Texas Lawmakers Advance Bills Overhauling Electric Grid, Regulatory Oversight
As the Texas legislative session drew to a close over the weekend, lawmakers approved bills aimed at overhauling the state’s electric grid and those who govern it following February’s massive winter storm that left residents in the dark for days amid record cold temperatures.
“This is our response, this body’s response, to the horrific things we saw during Winter Storm Uri,” said Rep. Chris Paddie (R-District 9), chairman of the House State Affairs Committee. “The issues of oversight and accountability, communication failures and addressing the weatherization issue I think we identified those challenges and came up with some really good solutions to prevent those things from happening again.”
Publishing date: May 29, 2021 • 1 hour ago • 4 minute read •
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(Bloomberg) After months of debate, Texas lawmakers are poised to pass a series of measures in response to February’s deadly blackouts. Yet those bills, critics say, do little to fix the fundamental issues that made the state’s power grid so vulnerable.
While the pending legislation will take steps including forcing electric plants and some pipelines to prepare better for the cold, the bills will do nothing to guarantee the state has enough generating capacity on hand at all times. Nor would they force Texas’s grid to connect to neighboring states so they could provide backup.
Credit: The Texas Tribune
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The 2021 Texas legislative session is heading into its final weekend fraught with uncertainty and tension between the two chambers that could lead to a special session.
After three of Lt. Gov. Dan Patrick’s priorities effectively died Tuesday night in the House, the Senate presiding officer called for a special session to pass them, jolting the final several days of a session that was already on track to be the most conservative in recent memory. The last day of the session is Monday, and procedural deadlines have been increasingly cutting off opportunities to hash out key issues.