Report | Never Again: How to prevent another major Texas electricity failure | June 3, 2021
Summary
Texas has more work to do to prevent the kinds of weather-driven blackouts that devastated the state in February 2021.
That is the conclusion of Never Again: How to Prevent Another Major Texas Electricity Failure, a groundbreaking report issued by five past Public Utility Commission of Texas (PUC) commissioners and a senior regulatory advisor.
The report was funded by the Cynthia and George Mitchell Foundation.
Many factors contributed to the widespread Electric Reliability Council of Texas (ERCOT) grid outages that occurred during the Arctic freeze in February 2021. The outage was a wake-up call about the need to fix multiple policy, operational, and planning failures across our state’s electric, water, and natural gas systems. We must fully address the causes of this winter’s weather challenge and prepare to deal with emerging economic, technology, and extreme weather realities.
The Texas Legislature has adopted several statutes to address the problems in the state’s infrastructure systems, and ERCOT and PUC have remedial initiatives underway. More action will be needed. A group of five former PUC commissioners and staff have issued a new paper that summarizes their view of the problems that contributed to the outage, offering twenty recommendations to position Texas for a better energy future.
NEWS SUMMARY >>
Analysis: The Texas electric grid and the improvements that didn't come
[Opinion] We helped design ERCOT, here's how to prevent another major Texas electricity failure
Texas Is Pressed to Do More To Prepare for Power Collapse
The report was funded by a grant from Energy Foundation and the Cynthia and George Mitchell Foundation.