At height of electricity crisis, leaders couldn’t tell Texans what they needed to know

The electricity crisis across Texas has shown us how dependent we are on a force we can’t see.

When another such commodity — clear, honest, precise communication — is in short supply, it drives frustration and deepens danger. Unfortunately, that’s what we saw at all levels, at least early on. And there’s a direct line between governments’ efforts over the years to stymie the flow of information and their inability to communicate clearly with the public now.

If there were a medal for muddled messages, it should be named the ERCOT Award. The agency that runs the state power grid, the Electric Reliability Council of Texas, was far from alone, but it was easily the worst offender.

The biggest communication blunder, the one that caused the most anger and distrust among millions of Texans, was that we should expect “rolling” or “rotating” blackouts. Texans were willing to share the burden, to have their power cut for a while and restored so their neighbors could have electricity for a while, too.

But that’s not what happened. Customers began seeing shutoffs Sunday night that extended for hours and days as the most stinging cold set in. Pipes burst; lives were endangered. It’s possible that the incorrect information prompted some to skip some preparations, figuring a few hours at a time without power isn’t that disruptive.

ERCOT never really owned up to this botched message. Agency officials explained that it was not possible to rotate outages without risking the entire grid for weeks or months. Those of us without degrees in electrical engineering will have to take them at their word. But if it’s the case, they must have known beforehand it was a possibility, and they shouldn’t have let customers believe in a scenario that wasn’t true.

ERCOT’s messages have been baffling, loaded with jargon. Ask a question, get an impenetrable word salad. But incompetence is one thing; insensitivity is another.

Someone on the agency’s social media team thought Sunday night, as millions of Texans were on the precipice of a treacherous week, to suggest the surge in power demand was in part because of “the fancy new appliances you bought during the pandemic and only used once.”

There was an important message there about taking steps to curtail even small draws on the strained grid. But by trying to be cute about it, ERCOT burned goodwill it hadn’t even earned.

In north Fort Worth, hundreds of thousands of customers suddenly had to boil their water after a treatment plant lost power. But the city’s rollout of that information was bungled. The map showing who was affected was confusing to begin with, and then it changed. For northern suburbs that buy their water from the city, the information was even further delayed.

And let’s not let state leaders off the hook. Rather than shooting straight with Texans about what had happened and what we were up against, Gov. Greg Abbott and others helped feed the political narrative that frozen wind turbine blades were the primary culprit, supposedly proving the folly of renewable energy.

Yes, the loss of wind-generated power was a factor. But the bigger problems, as energy experts and even ERCOT quickly noted, were a dip in natural gas production and freezing of vital equipment at generating plants.

Politicians can’t help themselves from trying to score points, and it’s true that fossil fuels remain our primary and most reliable source of energy, as they will for decades. But the effort to shift to wind and solar power as technology and storage improve isn’t a mistake. It’s vital that Texas lead the way in the transition, even as it takes decades. And every Texas official should speak with pride about the diversification of our energy supply and the move away from the dirtiest sources, such as coal.

Our statewide tragedy isn’t fodder for the tiresome debate over the Green New Deal. There are specific problems and failures to address. Anything else is a distraction.

These communication errors are more than just the result of stressed officials fumbling their response. They are symptoms of a decadeslong effort by government officials and their representatives at every level to dodge requests for information.

Agencies fight the release of the public’s documents. Representatives of elected officials often ignore reporters’ questions or respond with non-sequitur emails.

This isn’t about journalists, to be clear. It’s about a callous disregard for representatives of the people to answer basic questions about, say, what happened to plunge Texas into a week of darkness, cold and danger.

When the temperatures finally rise, we’ll move on quickly to other concerns. But Texans should remember the misinformation they were fed this week when it mattered most and hold their elected officials accountable.

This story was originally published February 19, 2021 at 5:03 AM.