US’ Texas produces power, go dark anyway

Shafaq News/ US’ Texas, the energy powerhouse of the United States went dark these days.

According to CNN, A deep freeze this week in the Lone Star state, which relies on electricity to heat many homes, is causing power demand to skyrocket. At the same time, natural gas, coal, wind and nuclear facilities in Texas have been knocked offline by the unthinkably low temperatures.

This situation could have wide-reaching implications as the US power industry attempts to slash carbon emissions in response to the climate crisis.

That nightmarish supply-demand situation has sent electricity prices in energy-rich Texas to skyrocket more than 10,000% compared with before the unprecedented temperatures hit. Texas has been hit with life-threatening blackouts. More than 4 million people in the state were without power early Tuesday.

In response, Governor Greg Abbott has called for an investigation into the nonprofit Electric Reliability Council of Texas, known as ERCOT, which controls most of the state's grid. The group's CEO on Tuesday defended the controlled outages, saying they "kept the grid from collapsing" and sending the state into a complete blackout.

Although some are attempting to pin the blame on one fuel source or another, the reality is that the Arctic temperatures are hobbling fossil fuels and renewable energy alike.

"The extreme cold is causing the entire system to freeze up," said to CNN, Jason Bordoff, a former energy official in the Obama administration and director of Columbia University's Center on Global Energy Policy. "All sources of energy are underperforming in the extreme cold because they're not designed to handle these unusual conditions."

The ripple effects are being felt around the nation as Texas' prolific oil-and-gas industry stumbles.

Motiva's sprawling Port Arthur oil refinery, the largest in the United States, shut down Monday, citing "unprecedented freezing temperatures." About 2.5 million barrels per day of refining capacity was shut between Houston and Louisiana, according to Rystad Energy.

Countless drillers went offline as temperatures in the Permian Basin, the nation's fracking capital, plunged below zero. The supply shortfall helped send US oil prices above $60 a barrel for the first time since January 2020.

Texas is the No. 1 US state in both crude oil and natural gas, according to the US Energy Information Administration. The state accounted for a staggering 41% of America's oil production in 2019 and a quarter of its marketed natural gas output.

Wind power is also booming in Texas, which produced about 28% of all the US wind-powered electricity in 2019, the EIA said.

CNN said it's too early to definitively say what went wrong in Texas and how to prevent similar outages. More information will need to be released by state authorities.

The energy crisis in Texas raises also questions about the nature of the state's deregulated and decentralized electric grid. Unlike other states, Texas has made a conscious decision to isolate its grid from the rest of the country.

That means that when things are running smoothly, Texas can't export excess power to neighboring states. And in the current crisis, it can't import power either.

But the problem is that not only is Texas an energy superpower, it tends to be an above-average temperature state. That means its infrastructure is ill-prepared for the cold spell currently wreaking havoc. And the consequences are being felt by millions.