Texas power outages prompt fight over blame

An arctic cold snap in Texas that has left millions without power for days has turned into a proxy fight over the future of the US electric system at a time of more extreme weather and a push to decarbonize.

The unfolding disaster has crippled large parts of Texas, whose leaders take pride in the state's identity as an energy powerhouse with a light touch to regulation. After a third frigid night with outages, more than 3.3mn customers remain in the dark and today are facing burst water pipes and shortages of potable water. Icy roads and the threat of Covid-19 have complicated efforts to relocate affected residents.

Texas governor Greg Abbott (R) and other Republican leaders have tried to pin much of the blame on wind and solar generation in the state, which they claim performed below expectations during a period when a dome of arctic air enveloped much of the midcontinent and reduced wind speeds in the state's wind-producing panhandle region.

"This shows how the Green New Deal would be a deadly deal for the United States of America," Abbott said yesterday during a televised interview. "Our wind and our solar got shut down, and they were collectively more than 10pc of our power grid, and that thrust Texas into a situation where it was lacking power on a statewide basis."

The state's main electric grid operator says that although iced up wind turbines have been a problem, gas-fired and other thermal plants were primarily responsible and accounted for 60pc of outages. Thermal power plants are also disproportionately important to reliability. The Electric Reliability Council of Texas (ERCOT), in winter planning documents, expected those plants would serve nearly 90pc of peak winter electric load.

Electric grid experts say there does not appear to be a single cause of the outages, which occurred during a cold snap that pushed forecast electric demand to 75GW, far above the last winter peak of 66GW three years ago. The extreme cold this week drove up demand for gas and electricity at the same time it froze off equipment used in natural gas infrastructure and power plants.

"No one fuel source is to blame for this event," US Federal Energy Regulatory Commission (FERC) commissioner Neil Chatterjee, a Republican, said in a televised interview today.

Renewable energy groups are firing back at critics, who they say are trying to mislead the public on power outages primarily caused problems at fossil fuel plants. Those plants have faced issues such as iced up instrument that trip equipment, difficulties acquiring natural gas and frozen cooling water.

"It is an extreme weather problem, not a clean power problem," American Clean Power Association chief executive Heather Zichal said. "If anything, it shows why we need to be investing in building out more renewable energy sources with better transmission and storage to replace outdated systems."

Even so, the curtailments of wind and solar output over the past week have posed hard questions for President Joe Biden's ambitions to achieve net-zero carbon emissions across the power sector by 2035. Hitting that goal while retaining grid reliability during extreme cold is expected to require vast investments in carbon sequestration, energy storage, electric transmission, renewables and energy efficiency.

Other political officials in Texas were more reflective in the wake of the outages. US senator Ted Cruz (R-Texas) was conciliatory for mocking California's energy policies last summer when it was struggling to retain electric service in the face of high temperatures.

"I got no defense," Cruz said on Twitter yesterday. "A blizzard strikes Texas, and our state shuts down. Not good."

'Big-time' cost to Texas

Abbott yesterday criticized ERCOT and ordered the state's legislature to investigate and consider making reforms. But political figures in the state are skeptical of any action that might jeopardize the high degree of independence ERCOT has from federal oversight.

"Texans would be without electricity for longer than three days to keep the federal government out of their business," former Texas governor Rick Perry, who served as US energy secretary under former president Donald Trump, said in a blog post today.

ERCOT's electrical grid is unique for its lack of interconnections to other electric grids. That avoided FERC oversight but also limits the state's ability to export power when there is too much generation or boost imports when supply is tight. ERCOT also lacks a capacity market that would pay generators for reliability, and instead relies on an energy-only market where prices can spike up to $9,000/MW to ensure adequate supplies.

Building more electric transmission that would connect wide geographic regions could mitigate grid disruptions and make it easier to integrate renewables, according to environmental groups that have pushed for the types of vast grid investments envisioned in Biden's $1 trillion infrastructure plan, which seeks a switch toward electric vehicles.

"We need an electricity system in Texas, and across the US, that can withstand the extreme weather fueled by climate change," the Sustainable FERC Project, a group affiliated with environmental group the Natural Resources Defense Council, said yesterday. "The lack of connections is costing Texas big-time during this cold spell."

The power outages in Texas could trigger another round of discussions about whether market rules should change to require more power plants to winterize and have reliable fuel supplies, such as a backup oil tank or a firm contract for pipeline capacity. Gas and coal officials are citing the outages to argue for a need to retain energy diversity.

"Rolling blackouts in Texas and Oklahoma, much like we have seen in California during extreme hot weather events, underscores the need for an ‘all of the above' energy system and additional focus on infrastructure and resiliency," American Exploration and Production Council chief executive Anne Bradbury said.

By Chris Knight