Reliable Energy is More Important Than Ever

February 19, 2021

After 5 days of no heat and power in the state of Texas, the power is slowly starting to come back on. But Texas is not out of the woods yet. As of Friday morning, over 195,000 homes across the state still did not have power. And with more winter weather on the way, the state needs to be prepared to not lose power again.

Lina Hidalgo, the top elected official in Harris County, which encompasses Houston, discussed the progress being made to restore power throughout the state.

“The grid is still fragile,” she said, noting that cold weather would remain in the area for a few days, which would “put pressure on these power plants that have just come back on.”

Governor Greg Abbot (R-TX) is calling on state lawmakers to pass legislation to make sure the energy grid can handle cold weather going forward, “What happened this week to our fellow Texans is absolutely unacceptable and can never be replicated again.”

It is important for the state to prepare the energy grid for the future. But it is also important to understand how we got here.

Texas is known as a great energy producer for the U.S. with a large oil and gas presence. However, as Congressman Dan Crenshaw (R-TX) pointed out, Texas has started relying too much on wind power. This past week’s freezing weather caused more than half of its wind power generators to freeze and come offline, unable to produce energy.

Rep. Crenshaw stated “A mix of over-subsidized wind energy and under-investment in gas power” led to an insufficient supply of baseload energy to meet “a massive spike in demand.”

Let us hope this past week’s tragic events have inspired politicians to take a closer look at what energy we turn our power grid dependence on and its reliability.