How the Texas Power Grid crumbled...

Severe winter weather conditions caused major power outages and left millions without water in the entire state of #Texas last week. I saw friends, families and colleagues struggle to keep themselves and their families safe and warm. At least 58 people died, and there was widespread damage caused to homes and businesses from frozen and burst water pipes.

How did this happen? Is Texas’s energy grid so unreliable? Well, last week exposed major vulnerabilities.

The Texas energy infrastructure is not built to withstand freezing conditions for long periods of time. When temperatures fell well below freezing, the natural gas pipeline froze and accumulation of ice on powerlines and wind turbines caused mass disruptions. I credit this largely due the cowboy style deregulation of the electricity market in Texas, leaving investment decisions to a makeshift of private generators, transmission companies and energy retailers. All of whom compete on price and sacrifice long term reliability by forgoing investments like winter weatherization upgrades.

Furthermore, the Texas grid is self-contained, and powered entirely in state. Which means that Texas is independent but also cannot draw electricity from other states in emergency situations. When its own infrastructure failed, it had limited import ability from other states. In fact, the Texas energy system was at the brink of total collapse and restoring power from a total blackout can take weeks.

As soon as this happened, there was an immediate spread of misinformation and propaganda, attributing the failure to green energy. The bulk of disruption, 80%, was from the coal and gas infrastructure freezing and only 13 % of the loss was attributed to wind turbines. (To some extent wind exceeded expectations, by generating more than it had predicted). To many Texans, it came as a surprise that a good chunk of their electricity comes from wind. Wind power is the fastest growing source of energy in Texas, in 2015, it was 11% of Texas grid and last year it supplied 23% of the systems’s power, surpassing coal as the second-largest source of energy. It is also the sector with the most job creation, bolstering rural economics and supporting communities across the state.

Wind power is good for Texas, and last week just underscored the need to build a more climate resilient energy infrastructure that in winter weatherized, and the urgent need to accelerate the transition to low carbon and renewables. We will #powerthechange!

Watch my video on this topic here.