Don’t forget the role of the Railroad Commission and natural gas producers in the power outages
Railroad Commissioners should require more from the operators who supply critical natural gas to power plants.
File photo shows an oil pumpjack working in the background by natural gas machinery in Webb County, Texas. (G.J. McCarthy/The Dallas Morning News)(G.J. McCarthy / Staff Photographer)
By Virginia Palacios
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The winter power blackouts that killed more than 100 Texans and caused millions to suffer were predictable and preventable. While most of the blame has gone to ERCOT and the Public Utility Commission, the Railroad Commission of Texas was also responsible and needs reform.
Warren Buffett’s Texas power plant scheme is expensive and ineffective
Re-regulation is a ham-handed reaction to February outages.
U.S. billionaire investor Warren Buffett
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Warren Buffett’s company has offered to invest $8.3 billion in the Texas grid, and Texas should decline.
Berkshire Hathaway proposed a plan to increase power generation reliability by building a special fleet of 10 natural gas-fired plants, according to reporting by The Texas Tribune, paid for by a socialized fee on electric bills. These plants would sit idle until needed in an emergency, like the February freeze.
This is a money grab that would re-regulate part of the Texas electrical system without addressing one of the key problems that triggered outages earlier this year. That is, a natural gas shortage. Many natural gas power plant operators said their plants worked just fine, but they couldn’t get natural gas fuel because of outages in pipeline and compression equipment.
The Texas grid loses to Arizona, New York, Mississippi, Alabama, Georgia
The damage from the grid failure continues deaths and funerals, bankruptcies, lawsuits, and more.
By Ed Hirs
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In 1998, about the time that Texas began to change the way it regulated electric utilities, NASA launched the Mars Climate Orbiter. It crashed on Mars due to a simple error, failing to convert English measures to and from the metric system. At any point in the design or even during the monthslong transit, the error could have been corrected. It was not. Last month, NASA’s Perseverance rover landed on Mars. NASA learned from its mistakes.
Like power generators, Texas homes are not built for winter
Energy efficiency upgrades would go a long way toward protecting Texans from the next freeze and power outage.
Maria Magarin takes a phone call while standing in the living room of her apartment at The Everly Apartments located in far northeast Dallas on Thursday, March 4, 2021. Magarin has been sleeping and living in her living room after her bedroom and laundry room sustained extensive water damage due to the epic snowstorm that hit a few weeks ago, and she says her apartment management has yet to make repairs. Magarin fears the mold growing on her wet walls will make her young sons sick and that the saggy ceiling in a walk-in closet will collapse. (Lynda M. González/The Dallas Morning News)(Lynda M. González / Staff Photographer)
Opinion
Natural gas was a big reason for the blackout, so why do lawmakers want to rely even more on the fuel?
Blocking communities from going all-electric doesn’t solve the natural gas system problems.
By Luke Metzger
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After a blackout caused in large part by shortages of natural gas, some Texas legislators want to make the state even more dependent on gas.
This week, House Speaker Dade Phelan announced a package of bills aimed at preventing future blackouts after the recent devastating power outages. Some are good ideas, including bills to add a consumer advocate to the board of Electric Reliability Council of Texas, to require weatherization of power plants and natural gas infrastructure, and to create a statewide emergency alert system for natural disasters.