The political cause of a Texas power outage

Mr Abbott blamed his state’s extensive power outages on generators freezing early Monday morning, noting “this includes the natural gas and coal generators.” But frigid temperatures and icy conditions have settled in most of the country. Why couldn’t Texas handle them when other states did?

The problem is Texas’s over-reliance on wind power, which has made the grid more vulnerable to bad weather. Half of the wind turbines froze last week, causing the share of wind in electricity to drop from 42% to 8%. Power prices in the wholesale market soared and grid regulators warned of rolling power outages on Friday. Natural gas and coal generators sprang up to close the supply gap, but failed to meet the rising demand for electricity – which half of households depend on for heating – even as many families turn on their gas ovens. Then a number of gas wells and pipelines froze.

In short, there was not enough base load power from coal and nuclear energy to support the grid. Base load power is required to stabilize the grid frequency amid changes in supply and demand. If there is not enough base load power, the grid will become unbalanced and power sources may fail. The more the grid relies on intermittent renewable energy sources such as wind and solar, the more base load power is needed to support them.

But politicians don’t care about the reliability of the grid until the power goes out. And for three decades, politicians from both sides have pushed for renewable energy subsidies that have made the grid less stable.

Start with the Energy Policy Act of 1992, signed by George HW Bush, which created a tax credit on production to boost the fledgling wind industry. Generators collect up to $ 25 per megawatt hour of power they produce, regardless of market demand. The credit was due to expire in 1999, but nothing lasts longer than a temporary government program, as Ronald Reagan once joked.

The renewable energy lobby found GOP allies in windy states like Texas, Oklahoma, and Iowa. Former Enron CEO Ken Lay, who had made a big bet on wind, pleaded with then-Texas Governor George W. Bush in 1998 to lobby Congress to extend the credit for five years. Congress has since renewed it more than a dozen times, most recently in December.

Wind producers have persuaded former Governor Rick Perry to support a $ 5 billion network of transmission lines to connect turbines in west Texas with cities. This allowed them to build more turbines and collect more tax breaks. Because the Texas grid is often oversupplied, wind producers sometimes pay to offload their power, although they still make a profit from the tax cuts.

Coal and nuclear power are more tightly regulated and cannot compete, and many coal-fired power plants in Texas and elsewhere have been shut down. In the past decade, about 100 gigawatts of coal power has been retired nationwide – enough to power 60 million homes. Many nuclear power plants are being shut down, including large reactors in New York and Illinois this year.

Renewables and natural gas are expected to replace them, but Texas is showing their limitations. In Lone Star state, bad weather has limited gas supplies, but government policies are doing the same in other states. New York Governor Andrew Cuomo and Phil Murphy of New Jersey have blocked pipelines to deliver shale gas from Pennsylvania to the Northeast.

Their blockage of pipelines has pushed up electricity costs. The average selling price of electricity in New Jersey and New York is about 50% higher than in Pennsylvania. She and other governors have also poured subsidies into wind and solar power, but neither can provide reliable power in freezing weather.

Many states also have renewable mandates that will force more fossil fuel generators to shut down. New York has demanded that renewables make up 70% of state power by 2030. Subsequently, democratic policy is pursued at the federal level that limits the production and distribution of fossil fuels.

The Federal Energy Regulatory Commission is supposed to ensure grid reliability, but under Barack Obama it promoted renewable energy over reliability. Democrats oppose attempts by Trump-appointed individuals to mitigate market disruptions caused by renewable subsidies and state mandates that jeopardized the net. The current trend, this week’s Texas fiasco, is coming soon to a cold winter or hot summer near you.