Name: The Texas Energy Grid Worked Exactly As Designed. Seriously. | by Joel Nihlean | Extra Newsfeed
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The Texas Energy Grid Worked Exactly As Designed. Seriously. | by Joel Nihlean | Extra Newsfeed

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Published inlackouts plunged millions of Texans into the dark and cold for days on end in single-digit temperatures. Hypothermia and carbon monoxide poisoning killed dozens — . A week after the storm stopped Texas in its tracks, a thaw revealed burst pipes, crippled well infrastructure, and .“This is becoming the worst state-level policy disaster since the Flint water crisis,” former mayor of San Antonio Julian Castro told MSNBC. “This is not the breakdown of the system. This is a system that has broken down by design.”Castro is right, but nobody said the quiet part quite as loud as Roland Burns, though.“Obviously, this week is like hitting the jackpot,” for his shale drilling company Comstock Resources, Inc.As social media feeds fill with outrage over Burns, , and , politicians like Texas Gov. Greg Abbott can point fingers as much as they want, but the Texas power grid wasn’t designed to provide reliable, life-saving heat at low prices.The Texas power grid and energy markets did exactly what they designed to do: Make money for shareholders with as little federal government interference as possible. Human need never entered the calculation.The Texas grid is an isolated, byzantine, scarcity-driven, for-profit system. It’s beyond inadequate if your goal is keeping people from freezing to death in their homes.A point of pride among secessionists, Texas has its own power grid — it’s almost entirely cut off from the rest of the country. It’s a decision that dates back to 1935 and was .Cut off from the Eastern and Western power grids of the United States, Texas utility companies couldn’t call for more power during the 2021 polar vortex. They were on their own. The free market got to work. Rolling blackouts and astronomical fees for the power managed the grid.William Hogan, Harvard professor and research director of the Harvard Electricity Policy Group — often described as the architect of the Texas energy market — that the blackouts and high prices in Texas were the system functioning as designed.“As you get closer and closer to the bare minimum, these prices get higher and higher, which is what you want,” Hogan said. “It’s not convenient. It’s not nice. It’s necessary.”In 1999, with considerable influence from the now disgraced and defunct energy company Enron, the Texas GOP deregulated the state’s energy grid, adopting Hogan’s model. The idea — at least as it was sold to the public — was to drive down consumer prices by way of free-market competition and the elimination of regulated energy rates and monopoly providers.“We want this bill to bring down the cost of electricity for all Texans,” State Senator David Sibley said in introducing the bill, “if we don’t get consumers lower rates, then we have been a failure — I’ll be the first to say it.”Even before astronomical electric bills made headlines, deregulation failed to meet its promise. The deregulated market since 2004. People living in the deregulated parts of the state pay nearly $300 more a year.In reality, this privatized model shifts the purpose of government away from serving citizens, wielding the power of government in service of capitalism instead of community.One of the reasons this scheme doesn’t drive costs down is that there are very few ways for providers to distinguish themselves in the market. Electricity is electricity. This is where capitalist “innovation” steps in.One way for providers to stand out is to offer access to wholesale electricity for a monthly membership. These providers, like , can get consumers lower-priced electricity by exposing them to bankrupting levels of risk.In this cutthroat market, where standing out means creating arguably predatory products, the first priority is always serving shareholder interests. Because power, heat and air-conditioning are not treated as a public utility, there’s no incentive to serve the basic needs of the community unless there’s money to be made.In fact, the Public Utility Commission of Texas (PUC) issued during the 2021 Texas winter storm for precisely this reason.As Texas began to freeze over, the arctic blast pulled down iced power lines, froze natural gas lines, stopped wind turbines, and brought the Texas electrical grid to its knees. Rolling blackouts ensued, sending false signals in the market that demand was going down. It created a vicious cycle where decreased demand pulled energy spot market prices down, disincentivizing companies from coming online to provide life-saving power.With falling prices, energy producers couldn’t justify providing the needed capacity. Human life was never a factor, only shareholders.People were left to freeze to death in their homes. It was murder. The motive was profit.The PUC order forced the invisible hand of the market, requiring the spot market to exchange all power at the statutory maximum of $9.00/kWh, to incentivize “an optimal response…”One of the side effects of Texas sticking its hand back into the market is that retail providers who are obligated to buy energy at these elevated prices still have to sell it to their customers at the previously agreed, dramatically lower rates. These companies ate thousands of dollars per customer, and many likely don’t have budgets sufficient to deal with such a dramatic shortfall. A wave of bankruptcies may be on the horizon.Texans can expect to see higher energy rates for years — maybe forever — as companies claw back lost profits from this shortfall and build up reserves to protect shareholders against the next disaster.The free market, walled garden of the Texas electricity market killed people. That was by design. Shareholders were the primary concern. People were left to freeze to death in their homes. It was murder. The motive was profit.Texas couldn’t rely on neighboring regional grids for support. The trade-off for a deregulated free market for power in Texas was a total lack of resilience for average people. Storms like this will happen again. And research shows that . Without a total redesign of the system. More people will die so the rich can get richer.As the shock and trauma subside for Texans, their anxiety will shift to paying higher power bills and burying the dead. Energy investors will continue making money hand over fist, warm in their and that were miraculously spared blackouts.Soulless price-gouging and scarcity are a feature — not a bug — in the current system. It achieved its primary goal of making money. If we want a system with the primary goal of providing power for people, we’ll need to build that system. That means giving power to the people. It can’t be a private, for-profit system. It needs to be publicly owned.A national, publicly-owned grid isn’t a radical idea. Far from a socialist battering ram, the process is pragmatic and something we’ve done before in the US. During the New Deal era, the Tennessee Valley Authority was created from the Tennessee Electric Power Company despite the protests of its executives. It created jobs and provided power to the rural mountainous regions of the state.The successes in Tennessee inspired the Rural Electrification Administration (REA). At the time, 90 percent of rural America lacked electricity, and there was no profit in it for private companies to electrify the poor communities of the countryside. Texas and the nation can take their cues from these past successes in putting people before profit.Nationalizing the grid won’t be a panacea, but it creates a system that serves the people and is accountable to the people. Something we don’t have now.Follow this author on . Read more articles by this author.the same political rants you see on Facebook, but they're well written.ininininEssayist, editor, drummer, and dad thinking about the climate crisis, politics, faith, political theology, policy, and punk rock. Texas forever.

Published inlackouts plunged millions of Texans into the dark and cold for days on end in single-digit temperatures. Hypothermia and carbon monoxide poisoning killed dozens — . A week after the storm stopped Texas in its tracks, a thaw revealed burst pipes, crippled well infrastructure, and .“This is becoming the worst state-level policy disaster since the Flint water crisis,” former mayor of San Antonio Julian Castro told MSNBC. “This is not the breakdown of the system. This is a system that has broken down by design.”Castro is right, but nobody said the quiet part quite as loud as Roland...

The Texas Energy Grid Worked Exactly As Designed. Seriously. | by Joel Nihlean | Extra Newsfeed

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