Texas is an independently autonomous power producer and the only one of the contiguous 48 states with its own stand-alone electricity grid, one of the three main grids in the U.S.: the Eastern Interconnection, Western Interconnection, and Texas Interconnection.
The Texas Interconnection is managed by the Electric Reliability Council of Texas, or ERCOT.
It has more than enough power producing capability, so much so that it can over-produce but prioritizes its demand needs first, maintaining a buffer referred to as the “state’s reserve margin.”
Then why are so many suffering for such a long time with no power? Why are Texans dealing with rolling blackouts?
The answer, my friends, is all too common: their relationship with the federal government.
Over the years Texas has signed onto the idea that they need to move toward cleaner “green” energy by introducing more wind turbine and solar panel energy to supplement the existing coal fired power and nuclear plants.
All sounds good and wholesome so far, right? Who can be against cleaner environment friendly energy?
Texas had the ability to ramp up production of electricity but first needed permission from big brother: the federal government.
From the federal government EO number 202-21-1, a four-page document states the following:
All entities must comply with environmental requirements to the maximum extent necessary to operate consistent with the emergency conditions. This Order does not provide relief from an entity’s obligations to purchase allowances for emissions that occur during the emergency condition or to use other geographic or temporal flexibilities available to generators.
The order shows Acting Energy Secretary David Huizenga did not waive environmental restrictions to allow for maximum energy output, instead ordering ERCOT to utilize all resources in order to stay within acceptable emissions standards–including purchasing energy from outside the state.
Not only has this insane policy of rigidly putting environmental concerns over people’s lives during an emergency, we have also come to find out that the order instructed an “incremental amount of restricted capacity” to be sold to ERCOT at “a price no lower than $1,500/MWh,” an increase of over 6,000 percent over February 2020 prices of $18.20.
Thousands of people’s lives have been put at severe risk and quite a few have died with more to follow, but rather than prioritizing an effective response to dealing with a catastrophic weather emergency, they are prioritizing using favored sources of energy and not "overproducing."
What we have here is another stupid federal government political policy to “save the planet” regardless of the suffering and obviously foreseeable detrimental outcome. As though the carbon footprint of repairing homes destroyed by water damage from frozen pipes won’t be far worse than trying to save the world from a phantom boogie man sometimes referred to as "global warming," from the relative comfort of their D.C. offices.
There is a place for so-called "green energy" but only for individual homes and businesses on a local basis because of the following reasons:
- There is more control of how it’s used, whether as a supplement to more reliable sources or as the main source (like in an off-grid situation).
- The more redundant a system (i.e. more independent autonomous modules of energy per area), the more diversely reliable and less prone to large scale power outage.
- Costs for installation and maintenance would be substantially less.
- Independence from any centralized authority allows for much more effective decisions based on the needs of the individual house, business, or area.
Centralized control and decision-making by the federal government for states and their locals throughout this country have proven disastrous.
This is the antithesis of what our wise Founding Fathers had in mind. In fact the states initially were more powerful than the federal government and for good reason. Local control and decision-making for most all aspects of society makes much more sense.
Article V of the Constitution allows for the citizenry to propose amendments to the Constitution through our state legislators.
The Convention of States Action resolution would allow for proposals that limit the power and jurisdiction of the federal government, impose fiscal restraints, and place term limits on federal officials.
We are building the largest most engaged grassroots army of volunteers in this country to rein in the federal government and ultimately get the states back under control as well.
Convention of States is in the process of achieving the goal. Won’t you join us?
Sign the petition and or become a volunteer.
