February 22, 2021
I wanted to take a few minutes to write about the current energy crisis that is plaguing Texas. Being a mechanical engineer who has knowledge of the energy industry, I figured I share some thoughts. From what I understand, the reason that they are having issues at the moment is that the severe winter weather caused gas, oil, nuclear, and coal power plant equipment to freeze. What I’ve seen from Republicans specifically on Fox News is that they’re blaming the power outages on wind turbines freezing which I find a little frustrating. It is very clear that they’re using the outages to attempt to show that renewable energy is unreliable, but it’s the failure to make the energy grid resilient which is causing the problem. Some other things that happened were that many people were charged thousands of dollars for energy which is very predatory of the energy companies and there were some texas officials that fled the state for warmer weather. I think it is an interesting dichotomy for Texas, a largely Republican state, that while Ted Cruz, a Republican senator representing Texas, fled the state for Cancun, Alexandria Ocasio Cortez, a Democratic Representative of New York (a largely Democratic state), raised $5 million dollars for the citizens of Texas. No doubt this was a political move motivated by the notion that Democrats would likely appreciate flipping the state from red to blue in the 2022 and 2024 elections. I’d say the move was a success especially in light of the fact that most of the Republican leadership had failed to address the concerns with the grid over the past 10 years. I’ve often thought that I want to be a Republican, but they make it so difficult, especially with the continued influence of Trumpism in the party. I can only imagine the kind of response if Trump was in office and Texas was a blue state. Without making the assertion that Joe Biden is the answer to all of America’s problems, at least he is not behaving like a petulant child. I’m still figuring out what my specific political opinions are as I think it is important to be able to articulate them and understand what can be done to improve the system that we have. With that said, something that I think I support is the regulation of industries that impact U.S. Citizens’ lives at a very basic level such as food, healthcare, and utilities. The issues facing Texans could be attributed to deregulation of the energy grid, although it is not certain, however, I believe there should be some oversight and a way to incentivize improvements in the system so that people who are on the receiving end of these services don’t have to worry about how they are going to survive events like this. That’s just my two cents. I’m sure I’ll have more to add at a later date.