fossil fuels’ campaign. Ted Cruz was quick to retweet a false claim that Texas was missing 25 gigawatts of wind power (it wasn’t), and John Cornyn retweeted a picture of a helicopter dousing wind turbine blades with boiling water to unfreeze the turbine. House Republicans Lauren Boebert of Colorado and Senator Steve Daines of Montana hopped on the bandwagon, also retweeting about frozen wind turbines. Boebert criticized “’green’ windmills”, and Daines emphasized the need for “reliable energy sources like natural gas and coal”. Both claims were demonstrably false, with Texas’s energy grid manager pointing out itself that natural gas was *mostly responsible* for the power outages. Reliable is thus wildly inaccurate, and all of these national congress members could’ve EASILY looked it up.
Worse yet, the viral helicopter image isn’t from Texas, or the US, or even this year. It’s an old image from Sweden back in 2014. Much like the other evidence-free lies about election fraud , lies these same Republicans claimed, here too did they mindlessly bash renewables without even looking at the renewable data, or lifting a finger to help their fellow Texans. Except of course Ted Cruz, who lifted his fingers, himself, and his daughters on a flight to Cancun in response to the impending polar vortex for a vacation. He claimed he wanted to be “a good parent” when they asked him to go on vacation, a definition of “good parenting” so flimsy and elitist it boggles the mind of the poor American Texans huddling with their kids overnight to keep them from freezing to death. Perhaps he got the idea from Conservative Australian Prime Minister Scott Morrison, who famously vacationed in Hawai’i while much of the country was on fire.
You’re Digging for Black Gold
What incentives might Republicans have to lie to their frozen constituents about the culprits behind the blackouts and frozen homes? As Molly Taft of Gizmodo reported, Senators Cruz and Cornyn and Texas Republican House member Dan Crenshaw all received donations to their campaigns from fossil fuel interests. In Taft’s words, “more than 30 companies in the oil and gas industry… gave tens of thousands of dollars to Cornyn, Cruz, and Crenshaw over the past year”.
Taft also notes that Republican Governor Greg Abbott received over $1.6 million from the CEO of Midland energy, an oil and gas company. Abbott’s lieutenant governor, Dan Patrick, was also handsomely donated to, by Midland’s CEO Syed Javaid Anwar. Lt. Governor Patrick’s PAC received nearly $250,000 from the Midland CEO over the same period. Furthermore, the Texas governorship duo received a combined $700,00 from Kelcy Warren, the CEO of Energy Transfer Partners behind the infamous Dakota Access Pipeline, whose construction violated the tribal rights of the Standing Rock Sioux Tribe.
A Falsified Finding
None of these Republican politicians have corrected their mistaken claims, or acknowledged potential conflicts of interest regarding their fossil fuelled campaigns, or attempted to provide accurate information to their constituents about the nature of the power outage crisis in Texas. It’s an abysmal dereliction of duty in the name of partisan politics, that may well be influenced by these congressmembers being beholden to their fossil fuel donors for upcoming re-election campaigns. It’s really shameful given the abundance of reporting and data accurately blaming frozen pipes from natural gas, coal, oil, and nuclear power plants. ERCOT’s data clearly showed the problem was largely with fossil fuels and nuclear. The case for getting money out of politics has rarely been stronger.
Furthermore, Governor Greg Abbott’s absurd claim on Fox News that “the Green New Deal would be a deadly deal for the United States” (off his baseless allegations renewables were to blame), not only flies in the face of evidence, but contributes to further Republican denialism of climate change and scaremongering about renewable energy. In truth, climate change will pose substantial risks to Texans and Americans going forward. The higher the temperature gets the worse the danger, in the form of sea level rise, stronger hurricanes, drought, and heat waves hotter than human capacity to survive. Their denial isn’t just dangerous because it might prevent meaningful grid reform, but because it misleads Americans about their vulnerability to climate change.
But today Texans Pay
The consequences of Texas’s ideological opposition to regulation, ignoring or perhaps pleading ignorance on scientists and meteorologists’ warnings, and ideological opposition to government spending on winterizing the grid and federal government oversight have been deadly for some Texans. At least 24 people were known to have died in the cold as of Wednesday. Thursday the number jumped to “at least 37”, and the number may well grow. And for what? So, in the words of former Texas governor and former Trump Energy Secretary Rick Perry, “Texans would be without electricity for longer than three days to keep the federal government out of their business”. It seems probable that the millions of Texans who lost power and water, and the dozens who lost their lives might be inclined to disagree.
You’re as cold as ice, Tim Boyd
Not to be outdone by the bigger fish in the Republican Sea, the mayor of Colorado City, Texas posted a controversial Facebook post 2 days ago berating his constituents for asking for help as they froze in their homes. After stating he intended to “hurt some feelings”, he went on a veritable conservative tirade about how “nobody owes you… anything” and that it’s not the government’s responsibility to support you… ignoring the obvious fact that the *Texas* government manages the production and delivery of heat, electricity, and water to people’s homes. Reminder that 37 Texans died in the polar vortex because of the extreme cold and blackouts. Boyd coldly continued, “only the strong will survive and the weak will perish” and oddly claimed “this is the product of a socialist government”, ignoring that Texas is a decidedly capitalist State, so firmly opposed to government regulation, they didn’t listen to their own advice and winterize their grid. Boyd resigned shortly after posting the rant, perhaps indicating he somehow has more integrity than his renewable-bashing Republican counterparts, one of whom (Ted Cruz) fled the country to Mexico rather than address the crisis at hand.
You’re willing to sacrifice our lives for ideology
It’s hard to overstate just how absurd the suffering of Texans, and particularly poor Texans is in this scenario. Literally none of the state had to lose power. Were Texas connected to the national grid, they could’ve imported energy from other states to help cover peak demand. Had Texas followed the recommendations of its own senate and its own energy grid manager after 2011, if would’ve winterized pipelines and wind turbines. But why bother doing things that might go against a fervent, dubious, Panglossian ideological belief in free markets and opposition to regulation, which might save people’s lives or prevent them from freezing in their sleep…, when you can just blame renewables? This, of course, after your own party failed to take any preventable steps to winterize your largely fossil fuel gas grid while your own party, the Republican Party, was in power for the last 10 years?! The idea that Texans would rather suffer freezing to death than be connected to the federal grid and ‘suffer’ regulation is about as loony as the theories coming from QAnon.
What started in the 1930s as opposition to Roosevelt’s social democratic “New Deal” Policies, is today continued in rhetorical, performative opposition to its modern incarnation, “The Green New Deal”. In the 1930s, it was classical liberal economics that opposed deregulation and the social democratic Keynesianism of the New Deal. In the present, the ideological economic opposition to policies that reduce inequality and improve quality of life has come full circle with continued opposition on ideological grounds to even the suggestion that Green New Deal might get passed. Considering the “jackpot” profits for fossil fuel companies from the winter storm, and those companies associated donations to Texas Republicans, it is largely unsurprising those same Republicans would oppose policy that might actually help regular Texans not freeze in their own homes. As author Naomi Klein would describe it, this is disaster capitalism at it’s worst.
Nowadays, the framing for Green New Deal opposition is ‘anti-socialist’, but looking at the results of the anti-socialist, anti-regulation policy could hardly be more revealing. Texas Republicans’ adherence to free-market fundamentalism, aka neoliberalism, aka Reaganism, aka Friedmanism — all variants of capitalism with low taxes on the rich, minimal government regulation, privatization of the public sector, and faith that ‘the market will get it right’ yielded a catastrophic disaster for the people of Texas. The market didn’t get it right in terms ensuring people didn’t freeze to death or nearly so. It also yielded massive price jackings in energy, hotels, gasoline, and food, that took cold Texans and broke their banks. Texas Republicans would rather bloviate about ‘socialism’ and not letting Texas get regulated than save people’s lives.
Do you want paradise?
Is Texas doomed to continue relying on natural gas pipelines backed by shoddy governance for it’s energy future? Is it possible for renewables to supply a significant portion of Texas’s energy needs during winter storms like Yeti? One researcher thinks so. Mark Z Jacobson of Stanford ran a simulation of grid stability in Texas run on entirely renewables (wind water and solar). The simulation modelled supply, “storage, and demand response for all energy (electricity, transport, buildings, industry) every 30 seconds for a year-2050.”. His model simulation yielded no blackouts for the entire year.
As Jacobson points out, wind speeds increase during cold storms. This increases wind turbines ability to generate electricity during winter storms. While Texas still has a long way to go before being anywhere close to 100% renewable energy for its grid, it should be comforting that energy modelling suggest renewables can meet Texas’s energy peak energy demand in the winter and summer. Indeed, if Texas is going to do its part to help stop climate change, it will have to shift much of its energy production to wind and solar.
We’ve seen it before, it’ll happen again
Unfortunately, this won’t be the last polar vortex to tango with Texas, nor will the strain on Texas’s energy grid during Cold Wave Yeti be the last major threat to the state’s grid security. In addition to the potential for more blasts of Arctic air to freeze Texas’ energy grid, climate change will pose risks to grid security in Texas around the world. Climate change has the potential to wreak particular havoc on Texas with sea level rise, drought, heat waves and water shortages; a transition to renewables is therefore desirable to mitigate worsening climate change impacts. If states and countries continue to rely on natural gas, coal, and oil to power the majority of their energy grids, the planet will continue to warm. Our current tools to keep us warm during the coldest nights of the year will ironically contribute to further baking us in the summer, which increases the risk of dramatic summer power outages in heatwaves that will rival this week’s cold wave blackouts. It’s imperative to transition to a net-zero emission, mostly renewable energy economy as soon as possible to limit the impacts of extreme climate change impacts in the future.
Cold as Ice, we know that you are
We know that Texas politician’s commitment to an economic belief system opposed to deregulation and federal oversight is as cold-hearted as ice that leaves Texans for dead, shivering in the night. We know that Republicans who are funded with cold cash by oil companies, are the same ones downplaying the natural gas failures that caused the crisis. And we know that those same politicians will lie cold-bloodedly about the primary culprits of the power outages and blackouts: fossil fuels. We know that the real thing as cold as ice are the Republicans who cold-shouldered meaningful grid policy reform that could’ve saved millions from the power outage crisis.
It’s time for Texas to do something and fight to improve its citizens lives, ask for help from neighboring states, regulate its energy grid, connect to the national grid, and start a massive buildout of renewables. After all the weather and climate disasters the state has been subjected to over the past few years, it’s long overdue. It’s time to end the blind faith behind adherence to anti-regulation policy at all costs when it has contributed to such deadly and dangerous results for so many Texans. It’s time to take steps for the good people of Texas so they can stop being as cold as ice.
