Page 37 - Michael Webber News Today

Texas regulators and lawmakers knew about the grid’s vulnerabilities for years, but time and again they furthered the interests of large electricity providers.

Winterize. That’s the directive Gov. Greg Abbott gave to power companies and lawmakers Thursday when he called for a law and funding to better prepare Texas’ essential power infrastructure for the kind of extreme winter weather that created multiple crises this week. Energy experts said that in some cases, retrofitting plants to withstand cold could be extremely difficult and expensive in Texas. Many of those plants already skimped on such upgrades due to the infrequency of prolonged and wi...

Now that the lights are back on in Texas, the state has to figure out who’s going to pay for the energy crisis that plunged millions into darkness last week. It will likely be ordinary Texans. The price tag so far: $50.6 billion, the cost of electricity sold from early Monday, when the blackouts began, to Friday morning, according to BloombergNEF estimates. That compares with $4.2 billion for the prior week. Some of those costs have already fallen onto consumers as electricity customers ex...

<figcaption> Evan Smith, CEO of The Texas Tribune. </figcaption>

By Randy Lee Loftis | Feb 23, 2021 State officials repeated failures to act on expert advice for averting grid catastrophes paralleled their long ignoring experts warnings about dangers of climate change. (Reposted from Texas Climate News.*) By Randy Lee Loftis | Tuesday, February 23, 2021 In addition to there being no power and no lights in widespread parts of Texas, there was too often little to no visibility outdoors in the heavy snow fall. Evidence of disaster lay across much of a state in ...

This story first appeared at ProPublica and the Texas Tribune. ProPublica is a Pulitzer Prize-winning investigative newsroom. Sign up for The Big Story…

In the latest episode of our podcast about the Texas Legislature, Evan Smith talks to University of Texas at Austin professor Michael Webber about the state’s failure to prepare for a brutal winter storm, the fragile electric grid we depend on, and whether the future of energy is bright or bleak.

AUSTIN, Texas – Ken Lay, the former CEO of the energy and utility company Enron, was fond of writing letters to his friend George on stationery bearing his company’s famous crooked E. Crossing out the “Dear Governor Bush” typed by his secretary, and penciling in “Dear George” in its place, he wrote to invite Bush to musicals, commiserate over knee surgery, thank the governor for a Christmas gift — and lay out the “benefits of competition” that electricity deregulation would b...

Experts say we could have paid power plants to keep reserve power ready to use, but it’s expensive. What about a Texas-sized battery? It’s all on the table.

In the aftermath of the winter storm that knocked out power to millions of homes in Texas, the finger pointing against renewable energy has been swift. Research shows the dangers of fossil fuels, including natural gas, but the recent winter storm that led to crippling power outages across regions in Texas has put into question the use of renewable energy instead of natural gas. Republican Gov. Greg Abbott, Texas Congressman Dan Crenshaw...