Re: “Put teeth in plan to prevent deadly outages Penalty for failing to weatherize energy equipment should be more costly than actually doing the job,”.
Tuesday, May 25: How to build a better grid
In each instance, lawmakers left
the state’s lightly regulated energy markets alone, choosing cheap electricity over a more stable system. As a result, experts say, the power grid that Texans depend on to heat and cool their homes and run their businesses has become less and less reliable and more susceptible to weather-related emergencies.
“Everyone has been in denial,” said Alison Silverstein, a consultant who works with the U.S. Department of Energy and formerly served as a senior adviser at the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission. “They treat each individual extreme event as a one-off, a high-impact, low-frequency event, which means, ‘I hope it doesn’t happen again.’”
Averting crisis: Path to weatherize Texas power plants and some gas wells set under compromise bill
The Legislature’s biggest answer yet to weaknesses exposed by winter storm selectively weatherizes gas infrastructure, creates outage alerts and tightens coordination.
A compromise bill unveiled by Texas House leaders on Tuesday would respond to February s electricity crisis by, among other things, weatherizing power plants – and, selectively, natural gas infrastructure. The bill also would create outage alerts and require grid managers and utility regulators to practice for emergencies.(Smiley N. Pool / Staff Photographer)
5:59 PM on May 18, 2021 CDT
AUSTIN Texas would require weatherization of electrical generating plants and some natural gas wells and related pipelines and compressors under a compromise bill that House leaders unveiled Tuesday.
As a nuclear waste company’s plan to store the most dangerous type of radioactive waste in West Texas moves forward at the federal level, state lawmakers are aiming to ban the materials from entering the state.
Environmental and consumer advocates for years have decried a proposal to build a 332-acre site in West Texas near the New Mexico border to store the riskiest type of nuclear waste: spent fuel rods from nuclear power plants, which can remain dangerously radioactive for hundreds of thousands of years.
A bill advancing in the House, filed by Rep. Brooks Landgraf, R-Odessa, whose district includes Andrews County where the proposed facility would be located seeks to stop the plan by banning that type of radioactive waste from being disposed of or stored in Texas.
/ The Waste Control Specialists hazardous waste facility in Andrews County near the Texas-New Mexico border. A bill advancing in the House seeks to ban high-level radioactive waste from being stored in Texas.
As a nuclear waste company’s plan to store the most dangerous type of radioactive waste in West Texas moves forward at the federal level, state lawmakers are aiming to ban the materials from entering the state.
Environmental and consumer advocates for years have decried a proposal to build a 332-acre site in West Texas near the New Mexico border to store the riskiest type of nuclear waste: spent fuel rods from nuclear power plants, which can remain dangerously radioactive for hundreds of thousands of years.