Schadenfreude? Not toward the Texans who are suffering right now with blackouts, of course. They deserve better than that jerk. But yeah, I do feel it towards Cruz and other snotty Republicans who had zero compassion for California during the wildfires.
Maybe he should STFU about this subject. His state isn’t exactly an avatar of smart energy policy:
Millions of Texans were without heat and electricity Monday as snow, ice and frigid temperatures caused a catastrophic failure of the state’s power grid.
The Texas power grid, powered largely by wind and natural gas, is relatively well equipped to handle the state’s hot and humid summers when demand for power soars. But unlike blistering summers, the severe winter weather delivered a crippling blow to power production, cutting supplies as the falling temperatures increased demand.
Natural gas shortages and frozen wind turbines were already curtailing power output when the Arctic blast began knocking generators offline early Monday morning.
The Electric Reliability Council of Texas, or ERCOT, which is responsible for scheduling power and ensuring the reliability of the electrical network, declared a statewide power generation shortfall emergency and asked electricity delivery companies to reduce load through controlled outages.
More than 4 million customers were without power in Texas, including 1.4 million in the Houston area, the worst power crisis in the state in a decade. The forced outages are expected to last at least through part of Tuesday, the state grid manager said.
CenterPoint Energy, the regulated utility that delivers electricity to Houston-area homes and provides natural gas service, started rolling blackouts in the Houston region at the order of state power regulators. It said customers experiencing outages should be prepared to be without power at least through Monday.
“How long is it going to be? I don’t know the answer,” said Kenny Mercado, executive vice president at the Houston utility. “The generators are doing everything they can to get back on. But their work takes time and I don’t know how long it will take. But for us to move forward, we have got to get generation back onto the grid. That is our primary need.”
Dan Woodfin, ERCOT’s senior director of system operations, said the rolling blackouts are taking more power offline for longer periods than ever before. An estimated 34,000 megawatts of power generation — more than a third of the system’s total generating capacity — had been knocked offline by the extreme winter weather amid soaring demand as residents crank up heating systems.
The U.S. Energy Department, in response to an ERCOT request, issued an order late Monday authorizing power plants throughout the state to run at maximum output levels, even if it results in exceeding pollution limits.
Ed Hirs, an energy fellow in the Department of Economics at the University of Houston, blamed the failures on the state’s deregulated power system, which doesn’t provide power generators with the returns needed to invest in maintaining and improving power plants.
“The ERCOT grid has collapsed in exactly the same manner as the old Soviet Union,” said Hirs. “It limped along on underinvestment and neglect until it finally broke under predictable circumstances.
Ted Cruz is a shameless asshole, that goes without saying. But this is the sort of thing that should make it clear that climate change cannot be a partisan issues, that sustainable reliable energy is going to take collective action and that people should be decent human beings in the face of emergencies.
By the way, President Biden didn’t take the opportunity to whip Texans for their lack of foresight and threaten to withhold money. He just sent federal relief immediately:
Gov. Greg Abbott announced that the White House has issued a Federal Emergency Declaration for Texas in response to the severe winter weather throughout the state.
The governor submitted a request for the declaration on Saturday to assist the state in response efforts related to the storm.
This Federal Emergency Declaration authorizes the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) to provide emergency protective measures for mass care and sheltering and Direct Federal Assistance for all 254 counties in Texas.