Environment & Energy
Related: About this forumAbbott Admin Dumped Independent Agency That Monitored Electrical Grid In November 2020
Late last year, as winter approached and power companies prepared for cold weather, Gov. Greg Abbotts hand-picked utility regulators decided they no longer wanted to work with a nonprofit organization they had hired to monitor and help Texas enforce the states electric reliability standards.
The multiyear contract between the Public Utility Commission and the obscure monitoring organization, the Texas Reliability Entity, was trashed. Over the next months, right up until the crippling storm that plunged millions of Texans into the dark and cold, the state agency overseeing the power industry operated without an independent monitor to make sure energy companies followed state protocols, which include weatherization guidelines. The Public Utility Commissions decision in November to end its contract with the Texas Reliability Entity didnt cause the historic grid failures that this week transformed Texas into an undeveloped country, leaving large swaths of the state without power or water as temperatures dropped and stayed below freezing. A PUC spokesman said the agency still had ample protections to ensure energy companies followed state rules and guidelines.
On Thursday, Abbott called for a state law requiring power plants to be better weatherized. Yet over the past quarter-century, state leaders have refused to require the companies to prepare for severe weather, even as once-in-a-lifetime storms have arrived with increasing frequency.
Critics say the utility commissions move to strip away a regulatory layer, especially with potentially severe weather approaching, was just the latest example of the consistently light touch Texas politicians have used to oversee the complex industry that generates and distributes power. Its astonishing to me that the PUC would get rid of the independent reliability entity with no plan to replace it, said state Rep. Rafael Anchía, D-Dallas, who sits on the Texas House Energy Resources Committee. No staff, no oversight on reliability.
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https://www.houstonchronicle.com/politics/texas/article/Abbott-appointees-made-astonishing-cuts-to-15963686.php?utm_campaign=CMS%20Sharing%20Tools%20(Premium)&utm_source=t.co&utm_medium=referral
duforsure
(11,885 posts)Criminal, or civil?
hatrack
(59,606 posts)Whether Abbott ordered them to do so is unknown.
The rest of the article gets even sleazier - not re. Abbott's conduct, or that of the PUC, but rather why the CEO of the booted non-profit was making more than $500,000 a year for doing, essentially, nothing.