A Perfect (Winter) Storm, a Changing Climate, and the Future of Energy Infrastructure in Texas and Beyond
It is approaching four months since the winter storm that overpowered Texas’ electric grid, plunging its residents into electricity blackouts and providing little respite from freezing temperatures. The state’s electricity grid was “seconds or minutes” from a total collapse that could potentially have caused months-long blackouts, according to the Electric Reliability Council of Texas (ERCOT) — a statement that is so utterly shocking to hear about a state in the 21st century United States, especially one that prides itself on its energy independence and production capabilities (Marfin). Living in Texas, I would never have imagined my family and I would spend two days huddled in blankets, freezing even by our fireplace, anxiously waiting for the power to return. For millions of Texans to freeze — for 111 people to die — from a crisis that could have been avoided, or at least mitigated, is simply unacceptable.
The stark reality of the situation proves our electricity grids need serious reform, as extreme weather events are predicted to become even more common. During an age in which electricity and power dominate our daily lives, our electricity grids are the veins and arteries of our societal body. Electricity grids can play a role in both mitigation of climate change effects — specifically through the search for cleaner, more sustainable energy sources — and adaptation to its inevitable and detrimental effects. The winter storm has sparked much discussion about how Texas moves forward from its electricity grid failure — whether it pertains to our aging infrastructure that is perhaps ill-prepared for climate catastrophes, or the flaws of our isolated energy grid — and what this failure can tell us about the way our global electricity grids will operate in a future of changing climate.
In the view of some experts, the failure of Texas’ electricity grid was simply a matter of time due to few regulations and poor planning. Energy economics professor Ed Hirs has been studying Texas’ electric grid for over a decade and predicted its failure. Texas’ individualism and distaste for federal regulation compelled the state to disconnect from the national electricity grids and avoid regulation by the Federal Power Commission. ERCOT was created in 1970 to unify small power companies and comply with federal guidelines established in 1965. In the 1990s and early 2000s, Texas moved to further deregulate its grid in search of higher profit potential. Texas has since allowed market forces to determine all aspects of the grid, choosing not to pay energy producers to maintain backup power plants in the case of an emergency. The drive to reduce energy costs and cut corners on regulation — as Texas did not require energy providers winterize their plants or provide for additional energy generating capacity, both of which would have raised electric rates and upset large electricity consumers such as grocery stores and skyscrapers — ironically came at the cost of a devastating system breakdown (Swartz). As Hirs said, “They all chose cheap over reliable, and they got it” (qtd. in Baucum).
This is not to say that Texas’ isolated grid was solely borne from hubris and self-importance — lower taxes and regulations have incentivized the energy market in Texas and provided some economic returns — but rather that the facts of the matter do indeed necessitate greater cooperation, and that the combination of independence and lax regulation can (and will) come to a head during crises such as February’s winter storm. There is no responsibility without accountability; if we give our energy providers the responsibility to provide for the needs of Texans, they must be held properly accountable for failures. Our current model of a scarcity market (not paying for unused power) cuts costs in regular weather, but fails during severe weather events. This is opposed to a capacity market, in which providers are paid to be available during emergencies, or connection to the national grid, in which unused power can be sold to other states.
The nature of Texas’ electric grid certainly contributed to its failure, but misguided projections sealed its fate. As Ezra Klein writes in his article “Texas Is a Rich State in a Rich Country, and Look What Happened”, a multitude of factors contributed to the state’s electrical collapse. ERCOT was warned ten years ago in 2011 after a cold snap that its energy infrastructure was ill-prepared for severely cold weather; ERCOT’s worst-case-scenario planning used 2011 as a data point, but seemed to fail to recognize a 1989 incident that had more severe ramifications than in 2011 (Klein). In addition, Amal Ahmad of the Texas Observer claims ERCOT does not use climate models and projections for its planning, rather choosing to solely use past data to determine supply and demand, which can prove misleading; the past will certainly not look like the future, as climate scientists have warned.
Texas is no stranger to the deleterious effects of climate change, nor will it be in the future. Two of the more recent events — this February’s winter storm and the category 4 Hurricane Harvey in 2017 — have proved the potential for climate change to wreak havoc upon Texas’ citizens. Tropical cyclones that make landfall on Texas are predicted to become more fast-moving in the coming years (Hassanzadeh 1), increasing their potency and putting Texas’ coastal communities at a higher risk than before. Texas is susceptible to drought exacerbated by climate change, which in turn would put a strain on its agricultural industry and water infrastructure, according to the EPA. And, as evidenced by this February, fiercely cold weather events (which Texas is unprepared for) could potentially be on the rise as Arctic warming weakens the jet stream. All of the aforementioned challenges will put increased strain on Texas’ energy infrastructure (“What Climate Change Means for Texas”). This is not to mention the steep financial cost of these natural disasters; there are predictions that the winter storm will even surpass Hurricane Harvey in damages. For context, Harvey itself cost $19 billion (Swartz).
It is difficult to make progress on energy reform when political actors seek partisan gain; Texas politics currently suffers from this problem. Soon after blackouts began during the winter storm, Governor Greg Abbott falsely blamed renewable energy for the blackouts and commented on the Green New Deal’s supposed ineffectiveness, with Congressman Dan Crenshaw and Texas Agriculture Commissioner Sid Miller joining in on the misleading attacks on wind energy. This is all despite the fact that the 80% of power losses were owed to natural gas and coal (Mena). Combine modeling and prediction oversights with political rhetoric of doubting climate change and incorrectly blaming renewable energy, and you get a state stubbornly stuck in muddied waters, even as natural disasters are predicted to become more frequent. Texas is indeed a rich state, as Klein writes, but it is still all the more susceptible to infrastructure failures in light of worsening climate disasters. We as Texans have long prided ourselves on our independence, but climate change necessitates cooperative transformation. The challenges climate change will bring are closely intertwined with public policy, particularly energy policy. To prevent more needless suffering, we will need to reevaluate how to best transform our systems and speak in terms of the facts.
The solution to improving Texas’ energy infrastructure does not have to lie in cutting down productive investments; reforming our market-based mechanisms, such as building a capacity market, can also potentially provide economic benefits. One way to build a capacity market is for Texas to join its neighbors on the national electricity grid, making it easier for Texas to draw power in a time of crisis (Bullock et al.). The city of El Paso, which is on the Western Interconnection electricity grid, can be examined as an interesting case study on the benefits of both being part of an interconnected national grid and updating power plants for extreme weather. El Paso managed to keep the lights on as the rest of Texas went dark during the winter storm, largely due to a difference in planning. The 2011 winter storm that served as a warning for ERCOT was not unnoticed by El Paso, and the city spent $4.5 million to winterize its power plants in hopes of averting a future winter crisis. El Paso also draws benefits from its connection with the Western Interconnection grid; the grid provides a safety net for the city, from which El Paso can buy energy if needed but also sell its excess energy. These financial benefits provide an incentive to winterize and properly maintain facilities, as profits can be made from excess energy (Juarez). The Texas Interconnection grid does not share these characteristics; as a result, any regulations on infrastructure in the isolated system unsurprisingly incur a significant cost, with no return; hence, there is a lack of an incentive to regulate or improve.
It is also worth mentioning, however, that the national grid is not a perfect solution; in fact, the national grid itself requires updates in the era of climate change, both to maintain its integrity and to move towards the dissemination of cleaner energy (Eckhouse). The loss of independence Texas would experience by transitioning to a national grid would make it more difficult to manage electricity transmissions within the state; there will be a need for all states, not just Texas, to manage electricity grids responsibly and sustainably to share power (Swartz). Building more transmission lines will be key to adding more renewable sources of energy to our grids, as renewable sources of energy are often located far from city centers (Brady). These updates are not cheap; improvements to transmission lines could cost the United States $90 billion by 2030, according to a 2019 study by WIRES, a group advocating for transmission reform (Weiss et. al). However, this investment is likely to pay off; a 2020 study by the Goldman School of Public Policy at Berkeley finds that a 90% carbon-free grid powered by wind, solar, and batteries could be economically feasible by returning money through job creation and energy savings (Phadke et. al 2).
The extent to which states and countries should pursue renewable energy has remained a debate which has become all the more relevant when discussing energy infrastructure reform. Kenneth Hersh, chief executive of the George W. Bush Presidential Center and co-founder of NGP Energy Capital Management argues that climate resilience should be prioritized over developments in green energy. Hersh claims that investments in green energy detract from opportunities to bolster current energy infrastructure, and that the provided incentives for green energy in places such as New York and California only seem to waste time and drive up prices. I would argue, however, why not focus on both green energy development and climate resilience? It is true that a focus on adaptation is necessary in light of worsening climate disasters, but this is just the tip of the iceberg when it comes to the natural effects of climate change. As long as we continue our reliance on fossil fuels, our global temperatures will continue to rise and further destabilize our climate. Hersh likens the focus on green energy to Emperor Nero playing the fiddle while Rome burned — but divestment from fossil fuels can hardly be considered an activity as idle as the emperor’s fiddling. Ignoring the ways we can prevent our climate from worsening will only result in a vicious cycle of hardening infrastructure just to have it fail again as conditions worsen — one that will cost more in the long run than a combined focus on renewable energy and climate resilience.
Moreover, investments in renewable energy can actually prove to be useful for building climate resilience. A 2021 study conducted on the southeastern United States shows that, by 2050, energy providers would need to increase generating capacity by more than one-third to avoid electrical grid failures, particularly in the summer, as extreme heat puts pressure on electricity generation. Texas’ winter storm was an exhibit of electricity grid failure in unusually cold weather; however, increased heat brought about by climate change is equally likely to threaten our electricity grids. The best way to accomplish increased generation, as demonstrated by the study, is to use solar and wind power to deliver the new electricity necessary for increased generating capacity (Ralston Fonseca et al. 1–8). Renewable energy does have its flaws; energy sources such as solar and wind are subject to fluctuations based on natural weather conditions (such as cloud cover or availability of wind). In Texas, wind contributes a significant amount to the state’s energy generated by renewables. When wind production falls, natural gas generation is able to fill the gaps. The Texas winter storm saw record demand and wind energy did indeed come short of its expected output, but the true driver of shortages was in fact the freezing of natural gas plants, which prevented natural gas to make up for energy shortages. Then, Texas was limited in its ability to import energy to make up for this failure (Everhart et al.). In conclusion, renewable energy, despite its variability, is definitely feasible when working with other sources of energy; if a grid is to be managed successfully, power plants must be prepared for weather, and if these plants fail, the capability to draw power from other regions is key. Tackling the dual issues of mitigation of and adaptation to climate change (one spurred by investments in renewable energy and the other in climate resilience and building a capacity market, respectively) could, at first glance, appear to be a difficult balancing act; however, mitigation and adaptation can work in tandem, and a blend of these two strategies likely provides us the best chance at surviving climate change.
To balance mitigation and adaptation strategies, it appears there is an inherent link between electricity grid interconnections and drawing power from reliable sources of renewable energy. Europe is an example of a region that, while still vulnerable to the effects of climate change, balances mitigation and adaptation through an interconnected, forward-looking grid that could potentially give itself a better predisposition to weather the effects of climate change. Europe functions on the largest unified electricity grid in the world, connecting 23 countries (“About”). To achieve this level of interconnectedness, Europe has had to invest in transmission infrastructure and technology, making its transmission infrastructure some of the best in the world as it “successfully [connects] grids in different countries to provide energy security and boost renewable power use” (Eckhouse). Christian Zinglersen, the director of the European Union Agency for the Cooperation of Energy Regulators, writes or an article in EURACTIV that regulations have been implemented for Europe’s continental grid and a “collective effort has been undertaken … to define and implement ambitious European rules” in order to avoid a disaster like the winter storm in Texas. Examples of these regulations include coordination of risk assessments and markets between countries sharing energy across the grid and rules requiring countries to support each other in energy-shortage crises. The primary benefit of interconnectivity and Europe’s capacity market, Zinglersen claims, is the security of supply it provides.
Europe’s electricity grid is, by no means, an example of a perfect electricity grid. It is still vulnerable to climate change, as a 2019 assessment by the European Environment Agency finds. Peak load in the summertime will increase as a result of an increased desire for cooling, and the Europe continental grid does not yet have the capability to be able to address this demand (“Adaptation challenges and opportunities for the European energy system”). In fact, there is not quite any energy grid system worldwide that does not require reform to survive climate change. Europe’s grid does offer some lessons for the Texas and United States, however. A 2019 study found that Europe’s increased commitment to renewable energy and its capability to balance power (shifting supply to countries in need) puts the region in a position to be able to withstand the effects of climate change; the most investment is needed in the continued upkeep of transmission systems (Kozarcanin et al.).
Ultimately, Texas’ best next steps will likely involve a widespread reform of ERCOT, a commitment and investment in winterizing and preparing power plants for weather extremes, and the exploration of strengthening partnerships and connectivity with nearby states. On April 14, the Texas Senate advanced a bill that would require standby sources of energy, primarily filled by solar and wind power generation, to be available in case of a spike in demand or stress on the grid (O’Hanlon). While this is an important step forward, there is much more work to be done regarding holistic reforms of the electricity grid. The United States, too, requires significant infrastructure reform to meet the Biden Administration’s target of carbon-free electricity by 2035. Reform may seem daunting, or even ambitious, but what February’s perfect (winter) storm of failures proved is that action on electricity grid reform and partnerships amongst each other can save lives. It simply costs far too much to do nothing.
Works Cited
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