Lessons for the Middle East from the Texas power outage

The US state's suffering is tragic, but it was avoidable

Pump jacks operate in the Permian Basin in Midland, Texas. The Arctic freeze gripping the central US is raising the spectre of power cuts in the state and placing pressure on energy already trading at record prices. Bloomberg

Brett Archibad entertains his family as they try to stay warm in their home the Blackhawk district in Pflugerville, Texas. Anger about the state’s power grid failure mounted on Tuesday. AP

Howard and Nena Mamu eat dinner at their home in the Glenwood district in Hutto, Texas. AP

People queue to buy food at a petrol station in Pflugerville, Texas. Most homes in the area had been without electricity for nearly eight hours. Power companies performed rotating cuts to protect the grid. AP

People queue to fill their empty propane tanks in Houston. The temperature stayed below freezing on Tuesday. AP

Christopher Harris, left, his wife Novi and their daughter Keeva occupy an office suite at a pop-up warming centre in Richardson, Texas. It is one of seven such places in the city, offering a place to keep warm and charge devices. AP

Freezer sections are closed off at Fiesta supermarket on February 16, 2021, in Houston, Texas. Winter storm Uri brought historic cold weather, power cuts and traffic accidents to Texas as storms swept through 26 states. AFP

Shell Timewise service station in Pflugerville, Texas, turned away people who needed petrol. Most homes in the area were without power for nearly eight hours. AP

The grounds of the Capitol in Austin, Texas, are covered in snow. AP

A car park is covered in snow at DIY store Home Depot in the Westbury district in Houston. A winter storm that is making its way from America’s southern plains to the northeast is affecting air travel. AP

The Trinity River is mostly frozen after a snow storm in Fort Worth. A frigid blast of winter weather across the US has left more than two million people in Texas without power. AP

Annie Boon, 5, creates a snow angel while sledging with her family in Austin. AP

People play in the snow in Butler Park in Austin. AP

A worker clears snow from a car park in Midland, Texas. Blackouts triggered by frigid weather have spread to more than four million homes and businesses across the central US and parts of Mexico. Bloomberg

Francisco Sanchez wipes snow off his car with a boogie board before going out sledging with his kids at Memorial Park in El Paso, Texas. Reuters

Horses wait for the ice in their trough to be broken in Bastrop county, near Austin, Texas. Reuters

Mia Donjuan, 4, falls off her sledge as she slides down a hill in the Elmwood district of Dallas. AP

Baylor University students enjoy their snow day without classes while posing near a fountain on campus in Waco, Texas. AP

Pedestrians walk on along a snow-covered street in Austin. Winter storm Uri has brought unusual cold to Texas, causing traffic delays and power cuts. Storms have swept across 26 states. AFP

Honey Russell clears the pavement outside her home after heavy snowfall in Fort Worth, Texas. Winter storm Uri has brought freezing weather to Texas. AFP

People push a car free after spinning out in the snow in Waco, Texas. A winter storm that brought snow and ice across the southern Plains stretched its frigid fingers down to the Gulf Coast. AP

A woman walks through falling snow in San Antonio. AP

Two people play in the snow in San Antonio. AP

Snow ploughs clear a lane of the I-30 motorway in Dallas. The Nashville Predators and the Dallas Stars NHL hockey game on Monday was postponed at the request of Dallas Mayor Eric Johnson owing to a power shortage. AP

The sun sets as a lone vehicle sits in a snow-covered parking garage at American Airlines Centre. AP

"The stars at night are big and bright," goes the opening line of Deep in the Heart of Texas, a country number widely considered to be the unofficial Texan state anthem. This week, the night sky shone brighter not just in Texas's rural heartland, but in its bustling cities, too. The Dallas skyline went dark on Monday in an effort to conserve power, as millions of Texans found themselves without electricity or heating amid the most brutal snowstorms their state has seen in three decades.

The rolling outages began on February 15, and have since affected around a third of Texas’s 10 million households, as well as nearly 5 million people in northern Mexico. The source is a combination of factors: the cold spell causing a sudden, huge spike in electricity demand, the failure of public agencies to predict it and the failure of energy infrastructure to cope.

Texas’s electricity grid is unique in continental US in that it is not connected to others outside the state – a legacy of an institutionalised suspicion of federal regulation. The state’s minimally regulated market only pays energy producers for what they sell, and not for what they keep in reserve for rainy (or snowy) days. There are no utility monopolies, and electricity retailers face high competition. All of this has brought benefits for Texans, including very cheap electricity prices and plenty of scope for entrepreneurial innovation (Texas produces a third of US wind power).

But while Texas’s energy market is well prepared for summer demand, there is little thought or expectation for the winter, given how rare cold spells have been historically. And the standalone grid has resulted in Texas being unable to import electricity to make up for the current shortfall.

The state’s grid operator, the perhaps unfortunately named Electricity Reliability Council of Texas (Ercot), was hardly more prescient than the private-sector players it is meant to help steer. The snowstorm was on its way down from Canada for a week, and even as the Texan governor, Greg Abbott, declared a state-wide disaster on February 12, Ercot’s predictions for the impact fell short. It has hardly helped public perceptions of Ercot’s mismanagement that the council’s chair and vice-chair do not live in Texas, but Michigan and California, respectively.

Mr Abbott’s own policies have been criticised, too. Whatever the merits of Texas’s free market, the government’s focus on rock-bottom prices for commercial entities have resulted in a failure to spend money winterising energy infrastructure. Transmission lines have frozen, generators are not geared up for winter, wind turbine blades are iced over and one of the state’s nuclear reactors has failed. Infrastructure for natural gas, which produces half of Texas’s electricity, has been hit badly, too, causing a cycle in which power cuts beget further declines in output.

The knock-on effects reach far. Texas produces 20 per cent of US natural gas exports, and is the country's largest oil producer. Both of those markets have seen global price surges this week. And around 1 million Texans could miss their Covid-19 vaccinations, as deliveries pause.

There are lessons in Texas for the electricity markets of other parts of the world used to warmer climes. Extreme weather events are becoming more common. Major snowstorms have hit much of the Middle East this month, too, putting a strain on poorly equipped infrastructure across Lebanon, Palestine, Syria and Jordan.

The development of sustainable energy must not be only about cleaner resources to avert climate catastrophe, but also about more resilient ones to mitigate the impact of the damage already done. The futurisation and resilience of critical infrastructure and preparing for an increasingly erratic climate has never been more important. Public officials must plan ahead, or else their constituents will find themselves once again powerless when the next storm inevitably comes.