GOV. ABBOTT DECLARES ERCOT REFORM AN EMERGENCY LEGISLATIVE ITEM
Governor Greg Abbott has declared the reform of the Electric Reliability Council of Texas (ERCOT) an emergency item this legislative session.
On Tuesday, Abbott called upon Texas legislators to investigate the operator of the state's power grid after millions across the state lost power due to prolonged freezing conditions.
In a statement, Abbott said ERCOT has been "anything but reliable over the past 48 hours," and called the situation "unacceptable." He said reviewing the preparations and decisions by ERCOT has been made an emergency item in order to "get a full picture of what caused this problem and find long-term solutions."
Abbott said in an interview with KTRK Houston Tuesday that this was a "total failure" by ERCOT, and that he believes leadership there should resign.
State Senator Lois Kolkhorst suggested several potential ideas for ERCOT reform in a social media statement Tuesday. Her suggestions included halting tax incentives for wind and solar energy providers in Texas, ensuring natural gas and coal plants have plans for winterizing during freezing conditions, investigating the role and purpose of ERCOT, building new power plants and building them closer to urban areas, and considering non-carbon production like nuclear energy. She said Texas needs to "stop looking and acting like California," and that the state needs to make corrections and investments now in order to prevent this situation from ever happening again. She added, "There are no more words; there should be no excuses."
State Representative Ben Leman, who serves on the House Committee on Energy Resources, said legislators need to do a deep dive to figure out where the state's failure occurred and how to correct it. He said he will work with colleagues to "find the problem and develop a solution that can be quickly implemented to strengthen our power grid."
House Speaker Dade Phelan on Tuesday requested that the House State Affairs and Energy Resources Committees hold a joint hearing on February 25th to review the factors that led to the widespread outages.