Texas grid failure fueled by rigid politics

The February 2021 Texas energy crisis affected millions of people for up to four days. Its worst effects was where the Electric Reliability Council of Texas manages an electric grid which operates independently from the much larger eastern and western U.S. electric grids.

The crisis caused hundreds of deaths from the cold. Some individual homeowners’ monthly electric bills increased to thousands of dollars. The total economic cost was nearly $200 billion. It could have been worse. The cumulative failures of the system came within five minutes of shutting the ERCOT grid down entirely. ERCOT CEO...