After years of inaction on, and even hostility toward, attempts to strengthen and secure Texas’ power grid, lawmakers might finally take action. Brandon Waltens has the details.
State Sen. Bob Hall (R-Edgewoood) and State Rep. Tony Tinderholt (R-Arlington) have tried for several sessions to get attention to the shortcomings of Texas’ electric infrastructure. They were ignored while lawmakers instead pumped $19 billion into “green” energy subsidies.
“Every time I author this bill, they push back on wanting to secure or protect the power grid and make it stronger,” Tinderholt toldTexas Scorecard. “The power companies need to step up to the plate and participate in the bill.”
FYI: The state’s power grid is managed by the Energy Reliability Council of Texas (ERCOT), a semi-private non-profit entity overseen by the Legislature and the Public Utility Commission. The PUC’s members are appointed by the governor and approved by the Texas Senate.
Will the governor and lawmakers push the blame solely onto ERCOT, or accept their measure of responsibility?
As if in response… Gov. Greg Abbott – who earlier this month received accolades for his promotion of green energy subsidies – yesterday named investigating and reforming ERCOT a legislative priority.
I wonder if the trophy those “sustainable” energy people gave the governor is still being displayed in his office? Seems like for the $19 billion Texas taxpayers have been forced to spend on “green” energy subsidies we’d have more to show for it than a cheap trinket given to a politician…
“If Texas were a public company, the CEO would be fired today.” – Former State Rep. Matt Rinaldi (R-Irving)
In the latest edition of his podcast, Luke Macias explains how wealthy government-subsidized oligarchies have been exposed by the massive power outages.
“Power companies, their lobbyists and their PAC’s have worked tirelessly to keep politicians on their side. Now that millions of Texans are without power and lives are literally being lost, the winds have shifted.” – Luke Macias
Texans took to social media to voice their frustrations with what we now know is the state’s highly unreliable electric grid. Robert Montoya finds many are demanding answers and action from their elected officials.
Count Texas Agriculture Commissioner Sid Miller among those unimpressed with Texas’ lack of electric preparedness. He is calling on Gov. Greg Abbott to make big changes and immediately hold people accountable. Iris Poole has the story.
“We should never build another wind turbine in Texas. The experiment failed big time. Governor Abbott’s Public Utility Commission appointees need to be fired and more gas, coal, and oil infrastructure built.” – Agriculture Commissioner Sid Miller
Texas Electricity Crisis, continuedThe Big Picture in Six PicturesTwo New Power Hours Texas Electricity Crisis, continued Let me start off by saying that I am thinking about all of you in Texas and I hope you are coping with the (very preventable) problems your grid is experiencing right now. As I wrote yesterday, I think we are in the middle of the most teachable energy moment of 2021. Accordingly, I’ve been attempting to create every necessary message (and image) to properly explain what’s going on. So far, I’m seeing a lot of success:My Twitter thread (also available at EnergyTalkingPoints.com) on the Texas Electricity crisis has over 2 million impressions! (Impressions are the number of times it has been seen.) I also have 3000 new followers in the last week.I was interviewed by The New York Times, who linked to my long Twitter post.”…proponents of fossil fuels are using the current crisis to emphasize why they think fossil fuels need to be part of the overall mix of options to power the grid. ‘The anti-carbon movement has really placed no value on reliability,’ said Alex Epstein, author of ‘The Moral Case for Fossil Fuels,’ who expressed his views in a long Twitter thread.”I was interviewed by Glenn Beck.I was interviewed by Fox News last night.I was interviewed by Michael Berry (a prominent Houston host) this morning.I was featured in articles by Fox News and OilPrice.com. (Note my “Back to the Future” reference in the Fox News piece.)I was just interviewed by Congressman Dan Crenshaw for an hour on his podcast. (It hasn’t been posted as of this writing but I expect it to be up by tomorrow.)If I may pat myself on the back, I’ve been doing all of this while spending many hours a day editing my book manuscript, which is due in two weeks :-). I certainly could not do this without Steffen Henne, who has been giving me great rapid-fire data and analysis. Thanks to all the Accelerators who support my amazing R&D resources, including Steffen. The Big Picture in Six Pictures Take a look at electricity use in New England, New York, the Mid-Atlantic, the Midwest, the Southwest, and Texas during this cold spell.
All tell the same story: unreliable wind and solar electricity (green and yellow) completely fail to keep us warm or powered when needed the most. Instead, the media are telling the story that “fossil fuels failed” because certain gas and coal plants went offline in one of these regions–Texas–due to preventable problems. (We know that these problems were preventable because places that are much colder and snowier than Texas use gas and coal with great success.) Two New Power Hours Of course of all weeks this turned out to be the week that I scheduled two new Power Hours. I know there’s a ton going on this week, but I’d highly recommend flagging both of them for listening at some point. The Failure of Unreliable Energy in Texas and Around the World with Steve Milloy Just as the devastation in Texas was reaching a peak, Steve Milloy of JunkScience.com, another whistleblower on “unreliables,” joined me to talk about what’s happening in Texas and around the world. I also asked him about his efforts to oppose certain ESG policies, and his views on the “fossil fuels cause 1 in 5 deaths” claim. FYI I addressed that claim in a Twitter thread. Here’s the summary: The widely-publicized claim that fossil fuels cause 1 in 5 deaths is the worst kind of pseudoscience. It ignores fossil fuels’ life-extending benefits and wildly overstates their negative side-effects. In reality, fossil fuels lengthen 5 out of 5 lives. You can watch on YouTube or listen on Apple Podcasts. The Future of Oil with Michael Lynch This week I also interviewed Michael Lynch, the oil guru who has been more right about oil economics over the past several decades than anyone I know. Mike was the second person I ever interviewed on Power Hour, and when he talked about long-term oil prices being in the $50/barrel range in 2011 I couldn’t believe it (even though I couldn’t argue with his logic). Now he has a new essay on claims that the post-pandemic world will mean “the end of oil.” I highly recommend this essay and Mike’s energy economics work in general. In this interview we covered: false past predictions of a green future, the real economics of EV batteries, what post-pandemic culture will look like, how much oil exists in the world, and much more. You can watch on YouTube or listen on Apple Podcasts.
That’s it for this week, except below I’m going to share some of my most popular Tweets this week. It’s really amazing how a well-explained idea on Twitter can take off–especially when it is supplemented with good visuals. To Life, Liberty, and the Pursuit of Energy,Alexhttps://twitter.com/AlexEpstein/status/1361128716391227394
Popular links:1. Change a mind by sharing my Google talk. Do you have someone you know who needs to learn pro-human thinking about energy issues? A great place to start is by sharing my talk at Google, which is designed to persuade even those immersed in the biased, sloppy, and anti-human energy thinking in our culture. You can find the video here.2. Empower a friend by inviting them to this newsletter. If you know someone who wants to increase their clarity and influence on energy issues, invite them to this newsletter by sharing this link: AlexEpsteinList.com.3. Empower an audience with one of our speakers. If you have an upcoming board meeting, employee town hall, or association meeting, you can book a virtual or in-person speech by me or one of our other great speakers. Just email me here.
Center for Industrial Progress, 302 Washington St., #150-9385, San Diego,, CA
Follower of Jesus, Husband of a Proverbs 31 Wife, Father of Joshua Blake, Electrical Engineer, and just glad to be here.
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John Hargrove Seeking Truth and Reality 