Lazy Narrative

During a recent email exchange, the person I was emailing used the term “lazy narrative” (not about something that I had said; it was just a general comment about the topic we were discussing). I was curious about the comment and asked him to explain. He said (and I paraphrase) that often individuals will default to a general label of people who disagree with them rather than listening to and considering those differing viewpoints.

Hmm, he had a point. I immediately began to wonder if I had been “lazy” in some of my narratives.

It didn’t take long for me to answer that question. Days after that exchange, winter storm Uri swept across the US wreaking havoc in Texas, which is unaccustomed to severe winter conditions. With the exception of February 2011 when another winter storm disabled the Dallas-Fort Worth metroplex during the week of the Super Bowl, the average yearly snowfall in Dallas is less than 2 inches. Temperatures haven't dropped below 10 degrees in Dallas since 1990 and haven't gone below zero since 1930.

But for more than a week in February 2021, temperatures were in the single digits, wind chills were below zero, and snow and ice covered every inch of the landscape in Dallas and Fort Worth. Other Texas cities, including Austin, San Antonio, Houston, and Galveston experienced similar weather. The extreme cold weather resulted in numerous deaths and even more hospitalizations due to carbon monoxide poisoning. My friends who are nurses were treating frostbite for the first time in their careers.

Compounding the weather crisis was another crisis – the extreme weather caused a record- breaking demand for power, which strained the Texas energy grid and left millions without power for days. Additionally, busted water pipes and other weather-related problems caused billions of dollars of damage in what may be the state’s most expensive natural disaster in history. Texas, a state that boasts it is the energy capital, had a complete energy fail in February.

Full disclosure – I know very little about energy – mostly because I’ve never been interested in learning about it. But I have been quick to jump on the renewable energy bandwagon because, and here comes the “lazy narrative,” organizations with which I am affiliated and trust, support it.

When my husband and I built our first house, we installed solar panels to heat our hot water tank because we got a tax break. We lived in that house for 14 years in Oklahoma and never had a problem with the solar panels. We always had plenty of hot water, even on cold, winter nights.

I have been sympathetic to my friends who live in California and Colorado when they experienced extreme conditions due to wildfires, but I have never taken the time to really understand climate and energy sources. Until now.

I resisted the urge to default to the easy, lazy response and disregard any narrative from opposing viewpoints. For the past two weeks, I have read news articles from The Washington Post, New York Times, Fox News, Houston Chronicle, Dallas Morning News, Texas government and utility websites, and even an engineering blog I found.

This is what I read. Texas Governor Greg Abbott, Representative Dan Crenshaw, and Representative Ronny Jackson blamed Texas “for following California’s lead” and “over-subsidizing wind and solar power” that “thrust Texas into a situation where it lacked power throughout the state.” In an interview with Fox News host Sean Hannity, Governor Abbott said the “Green New Deal would be a deadly deal for the United States of America.”

After several days of power outages, former Texas governor Rick Perry proclaimed that, “Texans would be without electricity for longer than three days to keep the federal government out of their business.”

And I read about former Colorado City Mayor Tim Boyd’s Facebook post that said, "No one owes you or your family anything; nor is it the local government's responsibility to support you during trying times like this! Sink or swim, it’s your choice! The City and County, along with power providers or any other service owes you NOTHING! I’m sick and tired of people looking for a d--- handout!"

He added that anyone complaining about the cold “must be lazy and products of bad parenting.”

I have to admit that was hard to read because it is in direct contrast to every one of my core values, but I kept searching.

Following his interview with Sean Hannity, Governor Abbott said to the Houston ABC affiliate that "The reason why power is not available for your viewers is because the power generators froze up and their equipment was incapable of generating power. Then on top of that, the natural gas that flows into those power generators, that is frozen up also."

Other information that I found supports Abbott’s comments during the ABC Houston interview.

According to the U.S. Energy Information Administration (EIA), Texas produces and consumes more electricity than any other state. It is the only one of the contiguous 48 states with its own stand-alone electricity grid. The Texas Interconnection grid is managed by the Electric Reliability Council of Texas, or ERCOT.

The reason behind Texas having its own power grid was because during World War II, large amounts of power were required to be available along the Texas Gulf Coast. Prior to the war, President Franklin D. Roosevelt had signed the Federal Power Act, which allowed the federal government to regulate interstate power lines. Following the war, Texas typically wanted no part of any federal standards and regulations. In 1970, Texas created ERCOT.

According to ERCOT, nearly half of Texas’ electricity was generated by natural gas-fired power plants in 2019. Coal-fired plants and wind power each generated about 20% (although several utility officials interviewed during the storm reported that wind accounted for 10%-13% of energy sources). The two nuclear power plants in Texas supplied a total of 11%. Solar, hydroelectric and biomass resources provided most of the remainder.

Wind turbines did freeze during the storm, but energy officials point to the way that natural gas is stored in Texas as the over-riding problem. In Texas, natural gas is stored in underground chambers, and to bring it to the surface, a pump is required. The cold temperatures knocked out the diesel engines that power these pumps. Also, natural gas pipelines used to transfer the gas froze.

Texas also lost its nuclear energy and coal power generating capacity. Coal plants couldn't operate because the coal piles froze and became stuck to the ground. One of the two nuclear reactors had to be shut down when the cooling pumps for its reactor froze.

Most homes and businesses in Texas are heated by either electricity or natural gas. Electrical power generators typically schedule maintenance and upgrades for the winter months, so when Uri arrived, some of them were offline.

Home users were competing with power generators for the limited natural gas supplies. When natural gas supplies are constrained, they go to homes. ERCOT responded with rolling blackouts for 26 million people, out of 30 million Texans, on its grid.

In an interview, Dan Woodfin, senior director of system operations for ERCOT, said there are national standards for prepping power plants for extreme cold to prevent generators from freezing, but they are not mandatory. Consequently, Texas did not follow the national standards.

To say that wind and solar are not effective under extreme cold temperatures is incorrect. In a Newsweek article, “Why Did Wind Turbines Freeze in Texas When They Work in the Artic,” several wind turbine experts said " wind power operates very reliably in even colder temperatures, including the upper Arctic regions of Finland, Norway, and Sweden. They said there are cold weather packages available which can involve a number of precautions such as heating up turbine components and lubricants, but it hasn't been necessary" to install such kits in Texas where the climate is generally warm.”

Woodfin added that in northern states, power generators are typically located in buildings, which help protect them in the winter. Texas, however, keeps generators outside in order to make full use of them in the summer months when energy demand is high with more homes using air conditioning. Having those generators indoors would cause an increase in heat and prevent them from being used at their full capacity during summer months. According to Woodfin, there are best practices to keep generators online during cold weather, but those were not sufficient with the extremely low temperatures.

Investments in infrastructure come with a cost, which is often passed on to the consumer. Ed Hirs, an energy fellow in the Department of Economics at the University of Houston, said the deregulated power system in Texas doesn’t provide power generators with the returns needed to invest in maintaining and improving power plants.

“The ERCOT grid limped along on underinvestment and neglect until it finally broke under predictable circumstances,” he said.

Expanding renewable energy also comes with a cost including constructing massive batteries that can store power on the magnitude that is needed. However, economic energy experts have said the fast development of technologies, such as hydrogen units and flow batteries, could begin to dramatically decrease costs similar to the decrease in costs of installing solar panels. These experts have said that there is “every indication that it will continue to increase in capacity, decrease in cost, and become more commercially viable."

Following the 2011 winter storm, federal officials recommended requiring that power plants winterize. Texas made winterization voluntary.

As I said earlier, I know very little about energy, and I know even less about climate science. But I do understand prevention.

As a result of winter storm Uri, dozens of Texans died, and more were hospitalized. Several of my friends were without power for days. Others I know were still under a boil water order for a week after the temperatures returned to average. Texas agriculture was also severely impacted, killing cattle and crops. It has been reported that citrus groves were hit so hard the effect will still be felt in 2022.

Texas will be exposed to extreme weather again. It may not happen for another 10 years or 5 years or 2 years, but it will happen. The only way to be prepared is if we can stop blaming, start listening to all possibilities, and find solutions that benefit everyone.