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17510 |
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Date: February 23, 2021 at 06:34:41
From: Akira, [DNS_Address]
Subject: Deregulation is mostly responsible for failures of Texas’ energy grid |
URL: https://lasvegassun.com/news/2021/feb/19/deregulation-is-mostly-responsible-for-failures-of/ |
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"Republican leaders seem to rarely let a crisis go to waste when it comes to
denying climate change and opposing regulations on fossil fuel companies.
Remember, for instance, how they turned logic on its head by claiming the
horrific wildfires in California were a matter of not raking up dead leaves and
pine needles?
Now comes the record cold snap in much of the country and the power
outages it triggered, and Republicans are at it once again. This time, they’re
claiming that when wind turbines iced up and quit spinning in Texas, the
lights and heat went out for millions.
“This shows how the Green New Deal would be a deadly deal for the United
States of America,” a grim-faced Greg Abbott, Texas’ Republican governor,
told Fox News propagandist Sean Hannity. “Our wind and our solar got shut
down, and they were collectively more than 10% of our power grid, and that
thrust Texas into a situation where it was lacking power on a statewide
basis.”
Oh, the utter nonsense.
In reality, Texas’ grid went down for a number of reasons, nearly all of which
had nothing to do with the wind turbines. For starters, the state draws more
than 80% of its power from fossil fuels, along with some nuclear power, but
failed to winterize those facilities despite the growing effects of climate
change.
Sample result: Pipelines to natural gas plants froze up, due to moisture in
the gas. Pumps at those plants also quit working, because the diesel
engines that power them had been rendered inoperable by the cold.
Elsewhere on the grid, a reactor at one of Texas’ nuclear plants went down
due to frozen equipment.
Keep in mind, this could have been avoided. As shown in areas that regularly
experienced extreme winter weather, power can be produced without
interruption in bitterly cold temperatures if the right precautions have been
taken. That includes wind turbines, by the way, which can be fitted with
equipment to keep them from freezing up.
Another reason Texas’ grid is vulnerable is because the state is the only one
that operates its own system — and that system is almost entirely
unregulated.
As one utility expert described it, this “Wild West” approach has left
independent energy producers with no reason to build the necessary
infrastructure to handle cold weather. In the minds of these producers,
those protections are a needless expense.
Meanwhile, the lack of regulation allows the power producers to charge
whatever the market can bear, which has sent energy rates in Texas
skyrocketing. The same system that allowed the producers’ negligence —
not hardening their systems to the cold in order to save money — also
allowed them to reap windfall profits at the expense of the public and the
state’s general economy.
In scapegoating wind turbines, GOP leaders are not only attacking
renewable energy, they’re avoiding blaming the negligent energy producers
and trying to preempt calls to regulate the industry. They’re prioritizing the
energy companies over the needs of the people.
By contrast, states whose power grids survive the cold have utilities that
operate in a regulated environment that ensures the providers do what’s
right for the entire state — individuals and businesses — versus what’s best
for a small handful of energy producers financing statewide political careers.
The bottom line is that wind turbines in Texas, while indeed providing about
10% of the power, weren’t the leading culprit for the power outages. Blaming
them for the losses was ridiculous, and pinning the storm-related deaths on
them was completely irresponsible.
Sadly, though, even in the short time it took to debunk the Republicans’
claims, they were already zinging all over social media and, no doubt,
leaving many Americans confused or misinformed about renewable energy.
The true motivation for the right’s hit jobs on green energy can be found in
another of Abbott’s remarks to Hannity: “It just shows that fossil fuel is
necessary.” In other words, it’s about maintaining Big Oil’s energy
dominance and the flow of cash that fossil fuel giants give overwhelmingly
to GOP candidates.
Just as insidiously, the false narrative also is part of the GOP’s polarizing
politics. Tying renewable energy to deaths is a form of demonizing
proponents of green energy and presenting them as an existential threat to
the right.
Most Nevadans, fortunately, see right through this. Our state is striding
forward in the development of solar, wind and geothermal power, as we
showed last year when voters overwhelmingly approved a ballot measure
calling for energy companies to produce at least 50% of their power from
renewable sources by 2030.
And in terms of regulation of power providers, we made a smart choice in
2018 by rejecting a ballot measure that would have transitioned the state to
a competitive retail electric market by 2023 and potentially opened the door
to dangerous deregulation.
We’ve also elected leaders at the congressional and state levels who
understand the critical importance of moving beyond fossil fuels, addressing
climate change and adopting clean environmental policies.
The GOP’s reaction to this latest round of extreme weather, though, is a
reminder of how far Republicans are willing to go to squelch the
development of renewables and allow polluters to run unabated.
In Nevada and most of the country, we prefer to expend our energy in
search of the facts and not the fantasies of right-wing fanatics."
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Responses:
[17528] [17534] [17537] |
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17528 |
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Date: February 24, 2021 at 08:47:30
From: Akira, [DNS_Address]
Subject: WSJ: Texas Electric Bills Were $28 Billion Higher Under Deregulation |
URL: https://www.wsj.com/articles/texas-electric-bills-were-28-billion-higher-under-deregulation-11614162780?st=9ugud2ma1lnp4dz&reflink=article_copyURL_share |
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Rebecca Ballhaus
"When Texas deregulated power generation—creating the system that failed
last week—it required 60% of consumers to buy power from retail providers,
rather than a local utility. Those consumers paid $28B more since 2004
than the utilities’ rates, WSJ finds."
I don't have access to wsj article...
Texas Electric Bills Were $28 Billion Higher Under Deregulation
"Competition in the electricity-supply business promised reliable power at a
more affordable cost"
anybody have a wsj subscription?
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Responses:
[17534] [17537] |
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17534 |
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Date: February 24, 2021 at 20:15:17
From: sheila, [DNS_Address]
Subject: Re: WSJ: Texas Electric Bills Were $28 Billion Higher Under... |
URL: https://www.propublica.org/article/power-companies-get-exactly-what-they-want-how-texas-repeatedly-failed-to-protect-its-power-grid-against-extreme-weather |
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I don't have a subscription either but did get this much of the story. Propublica has a very insightful on the Texas problem at the link, if you've not read it
already.
Texas’s deregulated electricity market, which was supposed to provide reliable power at a lower price, left millions in the dark last week. For two decades, its customers have paid more for electricity than state residents who are served by traditional utilities, a Wall Street Journal analysis has found.
Nearly 20 years ago, Texas shifted from using full-service regulated utilities to generate power and deliver it to consumers. The state deregulated power generation, creating the system that failed last week. And it required nearly 60% of consumers to buy their electricity from one of many retail power companies, rather than a local utility.
Those deregulated Texas residential consumers paid $28 billion more for their power since 2004 than they would have paid at the rates charged to the customers of the state’s traditional utilities, according to the Journal’s analysis of data from the federal Energy Information Administration.
The crisis last week was driven by the power producers. Now that power has largely been restored, attention has turned to retail electric companies, a few of which are hitting consumers with steep bills. Power prices surged to the market price cap of $9,000 a megawatt hour for several days during the crisis, a feature of the state’s system designed to incentivize power plants to supply more juice. Some consumers who chose variable rate power plans from retail power companies are seeing the big bills.
None of this was supposed to happen under deregulation. Backers of competition in the electricity-supply business promised it would lower prices for consumers who could shop around for the best deals, just as they do for cellphone service. The system would be an improvement over monopoly utilities, which have little incentive to innovate and provide better service to customers, supporters of deregulation said.
That's all I could get, sorry. :)
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Responses:
[17537] |
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17537 |
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Date: February 25, 2021 at 05:56:05
From: Akira, [DNS_Address]
Subject: thanks(NT) |
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Responses:
None |
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