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US cold snap: Why is Texas seeing Arctic temperatures?
February 15: The state is seeing some of its coldest temperatures in more than 30 years, with some areas breaking records that are more than a century old.
Parts of Texas hit 0F (-18C) on Sunday, and weather warnings are going to stay in place through the week.
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Power cut across Texas during nasty winter storm
Electricity prices spike more than 10,000% on the Texas power grid
The state of Texas is reeling under a deep freeze, leaving utilities scrambling to meet record power demand and forcing the state's grid operator to enforce rotating blackouts early on Monday.
U.S. President Joe Biden approved the state's emergency declaration, unlocking federal assistance to tackle the rare deep freeze.
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Winter's wrath makes for a cold and deadly week in Texas
By mid-week, many Texans were still working to stay warm, with some people resorting to lighting fires to make that happen.
On top of the general stress of the situation, several tragedies were reported as well, including the death of a family who were trying to keep warm in a car left running inside a Houston garage.
And at least six deaths have been attributed to the cold in Abilene, a city in western Texas, including a man who was found dead in his bed.
At least 70 deaths had occurred as a result of the recent winter weather in the wider United States, according to a report from The Associated Press on Friday.
The power situation gradually improved in Texas throughout the week, but the winter weather didn't let up, and some problems related to the emergency persisted.
As of the week's end, roughly one-quarter of the population of Texas — about seven million people — were under a boil water advisory stemming from issues related to the wintry blasts that struck the state this week.
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Texas freeze led to release of tonnes of air pollutants as refineries shut
The extreme cold, which killed at least two dozen people in Texas and knocked out power to more than 4 million at its peak, also hit natural gas and electric generation, cutting supplies needed to run the plants.
Shutdowns led to the refineries flaring, or burning and releasing gases, to prevent damage to their processing units. That flaring darkened the skies in eastern Texas with smoke visible for kilometres.
"These emissions can dwarf the usual emissions of the refineries by orders of magnitude," said Jane Williams, chair of the Sierra Club's National Clean Air Team.
The five largest refiners emitted nearly 152 tonnes (337,000 pounds) of pollutants, including benzene, carbon monoxide, hydrogen sulfide and sulfur dioxide, according to preliminary data supplied to the Texas Commission on Environment Quality (TCEQ).
Valero Energy said in a filing with the TCEQ that it released 35 tonnes (78,000 pounds) over 24 hours beginning Feb. 15 from its Port Arthur refinery, citing the frigid cold and interruptions in utility services.
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Market fundamentalism should never apply to utilities, as Texans are learning the hard way
The United States is in the grips of a winter storm that has left millions without power along its Gulf Coast. In particular, the state of Texas, the so-called energy capital of the world, is being ravaged and many are wondering how and why such a thing is happening when energy suppliers knew the storm was coming.
First of all, most of Texas has an independent power grid and, in fact, there is no national US power grid at all. While the country sports a “balkanized” power grid split into several distinct zones, Texas operates a stand-alone grid that keeps it isolated from other markets. That means that during rare times of emergency such as this the state cannot draw from elsewhere, leaving 4.4 million customers without power at one point.
Texas’s independent power grid also means that it has been able to avoid federal regulations and opt out of capacity market pricing, meaning that operators don’t need to meet capacity for emergencies and can hike prices. It was even reported that ERCOT North hub ratcheted prices per megawatt hour to $1,489.75 last Tuesday, compared to the 2020 annual average of $26.
In addition to the tragic loss of life and weather-induced injuries suffered as a result of the cold snap and the power grid’s inability to meet demand, many who were “lucky” enough to keep the lights on will be financially ruined as a wave of bankruptcies and foreclosures follow in the wake of the storm.
As the New York Times reported on Sunday, some are being stuck with electric bills in the tens of thousands of dollars. This is because thousands of Texans pay wholesale energy prices that are not fixed, but fluctuate with the broad market swings of supply and demand.
Again, pointing back to Texas’s heavily deregulated energy market, operators in Texas are not required to meet demand – and consumers, who can pick from about 220 retailers, have little protection.
Some operators, like the company Griddy, pass wholesale pricing onto customers with a modest surcharge, which usually amounts to savings in normal times – but can obviously turn disastrous.
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