It’s Time to Give Renewable Energy A Chance
ERCOT data proves wind energy is only a scapegoat for Texas leaders.
In the heart of Texas, away from bumbling boisterous cities, lies the quiet and quaint rolling hills of rural life. Here, ranchers and farmers only know a lifestyle of hard work and open pastures, victim particularly to Mother Nature herself. When meteorology reports began to show the frigid temperatures anticipated on February 12th and continuing into the following week, many of the elders nearby recalled the epic freeze of 1983 in which they endured wide-scale rolling blackouts (also known as load shedding) and 140 hours of subfreezing conditions. I wonder, if at that time, they ever expected a similar plight nearly 40 years later.
My partner, Thomas, a full-time ranch hand, works under his grandparents who have spent nearly their entire lives in Mills County. They warned us of the week we should expect from their experience prior; although the electric company had proclaimed “scheduled” rolling blackouts, they told us to not expect the power to come back on immediately for the rural residences. We tried to prepare as best we could, but we had only heard about the power outages a few days before they were scheduled to occur, and no one knew how long we would go without electricity. By the time we realized our backup gas heater wasn’t working properly, it was too late to get it repaired because the roads were already covered in ice.
On Monday, February 15th, we woke up to a cold yet manageable house with no power. Our fireplace that had been boarded up for decades before we moved in became our only option for a heat source, and after careful inspection, we concluded it was cautiously safe to use. We took curtains intended for donation out of a cardboard box and stuffed every door in the house. We removed any personal items from our bedroom and office, sectioned them off, and closed the vents so our heater could direct the warm air to specific rooms if the power was to come back on. That first night — with no sight of power — our fatigue held us down long enough we did not tend to the fire properly. I will never forget waking up Tuesday morning to observe the thermostat in our hallway reading 32 degrees Fahrenheit and to walk into the kitchen only to find our olive oil had solidified. The bathtub we had filled with water — used to refill the toilet tank because the line had frozen — had a layer of ice sitting on top. I could see my breath as I walked around.
The first couple of days were the harshest. Our bodies were not accepting of the sudden drop in temperature and we still had to bear worse conditions outside to tend to the livestock. Regardless of how we were feeling, the animals required food and water.
Similar to the measly one-bite samplers at Costco, the power acted as a bad tease from Monday through Tuesday, coming on for 20 to 30 minutes, and just when the house had warmed a few degrees, it shut off. There was no consistency — no “schedule” that we had been promised until Wednesday, when I began to notice a pattern of one hour on followed by two hours off. By the time we came upon the fourth day of the week, the power finally turned on and remained, but without any trust in its reliability we kept the fire going through the night. With all things considered, I reckon us one of the lucky ones compared to some of the horrific stories the news has detailed.
We did not trust the electric companies in their initial notice of temporary, rolling power loss. We trusted the elders who had been failed before.
While power had returned to the majority of the state by Tuesday morning, many families had to sleep and eat inside subfreezing rooms. By Thursday, when our power was restored, 325,000 homes and commercial buildings were still not gifted the basic necessity. Over the week, people died from hypothermia or succumbed to carbon monoxide poisoning when trying to keep warm. In a state that prides itself for possessing its own unique culture, extreme hospitality (to some), and independent power grid, Texas has publicly and horrifically failed its people. And this was not the first offense.
So what happened? And why has this happened before without proper repairments?
There is no question that an independent power grid was adopted in 1996 — in concurrence with the appointment of the Electric Reliability Council of Texas, or ERCOT — to avoid federal regulation. Most recent failures of power plants in 2011 and near-failures in 2014 led to investigations from the Texas Public Utility Commission (PUC) that concluded the state’s power-generating companies were not prepared for anticipatory “failure points” in response to cold weather. In addition, a federal report discussing the efforts of multiple states during the 2014 polar vortex further strengthened the argument of the state’s vulnerability and provided recommendations for winterizing natural gas supply and transportation. Essentially, the report insisted they learn from their mistakes now before another cold front comes south.
Clearly, they did not.
Due to the inability to store natural gas directly on-site, pipelines usually transport natural gas from its generating sites to main centers and substations by demand. Because many of the said pipes froze, the ice blocked the natural gas from traveling on its typical pathway, commonly called a “freeze-off.” With the increased use of natural gas at the beginning of the week, this also caused depressurization in the pipelines. Although officials had no shortage of natural gas sources, there was no way to supply and distribute it throughout the state.
Combined with coal and nuclear power, about 28,000 megawatts of energy failed us. Approximately 80% of fuel is generated between the three sources in winter — 56% from natural gas — yet multiple politicians and others refused to blame anything but renewable energy, specifically wind. Gov. Greg Abbott directly blamed the Green New Deal on an interview with Fox News; Rep. Dan Crenshaw (R-Houston) tweeted early in the week that we cannot rely on, “intermittent renewable energy like wind” in severe weather conditions; Texas Agriculture Commissioner Sid Miller turned to Facebook to exclaim that “the experiment” of renewables had failed us; and, Senator Ted Cruz decided to warm himself at a lovely resort in Cancun while 3 million Texans shivered themselves to sleep.
The audacity for the leaders and decision-makers of Texas to refuse the honest data, form absurd statements to push blame elsewhere, and take no responsibility for the deadly unpreparedness of their power sector is unacceptable. After experiencing the events of last week, I still carry hope for the future of the Texas power grid. Gov. Abbott will be up for reelection in 2022; less than a year away, the people of Texas will not forget the repercussions from the freeze of 2021. Senator Ted Cruz may not be on the hot spot until 2024 for the next election however he has clearly shown his disregard and fickleness towards the men and women that voted him into office.
The data does not lie. With reliability in its name, ERCOT must take ownership for the failures of fossil fuels last week and ameliorate a power grid we can trust. With appropriate regulation and subsistence, renewable energy will be the reliable energy of our future, if it is given the chance it deserves.
