Gas, coal, wind, solar. Expect the politics of energy in the wake of Texas’ blackouts
State leaders were quick to look for someone or something to blame when millions of Texans were left in the cold and dark starting early Feb. 15.
Texas Gov. Greg Abbott’s finger pointing at wind generated energy was met with sharp backlash following an interview on Fox News. Abbott told Sean Hannity the shutting down of wind and solar power “thrust Texas into a situation where it was lacking power in a statewide basis.”
“This shows how the Green New Deal would be a deadly deal for the United States of America,” he said Feb. 16, referring to New York Democratic Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez’s plan for addressing climate change. The proposal calls on the U.S. to meet all of its power demands through “clean, renewable, and zero-emission energy sources.”
Abbott’s claim was quickly debunked. Even earlier that day, the group charged with managing Texas’ electric grid said the storm had an impact on many types of generation. At that point, 16,000 megawatts of solar and wind had gone offline, compared to a little under 30,000 megawatts from thermal generation sources, such as coal, gas and nuclear.
Abbott’s remarks may give a hint of what’s in store as Texas’ elected officials investigate the widespread, long-lasting outages and consider responsive legislation.
The conversation in the coming weeks may be more sophisticated than just blaming wind, but political discussion should be expected — especially since the oil and gas industry is a significant player in the legislature, said Jim Henson, director of the Texas Politics Project at UT-Austin.
“They’re going to have a large voice in this,” Henson said. “And that voice can be expected to blame renewables.”
‘Reliable’ vs. renewable energy
Texans were freezing and many were without water as those without power waited for it to return. By Friday morning, the Electric Reliability Council of Texas said operations were out of emergency conditions. The group manages the Texas Electric Grid and is overseen by the Public Utility Commission, which has it commissioners appointed by Abbott.
Abbott has blasted ERCOT’s response to the winter storm, calling it unreliable and dubbing its response a “total failure,” as he called for the resignation of its leadership. Reforms to ERCOT are one of Abbott’s emergency items this legislative session.
He back pedaled his remarks about frozen wind turbines and the Green New Deal somewhat in a Wednesday news conference.
“I have repeatedly talked about how every source of power that the state of Texas has, has been compromised,” he said. “Whether it be renewable power, such as wind or solar, but also — as I mentioned today — access to coal generated power, access to gas generated power, also have been compromised.”
As weather and power conditions in the state move toward normalcy, the policy debate revs up. ERCOT officials will testify before House and Senate committees on Feb. 25 about the outages, as lawmakers try to get to the bottom of the infrastructure collapse.
Lawmakers have already expressed outrage on social media and in interviews, including debates over who’s at fault.
“You want to know why Texas Republicans are desperately trying to blame renewables for this crisis?” Rep. Gene Wu, a Houston Democrat tweeted Feb. 17. “Because if you start looking closer at the real cause, you’re going to start asking why there was no oversight, why there was no regulation, and all the other things THEY created.”
Sen. Kelly Hancock, R-North Richland Hills countered: “Thermal generation is 95% of what is currently heating homes and providing electricity. Future load growth will also come from thermal generation. And during peak hours, renewable generation drops.”
Hancock, chairman of the Business and Commerce committee that’s meeting this week, said Texas has a diverse range of energy sources, which is necessary, but maintained thermal energy sources are more reliable than renewable sources.
“We have spent so much time and energy and effort talking about green energy, green energy,” Hancock said. “I think what this has brought to light is that we need reliable energies.”
Subsidies for renewable sources make it difficult for thermal sources to compete, he said. Asked if those subsidies should be eliminated, Hancock said “we’re going to look at everything.” Last session, he authored a bill seeking a study on the effects of federal renewable energy subsidies. It was left pending in committee.
“That’s not what we’re counting on to get the lights back on,” Hancock said of solar and wind energy.
But Rep. Abel Herrero, a Robstown Democrat who is the vice chairman of the House Energy committee, said the state should not be too quick to turn away from renewable sources, noting that all energy types have ideal circumstances for generation. He pointed out that gas lines freezing contributed to the outages, which ERCOT says it implemented to avoid a statewide blackout.
Herrero plans to resurrect a bill from early in his legislative career that would create an incentive for energy companies to create storage capacity that can be used for later transmission.
“While not necessarily the complete answer to these types of circumstances, at least they would be helpful in some other ways — maybe like a hurricane or things of that nature,” he said.
State Rep. Craig Goldman, a Fort Worth Republican who is chairman of the Energy Resources committee, said the committee will work to figure out “what went wrong, who’s responsible for what went wrong” and what needs to be done to make sure it never happens again in the committee’s coming hearing. One of the hearing’s focuses will be the winterization of equipment, he said.
The first step for politicians should be to dissect the week’s events to understand what led to them.
“But while that’s going on, the political stuff that we’re already seeing, is going to be trying to promote and establish a frame that suits people’s interests,” Henson, of the Texas Politics Project, said.
A Texas power breakdown
Texas is the top producer of crude oil and natural gas in the U.S. It also leads in wind-powered generation.
In 2019, 47% of Texas electricity was generated by natural gas, according to ERCOT. Coal and Wind each accounted for about 20% of electricity generation.
“If you’re pro fossil fuels, you’re going to immediately point your finger at the turbines, and if you’re on the other side, you’re going to try and say, ‘well yeah, that happened but then there was half as much of the natural gas that went down,” said Richard Denne, director of the Texas Christian University Energy Institute.
What people should look at is the deregulation of Texas’ energy market, dating back to 1999, he said.
“We allowed for this setup, that our plants are not set up for a hard winter,” Denne said.
Abbott made the winterization of power generators and corresponding funding an emergency item for Texas lawmakers to consider.
The outages highlighted Texas’ need for a more well rounded approach for generating energy and distributing it to customers, said Ann Bluntzer, an associate professor of professional practice at TCU who has studied energy geopolitics.
She’d like to see lawmakers invest time and money in innovation and research for sustainable energy solutions, rather than subsidies for wind and solar. Better storage of energy is one area for improvement, she said.
“If we could solve the storage problem, then we wouldn’t be talking right now,” Bluntzer said.
ERCOT isn’t focused on the policy debate, ERCOT President and CEO Bill Magness said Thursday as ERCOT’s response to the week’s weather events continued.
“This event, which pulled so much attention to the energy, to the electric system, is going to be discussed, debated and analyzed,” he said, noting that there’s been robust debate about energy policy in the past.
ERCOT’s role is to implement whatever laws the state requires of them, Magness said.
“The state asks us to implement state law and to implement measures to make sure that the grid is reliable and doesn’t have a blackout,” he said. “If there are changes in what the legislature wants us to do as part of that … we need to follow the state statute, because that’s our governing document when it comes down to it.”
The outages will force a conversation about Texas’ energy policy, said Bluntzer.
But when it comes to culpability for the outages that spanned days for some, the blame does not rest with one segment or group, she said.
“I think everybody’s a little bit to blame,” Bluntzer said. “I really do.”
