The cold snap that hit the southern United States and moved northeast this Thursday was more than ignored 600,000 households and businesses without power in Texas, the country’s largest oil and gas producer.
There, millions of people without heat have used firewood, grills, gas generators and their own cars to warm themselves in recent days.
The crisis came after the increase in electricity consumption in the southern states of the United States., caused by freezing temperatures, characterized by polar temperatures and snow storms.
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And while Texas is that country’s energy lung and the only continental state with an independent energy network, the cold has exposed its network failures in the face of extreme temperatures and the effects of climate change.
Texas, which has a population of nearly 29 million, is experiencing the greatest difficulties in meeting this explosive demand.Because several power plants that run on natural gas, wind or nuclear power that supply cities like Austin or Houston were interrupted by these extreme conditions.
Ercot, the company responsible for the power distribution in Texas, declared a state of emergency from Sunday to Monday and decided, as a precaution, to cut off certain power sources to avoid grid saturation. Some families were without power for more than 48 hours when the thermometer dropped to rare marks.
Wednesday night, the company said it had restored power to about 1.6 million homes, adding that it was working “24 hours a day to provide Texans with power again”But according to the PowerOutage.us site, some 500,000 people were still without power since Thursday.
According to the AFP agency, the storms have already left more than two million homes in Texas without electricity, which have also hit northern Mexico.
The Republican governor of that state, Greg Abbott, criticized Ercot’s management of the crisis. “Too many Texans have no electricity or heat because our state has to deal with freezing temperatures and harsh winter weather. This is unacceptable”Abbott said Tuesday, announcing an investigation into Ercot. The federal agency responsible for electricity and natural gas tariffs for its part also announced that it will analyze the reasons for the power outages “the next few days”.
But some experts believe that the problem is mainly structural. “Ercot cannot invest in equipment. You can only manage the network “said Ed Hirs, an economics professor at the University of Houston.
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According to Hirs, Texas, which typically peaks in energy activity in late summer, was not prepared for a cold snap. “Not enough generators are planned to meet the sharp increase in winter demand”, He said.
Texas is America’s energy long and by far the largest producer of crude oil and natural gas in the country, but it is also a heavyweight in wind and solar power. This energetic ‘independence’, so remarkable in other situations, it plays against it in times of crisis, as its energy grid is disconnected from the rest of the country, so it cannot import energy.
The current crisis has exposed the limits of this system.It is a warning to the world that even regions where energy is abundant can be in trouble and it can be catastrophic.Said Michael Webber, a professor at the University of Texas and scientific director at the Paris-based Engie Group.
The effects of the cold snap, which left dozens of deaths in the United States, are felt in states such as Mississippi, Louisiana, Oregon and Kentucky, which reported a power outage on Thursday. In New York, a snowfall of up to 5 inches was expected last night, with about 3 inches more in the early morning of today, according to the national meteorological service. In addition, New Jersey Governor Phil Murphy also announced the closure of several vaccination sites.
In total, more than 100 million people living in the Midwestern United States have been affected by winter storms.
AFP Y EFE
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