By Robert Bradley Jr. — February 14, 2025
Ed. Note: Four years ago, Storm Uri caused Texas’s centrally planned wholesale electricity market (ERCOT) to buckle, vindicating warnings about the state’s wind/solar reliance. The mainstream media implicated natural gas instead, failing to explore the why behind the why. Rather than deregulation, Texas has chosen to add wind, solar, and batteries, while subsidizing natural gas plants to counter intermittency. This duplicated grid is now driving rates up in a state that could have relied on surplus natural gas instead.
It was not so much the story of freak weather triggering a market failure writ large. It was a classic application of the political economy of government intervention: the seen and the unseen, expert/regulatory failure, and unintended consequences.
Don Lavoie, a preeminent thinker in the field of market-versus-government planning, once warned:
If the guiding agency is less knowledgeable than the system it is trying to guide—and even worse, if its actions necessarily result in further undesired consequences in the working of that system—then what is going on is not planning at all but, rather, blind interference by some agents with the plans of others.” [1]
Planned chaos, in other words.
The failure of governmental electricity in Texas humbled many electricity design experts (including technocrat Lynne Kiesling); the Public Utility Commission of Texas (PUCT); the Electric Reliability Council of Texas (ERCOT); and the Texas Legislature. Other players at a distance were the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission (FERC), North American Electric Reliability Corporation [né Council] (NERC); and National Association of Regulatory Utility Commissioners (NARUC).
Classical liberals can tie experience to theory to identify expert/regulatory failure. This should not be surprising given that electricity is the most regulated industry in the United States next to money & banking and the national-defense contracting.
Superficial View
The ‘mainstream’ view is that an “extreme tail event” caught the private-sector firms, most in natural gas, unprepared. The regulators, in the middle for the most part, did their job. I have challenged this interpretation in detail here and here. “Renewables, representing more than one-fourth of Texas’s generating capacity,” I argued, “all but disappeared at the peak.
But there is a very important second part of the story: the tax-break-driven pricing of wind severely compromised the economics of existing and new natural gas and coal plants.
But the rare event was not a market situation begging for market reform. It was a governmental situation where the inertia of intervention resulted in more intervention: continued wind/solar, battery storage, and even talk about demand-side responses (meter technology and incentives). The experts can solve this, in other words, with a lot of studies and planning.
Enron Analogy
This reminds me of the (superficial) Enron interpretation. Enron made bad investments, tried to cover them up, and lost the confidence of the market. They went bankrupt and ‘the market worked.’ Why the massive failure? Fish rot at the head, one book concluded. But why?
With Enron (as with the Blackout), I argue that something greater was at work. It was ‘contra-capitalism,’ the pursuit of the unearned, in the form of pervasive rent-seeking, strategic deceit (’philosophical fraud,’ short of prosecutable fraud), and imprudence that Adam Smith, Samuel Smiles, Ayn Rand, and Charles Koch, among others, have warned against.
For me, at least, getting to the ‘why behind the why’ to explain a ‘systemic failure’ like Enron opened up a lot of deep thinking that tested and expanded my theory. Capitalism was not to blame for Enron considering all the warnings from our side on bad commercial behaviors, and same for electricity in Texas in February 2021.
Reinterpreting the Backout
With Texas, the surface explanation of wind and solar all but disappearing at the peak is just the beginning. (‘This was expected by planners—can’t blame them.’) It was a pervasive lack of weatherization among natural gas companies from the wellhead to the power plant. But why? Reliability is JOB 1 with electricity, and this job was outsourced to regulators working with a very (regulatory) weakened/fragmented industry. Coordination issues aplenty!
The ‘why behind the why’ gets to a lot of regulation and political/social pressure that brought the worst out of private sector parties. Think about the intended and unintended consequences of government forcing of wind power in particular. Wind’s intermittency and negative pricing (from the federal tax credit) ruined the economics of conventional power plants.
Regarding (mal)coordination, federal and state regulation has disaggregated the natural gas industry in three phases, and the same for electricity in three/four phases. There are no ‘electricity majors’ or ‘natural gas majors’ that are vertically and horizontally integrated (regulation forced the disaggregation of the industry). We needed Majors, in fact…. (The business strategy of integration (“oil majors”), by the way, was part of the answer to the “commons problem” of oil and gas production under the ‘rule of capture.’ another story.)
Electricity is different, they say. Need large control areas because of the nature of electrons. A ‘commons problem’ says Lynne Kiesling. Okay, then who do you trust? Markets or experts/regulators? And no, there is no Hayekian/ central planning solution of private resources in the electricity ‘commons’.
The experts have been working hard on market design to find that right balance between reliability and price. Texas went virtually all price (thinking that peak pricing for several weeks of the year would compensate for not having ‘capacity payments’ for standing ready to meet peak demand). But the shortage during Storm Uri sent prices to astronomical levels, which now will result in a bunch of nonpayment, lawsuits, and probably socialistic cost-spreading among all customers. Total mess—and most all of the involved regulators have resigned and have court dates.
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On Facebook, Lynne had a revealing exchange with economist Steve Postrel:
Postrel: According to the data I’ve seen, ERCOT consistently plans for lower reserve margins than other grids. ERCOT now planning for 15-20%, but that’s still lower than surrounding grids.
Kiesling: Reserve margin: In contrast to your interpretation, I would argue that other RTOs (PJM in particular) have excessive reserve margins relative to supply requirements and relative to the ability of demand to respond to higher prices. Other RTOs (PJM in particular) are governed by generators, who clearly have an incentive to have higher than needed reserve margins. Again I say to you: what do you think the cost is of a reserve margin to achieve 100% reliability during a 1-in-20-year extreme tail event??????
Postrel: As I noted on your other post, the decision to just accept blackouts like these (in extreme freezes) as the cost of doing business cannot be ruled out as the optimal policy, given the cost of incremental reliability. Presumably, this would be a good subject for cost-benefit analysis with reference to the degree of public risk-aversion. But the “excess” reserves in other places, if adequate to mitigate the consequences currently being felt in Texas, don’t seem so burdensome as to be obviously superoptimal.
It is a huge planning issue: reliability vs. price. Experts (like Kiesling) must tell the regulators what to do. NO, we cannot let the market decide because it is a “commons problem.” But I say: deregulate to let the electricity majors into the market … And short of this, at least understand the ‘coordination problem’ as an expert/regulatory failure, not market failure.
It is time for an entrepreneurial discovery process in a true market, not a contrived market under mandatory open access. Firms must be allowed to internalize the reliability function with their Grade A corporate guarantee. Lots of laws must be repealed, another story.
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[1] Don Lavoie, National Economic Planning: What is Left? (Cambridge: Ballinger Publishing Company, 1985), p. 95.
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Appendix: Storm Uri Blackout Reinterpretation
My posts on the Great Texas Blackout:
Wind, Solar, and the Great Texas Blackout: Guilty as Charged
Renewables “Market-Failed” Natural Gas in Texas
Electricity Planning: Physical vs. Economic (an exchange with Eric Schubert)
ERCOT “worked as planned” (architect Hogan gives no quarter)
Civil Society and Natural Gas during the Great Texas Blackout
For other posts:
“U.S. Winter Outlook: Cooler North, Warmer South” (NOAA’s prediction bust)
Numbers and the Great Texas Blackout (Bill Peacock: March 4, 2021 )
ERCOT: A Central Planning Government Agency
Texas’ Renewable Fail: Remember Georgetown’s Green New Deal Too
Oklahoma’s Rolling Blackouts: Remembering Audrey McClendon’s War on Coal (Charlie Meadows: February 23, 2021)
Wind Subsidies Help Freeze Texans (Bill Peacock: February 18, 2021)
Texas Windpower: Will Negative Pricing Blow Out the Lights? (PTC vs. reliable new capacity) (Josiah Neeley: February 17, 2021)
Texas discovered the just in time natural gas production problem in extremely cold weather in the 1980s.
It caused the first blackout in 2011
The problem was not solved
It caused the second blackout in 2021
The problem is still not solved.
The solution was NOT to subsidize windmills after 2011. Or to covert gas pipeline compressors from gas powered to electrical powered.
The solution was gas storage at all gas power plants. Or forcing gas producers to weatherize wellheads which they will never do for extremely cold weather every ten years.
More gas plants would not help in extreme cold weather because there’s not enough gas for the existing plants in such weather conditions.
More coal plants and nuclear plants would help
Higher capacity interconnections with other grids would help
The core problem is ERCOT
They are incompetent.
The cold weather gas production problem was discovered 40 years ago and is still not addresses.
Now the Texas grid will have hot weather problems too, as the population increased a lot without a matching increase of reliable, continuous baseload power. It’s hard to believe Texas is a red state.
The major issue is subsidized wind distorting the economics of power generation, and not charging the intermittency as a cost of wind. Windmills do not generate power in freezing rain and still air. As long as the subsidy miners are exploiting their subsidies and purchase requirements, the problem will exist.
The major issue is that the subsidies are federal, not state.
An interconnect would have been no solution in Feb 2021, as there was no ready source of power outside Texas. And tying Texas to an interstate grid would subject Texas to the tender mercies of the Feds. I rate the competency of Federal regulators as high as Joseph Robinette Biden, jr.
@Tom Halla
While the spark gap is an issue, the actual primary problem was weather resistance/cold weather reliability of the overall electrical system. It was not just natural gas itself but the electrical system around the natural gas electricity production system.
An issue was that global warming is the theme of the day, so hardening against the coldest weather since 1913 was not a high priority.
Given a magic spell that eliminated the anti nuclear movement, putting the same investment into nuclear plants would have been a more stable grid than wind. Most of the cost of nuclear is lawfare.
I’d class that as a secondary issue. True, it did lead to some plant trips, including nuclear (frozen water intake gauge), etc. But the failure of gas compressors was due to power being cut to them as part of the blackouts enforced due to lack of capacity – which was the primary problem.
Had ERCOT “war gamed” a severe weather event, the vulnerability of electrified pipeline compressor stations could have been recognized as system critical.
Supposedly they are now rated as priority demand. I don’t know whether any of them have been equipped with back-up generators.
You could even run them off gas.
/sarc
Coal and nuclear are more reliable than gas in extremely cold weather and coal is a better for storage as well.
Chris Wright is Right: Keep the Coal Plants Running
Coal, nuclear, AND gas are reliable in extremely cold weather only if the operations and maintenance are prepared for it. Power plants are not static, if you were prepared last year, it does not mean you are prepared this year. Extra insulation, wind breaks, and extra heat sources are often needed to keep operating during cold weather.
And good luck if the plant had not been operating (no heat) due to market prices and is asked to come on during the cold weather.
Texas passed weatherization and ERCOT reform legislation several years ago and legislation regarding interconnections is in the pipeline.
Little has been accomplished to force more production in very cold weather.
Because nothing can be done for a profit or break even. If there is really cold weather every once 5 to 10 years, weatherization would be a terrible investment.
Unrefined gas has moisture that can freeze.
Preventing gas well freeze-offs can be expensive, depending on the methods used and the specific conditions of the well. There have been only two major freeze off problems in Texas in 40 years and there is global warming in the winters so this has been a rare event.
Gas is 42% of the fuel in Texas for electricity ad must back up wind and solar too.
In very cold weather, natural gas production can slow down significantly, with some reports showing decreases of up to 20% during extreme cold snaps,
Scrap Wind and Solar and install Nuclear instead…
More reliable base load
Can’t freeze out
Not subject to the vagaries of weather or time of day
Doesn’t require (Battery) Storage as Back-up
98% Capacity Factor
Up to 80 year operating longevity
Which is one reason they have storage of dry gas in caverns, also used to bridge offshore production shutdowns during hurricanes. Only onshore wells were affected in 2021. The ocean did not freeze.
As usual, Richard is spouting nonsense. We deal with production in freezing weather routinely in places like Michigan, Wyoming, Colorado and Pennsylvania. It’s not that expensive and there are easy workarounds. Contrary to popular believe, the main problem is not water freezing, but methane hydrate formation. The ability to inject methanol at key choke points on the system fixes this. This is done on an event basis, so you really only incur the cost when you need to do it.
Most of the systems are underground. There is very little that needs to be heat traced and insulated. The key is to have the methanol injection points to be able to recover from a freeze.
But if most of your compression horsepower is electric, and it gets load shed, your kinda screwed.
The legislation addresses many of your concerns.
The details of what you are saying are true but were not the actual factors causing the blackouts during Uri. Cold weather resistance was – and it was the electrical systems around the natural gas network, primarily.
Such green sillyness as requiring electric powered compressors on gas pipelines did not help, either. Satanic Gasses, you see.
Good news…
re: “Higher capacity interconnections with other grids would help”
Ignores the complications/issues the ‘grid’ to the east of Texas experienced; This is NOT the claimed panacea some envision.
COAL PLANTS were closed as a result of govt action/programs/drive by fed gov and the EPA, notably during the Obama years. I know ppl who worked there once upon a time who lost their jobs as a result.
Did Mr. Greene claim that it would be a “panacea”?
Exactly correct. Interconnections are a tool, but electricity supply at the grid level requires volume, timing and location matching.
Too many fools think that grid level electricity works like household electricity: magic!
Gas production was NOT the cause of the 2021 blackout. It was down to a shortage of dispatchable capacity. They ran out of reserve, and were too slow to create reserve by imposing some blackout. So they ended up with trying to turn plants up to 11 which is always a high risk strategy, which resulted in plant tripping out, and a cascading trip at 1:52a.m. which sent frequency tumbling to 59.3Hz, at which point automated disconnection kicked in which included cutting supply to key gas compressors feeding power stations.
Gas supply was running all the available gas generation without problem prior to that. Loss of production was compensated by storage drawdown, much as happens when production is shut in during a hurricane.
The problem was the electricity infrastructure around the gas system – both production and conversion to electricity. It was much more the latter than the former although there were cases of both.
The problem was a shortage of capacity that led to a cascading trip and blackouts. The compressors were working fine until then, although they might have had more resilience if they had been powered by the gas going through them – something e.g. the Russians have been doing for supply ex Siberia for decades.
“Or to covert gas pipeline compressors from gas powered to electrical powered.”
Largely, already done. The non cold weather benefits were too compelling.
“The solution was gas storage at all gas power plants.”
You don’t understand gas storage.
“Or forcing gas producers to weatherize wellheads which they will never do for extremely cold weather every ten years.”
No “forcing” required. The upgrades are practical, doable, and can be subsidized at a 1/10 year cost over an order of magnitude less than than the 200+ life, $100B+ cost of the event.
“More gas plants would not help in extreme cold weather because there’s not enough gas for the existing plants in such weather conditions.”
Wrong. Plenty of deliverability, if weather hardened, as they do almost everywhere else in the CONUS.
“Higher capacity interconnections with other grids would help.”
True.
Interconnection can only help if there is spare dispatchable capacity elsewhere and willingness to commit it to supply. The neighbouring TSOs were already operating at or beyond their safe operation levels. If you rely on interconnection you assume someone else will provide the capacity to feed it. As events in Europe are showing, that is not a wise assumption. Everybody assumes someone else will provide.
The excess capacity could have trickled down through multiple states. Happens all the time, everywhere else north. Just consideration of the fact that so much Texas electricity already goes hundreds of miles from west to east, before consumption, should be a clue. The extra CapEx, I2R losses and trans costs would have been tiny compared the resulting deaths and treasure needlessly sacrificed.
Yes, not the whole solution. The name of the game should be increasing natural gas to electricity extreme weather deliverability reliability. Mostly old tech that Texas knows well. I’ve personally sized hundreds of well site/consolidated facility gas production units and dehydrators, fueled by well head gas. 50 year old (at least) technology, long since perfected.
No it would not have worked like that. The system performed at its limits, and there was no way to get around the constraints even if you built 10GW interties between Texas and its neighbours.
The gas compressors would have kept working had there been sufficient dispatchable capacity to avoid the loss of reserve and cascading trip. Storage was providing the gas. Perhaps the storage might have been stretched by the end of the freeze, but not at the beginning. Reducing the gas production risk would also help, but it’s a trade off against storage. The market had opted for storage. I don’t know what the marginal economics and potential to increase storage look like in enough detail to evaluate the economics of extra provision, but it’s likely that some increase in the hardiness of parts of the production system would be warranted.
There is plenty of storage now. Much of it in the east. And since storage is developed from old oil fields, Texas can make many more.
The Achilles heel, by far, is what you call “dispatchable capacity”. Texas has low bid systems, which results in not enough of it. Almost all of the time, that’s fine. The rest of the time, they are open for 11/21 level deaths and economic loss. This problem can, and should be practically and economically fixed.
Firstly by getting rid of W&S. Not needed.
Getting involved with the federal regulators is too much of a risk for marginal benefits. As most of those advocating interstate connections are green Democrats, I doubt their good faith.
Asking some basic questions for a friend:
Considering both Wind and Solar are subject to Take or Pay (anyway) they have to take priority over all other forms of generation. If you don’t TAKE what they offer when ever they offer it you Must PAY them regardless as long as they can produce. And that is what makes then unaffordable and increases overall rates.
Yes, that’s the problem. Special pricing for windmills and solar is the cause of the problem.
Windmills and solar should be backups to the grid, with no special pricing. If they can’t stay in business that way, that’s too bad.
re: “How does ERCOT acquire and schedule energy for the grid?”
There are resources accessible on the EROCT website covering these and related topics, primarily focused on the viewpoint of a new participant coming into the merchant power market in Texas. Its 3:46 AM here and I need to head back for a few more hrs sleep before daylight or I would add a link or two.
ERCOT blocks overseas access to its website. VPN with local connect point needed.
Another take on this is the “wind drought trap” story, based on the suggestion that wind should never have been allowed onto the grid, much less subsidised and mandated if only severe wind droughts had been taken into account.
Independent Australian observers Lang and Miskelly explored the impact of wind droughts on the wind power supply over a decade ago but despite the efforts of Jo Nova and The Energy Realists of Australia the usual suspects pressed on regardless.
Germany, Britain and South Australia led the wind power revolution and SA may have been the first place to literally blow up their coal stations, closely followed by Victoria.
Now the results are in.
https://open.substack.com/pub/rafechampion/p/lessons-from-the-world-wind-leaders
Even the prolonged Dunkelflautes in Europe escaped attention until Britain metaphorically tripped over one in June 2021. Mariners and millers must have experienced them for centuries:)
https://www.flickerpower.com/images/The_endless_wind_drought_crippling_renewables___The_Spectator_Australia.pdf
So now we have to talk about wind droughts, and the “wind drought trap”.
https://open.substack.com/pub/rafechampion/p/we-have-to-talk-about-wind-droughts
It is just possible that some of the US grids were getting into the red zone where windless nights can spring the trap if there is extreme demand and unscheduled outages of conventional power.
http://www.flickerpower.com/images/RAFE_CHAMPION_CAN_THE_US_ESCAPETHE_WIND_DROUGHT_TRAP_The_Spectator_Australia.pdf
“It is just possible that some of the US grids were getting into the red zone where windless nights can spring the trap if there is extreme demand and unscheduled outages of conventional power.”
ALL the US grids are getting into the red zone. All of them are doing what Germany, and the UK and Australia are doing which is to add windmills and solar to the grid and subtract conventional generation (coal and natural gas).
Now all US grids are on the brink of having blackouts. More windmill and solar additions should guarantee blackouts, under the current way of doing things.
I think you meant “devolution”
Let’s remember we had events like this in 1989 (over Christmas holiday) and in 2011 (I distinctly remember accounts of low natural gas pressures in the retail customer network to the degree that furnaces would not fire up) too. Memories don’t seem to go back that far – AND there are written reports from those days citing the causes too.
Also – areas (in states) to the east of Texas were affected in similar ways in 2021, but didn’t garner much press, so an inter-tie outside the ERCOT/Texas grid to the east would not have been the panacea some suggest; I did manage to save a few articles/stories detailing this aspect too.
The Texas grid is aurrounde by three grids
They had low capacity interconnections with the EASTER GRID AND MEXICO BUT NO CONNECTIO WITH THE WESTERN GRID. THEY NEEDED HIGH CAPACITY CONNECTIONS WITH ALL THREE BECAUSE OF SO MANY WINDMILLS.
ALSO TEXAS HAD WELL BELOW AVERAGE RESERVE CAPACITY, I BELIEVE HALF OF AVERAGE, WHEN THEY NEED ABOVE AVERAGE RESERVE CAPACITY BECAUSE OF SO MANY WINDMILLS.
NEVER FORGET THAT MOST OF THE PEOPLE IN TEXAS (24.5 million of 29.5 million) WERE NOT AFFECTE BY THE 2021 BLACKOUT.
The February 2021 Texas wind drought lasted over a week and was the longest in modern US history.
There was enough wind to average 8% to 10% of nameplate capacity for windmills. But about half the windmills had blade icing — no optional blade heaters to save money — so actual output was in the 4% to 5% range. That should not have been a problem if there was enough just in time natural gas to offset the lack of wind.
re: “The Texas grid is aurrounde by three grids”
Know all this. Why do you lead with this? Do you assume I and others are that un-studied and unknowing on this subject? It would appear so.
Okay, perhaps some ppl don’t know this. I would bet that you haven’t read the previous reports either, as most ppl have not as well, nor do you know the issues the grid to the east of Texas faced during that same time period.
You mentioned ‘western grid’ tie-in – have you NO idea the distance involved from west Texas to east Texas (MAJOR load centers are on eastern side of state)? Dunning-Kruger, do you not know this would call for seldom used high-cost transmission equipment across great distances? Fairy tale solutions from – Dunning-Krugers.
It would help if you came into this discussion actually knowing and educated on the basic, physical factors and physical ‘plant’ that would be involved in a practical, realizable system. Your solutions reflect those of non-engineering, cost-oblivious persons/pols who prescribe ‘moar’ wind generation and grid-scale storage (to be used up in times of lagging wind), ignoring the limitations of such approaches, the needed scale to achieve even present day reliability, and never mind the quantity of necessary equipment to pull this off, at the cost of securing ever-more costly and sometimes dwindling raw material stocks necessary for production of said equipment, and the manufacturing know how and skilled personnel and companies to do that work.
It is not only the distance that is the problem. It is a combination of investments required to supply an interconnect and to sink the interconnect when needed. The “western grid” would need to have investment to provide power to the interconnect along with the excess capacity to supply the needed power. At the far end in eastern Texas more investment is needed to take that power and properly distribute to the required points needing power.
If that investment is only used once every 5, 10, or 20 years, who pays for the expenses to maintain not only the transmission but the investment in power at the far end and distribution at the near end?
It is a Rube-Goldberg engineering solution to a problem that is neither economic and probably not even workable. In the end, it is up to Texas to solve its own problems. Relying on somewhere else to solve the problem is part of the Tragedy of the Commons that the author mentions without detailing what it means. I would think Texans would understand the issue of a rancher overgrazing his land and then asking neighbors to let his stock graze their land, gratis.
Rube Goldberg/Richard Greene…R. G….Hmmm, makes one ponder…
If it was uneconomic for Texas to have enough dispatchable capacity it would be even more uneconomic to locate the capacity elsewhere and pay for interties to deliver as well. More grid just means higher cost and bigger bills.
It’s giving the UK its unenvied position of highest prices in a major economy.
You actually cited the real physical problem. INADEQUATE DISPATCHABLE CAPACITY. That was caused because subsidised wind made it uneconomic to provide it.
None of this is complicated. Here in the U.S. we have such a wealth of natural gas that nothing else can compete with it until we have a few assembly line SMR factories every year manufacturing 100’s of reactors that are transported to the job site on semi-trailers and up and running in two years (2040?).
The only way that is going to happen is SMR will need “incentives” comparable to that which wind and solar have been receiving for decades, .Without incentives, including mandates for at least 12 years (3-administations), SMR can not compete with CCGT and/or subsidized wind and solar. Ending the W&S incentives wouldn’t help SMR because it still couldn’t compete with CCGT running on $4/MCF natural gas. Paradox.
From the article: “Wind’s intermittency and negative pricing (from the federal tax credit) ruined the economics of conventional power plants.”
Yes, it is as simple as that.
Special pricing for windmills and solar is what is driving the cost of electricity up.
“But the shortage during Storm Uri sent prices to astronomical levels, which now will result in a bunch of nonpayment, lawsuits, and probably socialistic cost-spreading among all customers
Yes, and gas suppliers gouged like mad . Local gas company ( small ) got ripped off for over a million dollars .
Lawsuit still in court .
Customers still paying a surcharge of more than $3 per Mcf .
A very useful summary from the American Gas Association
https://pubs.naruc.org/pub/4C6EB4E5-1866-DAAC-99FB-8143FCD9E001
Fingers crossed is not a policy.
Hope I add to and not diminish the many high value comments… But one point is missing! I live in Ontario. For 65 of my many years we NEVER had Nat Gas Power and we never lost power supply. Sure lines went down and other local supply issues, but we had hydro, coal, and NUCs. We only brought in Gas due to wind and solar. Even most important, many millions all over NA require gas for heating, which is a much more efficient use than converting it to electricity. Many claim an almost unlimited supply and while that has some validity ( in the ground), over what period do we get to use it. Being in the ground it almost never fails, for any length of time and has seen many through various other power failures. MY point is we need it MORE for heating, keeping folks alive. It should seldom if ever produce electricity. We have other better ways and solar and wind ARENT THEM. All would be so much further ahead if the billions? had been spent on modular nucs especially in Texas.
1.) We need a good, government-managed monopoly to prevent an evil, private monopoly.
2.) Just think of all the good things we in government can do with our monopoly! We’ll be rich!
Mentioned in others’ comments but bears repeating: what gas was still being produced could not be transported because EPA convinced the pumping stations to switch from using natural gas from the pipeline to power the turbines to using electricity to reduce emissions. This electricity could not be delivered to the pumping stations because of the already low production of natural gas curtailed generation by the gas turbines. Now, switching to electricity does not reduce emissions, it just moves them. I do not have access to the efficiency of the gas-powered turbines that pump natural gas along the pipelines. However, considering the coal-fired power plants are about 35% efficient, it is likely that the mandate from the EPA actually increased CO2 emissions and reduced overall efficiency rather than helping it. This is why Trump needs to get the EPA to re-think their endangerment finding and for Congress to pass a law saying that CO2 is not a pollutant.
Here is the thing, we need to define failure. Blackout, rolling blackouts metering to control power to the customer are all failures. These are not an acceptable compromise. We all know there are things out of our control that can cause loss of power, solar activity, weather even accidents. The problem we are dealing with and the biggest failure in my view is the government accepting even mandating forms of energy production that are unreliable, not constant, very expensive, disrupt the grid are not recyclable and are not long lived. The government involvement is an absolute failure. The only fix is to get them out of the mix to the greatest extent possible and undo all the devastation they have caused.