Legislative Response to Winter Storm Leaves Some Doubting
“SB3 does an OK job of requiring regulatory bodies to develop weatherization standards and have rules and penalties in place. Those are good things,” Beth Garza, a senior fellow with R Street Institute and former director of ERCOT’s Independent Market Monitor, said during a media briefing last week. “What hasn’t been addressed is any kind of energy efficiency or demand-side actions to improve the usage, the lower and controlled requirements for electricity.”
Endnotes
Texas House goes further than Senate to protect state s main power grid
Mitchell Ferman, The Texas Tribune
May 24, 2021
FacebookTwitterEmail 3
1of3Kim Scott takes in a pan of biscuits that he cooked on his outdoor grill for breakfast on Tuesday, Feb. 16, 2021. Scott and his wife, Clara, lost power in their home about 7 p.m. on Monday. Scott said they still managed to cook dinner last night on the grill as well. They live in a subdivision off Vance Jackson Road where according to the CPS Energy website has one of the most extensive outages in the city.Kin Man Hui/Staff photographerShow MoreShow Less
Texas House s proposed fixes to state power grid go further than Senate s texastribune.org - get the latest breaking news, showbiz & celebrity photos, sport news & rumours, viral videos and top stories from texastribune.org Daily Mail and Mail on Sunday newspapers.
By Nikki Courtney
May 21, 2021
The Texas legislature has until the end of May to decide how to resolve the issues made apparent during the unprecedented February freeze when the state’s power grid effectively collapsed, leaving millions without power in the cold and more than 100 residents dead.
Nothing consequential has been ironed out yet as the House took a break Thursday and said they wouldn t return until Sunday, quibbling with the Senate over pet projects.
One bill has made it to Governor Abbott’s desk for a signature, but it concerns a matter involving California policy with questionable if any impact on Texas.
Fotolia
In efforts to prevent a repeat of the February disaster that left millions without electricity, Texas policymakers continue to disagree over the cause and appropriate mitigation efforts. The blackouts from the storm led to spikes in power prices and the deaths of at least 151 people.
Republican leadership was quick to criticize renewables for the role they played in the blackouts, with Gov. Greg Abbott, R, claiming on national television that renewables caused the outages. They cannot be dispatched by the Electric Reliability Council of Texas (ERCOT) and therefore cannot be relied upon, said state Sen. Kelly Hancock, R, who chairs the Senate Business and Commerce committee. Hancock sponsored Senate Bill (SB) 1278, which would impose reliability costs on intermittent generation.