Winter storms swept across the south and south-central United States in February 2021. On the 14th, the entire state of Texas was under a winter storm warning. By the next day, there was dense snowpack and freezing rain, further exacerbating below-freezing temperatures, and ultimately leading to a statewide blackout that left millions of Texans without power or heat for days or weeks. Dr Joshua Busby, professor of public affairs at the University of Texas at Austin, was one such person: “we lost power for three days[…]and were without hot water for ten days.” Financially, the storms and blackouts resulted in an estimated $80 to $130 billion in economic losses. There was also a devastating loss of human life—official numbers report over 210 casualties, but others estimate that at least three or four times as many people were killed, primarily those who were medically vulnerable or in poorer communities.
Despite previous storms and subsequent warnings about the vulnerability of the power systems to extreme cold, the state and private sectors did not see winterization as necessary because such events were seen as rare. Accordingly, hundreds of power-generating units were left unprepared for the freezing weather conditions. Moreover, some gas suppliers had not self-identified as critical infrastructure to avoid high energy prices and, as a result, they lost electricity too. “This negative feedback loop between gas and electricity suppliers contributed to the immense deficit in electricity generation,” Busby notes, “frozen equipment caused difficulties for gas suppliers to stock electricity providers, which led to electricity providers to suffer from outages and, in turn, not be able to supply adequate electricity for the gas supply chain”.
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