SOME GUYS ARE JUST UNTEACHABLE:

After such a devastating storm, it would seem logical for Texas to impose sweeping reforms to ensure a similar tragedy was avoided in the future. Instead, in March 2021, the Texas legislature passed two bills: Senate Bill 2, which gave the governor added control over ERCOT, and Senate Bill 3, which, as Nitish Pahwa notes in Slate, included "a proposed overhaul of emergency alert systems, a requirement for state regulators to review the availability of energy reserves, and orders for power generators as well as transmission lines to bolster their weather resiliency." Abbott, who faced fierce criticism for his handling of the storm, declared victory. The bills "fixed all of the flaws" of the grid, he said; "everything that needed to be done was done to fix the power grid in Texas."

One thing the bills did not do was to require the natural gas pipelines be winterized, the main reason the grid failed. Oil and gas industry leaders did not want to incur the debt of winterizing the pipelines, so the legislature, with Abbott's blessing, did not require it. According to Disaster by Design, a soon-to-be-released short film about Uri, Kelcy Warren, chairman of Dallas-based Energy Transfer Partners, contributed $1 million to Abbott at the end of the legislative session, four times more than any previous donation he made. Even though Energy Transfer enjoyed a $2.6 billion windfall from Uri, the company opposed moves to winterize Texas's natural gas pipelines.

As the anniversary of Uri approached this past February, Abbott said the Texas electric grid "is the most reliable and resilient it's ever been." Critics disagree. "He is stating that the ERCOT grid has never been stronger," says Ed Hirs, University of Houston Energy Fellow, "but given that it has been the worst and weakest in the nation, that is not saying much. Abbott complains that Biden policies in favor of renewables have weakened the grid. But the voters are smarter than that. Other grids have dealt with new generation resources without problems. The legislature and Governor Abbott know they did not address the critical failures identified following the 2021 winter grid failure."

Abbott's coziness with the oil and gas industry has opened him to criticism. "Governor Abbott has resisted all significant improvements on the grid," says George Shipley, a longtime Democratic strategist in Texas. "What he has done is take millions of dollars from oil and gas. He is bought and paid for by the oil and gas industry."

With some success, O'Rourke has turned the grid into a wedge issue in the campaign, which is not surprising since a University of Texas at Tyler survey from last month found that only 15 percent of Texans have confidence in the current grid.

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