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- cross-posted to:
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Almost three years since the deadly Texas blackout of 2021, a panel of judges from the First Court of Appeals in Houston has ruled that big power companies cannot be held liable for failure to provide electricity during the crisis. The reason is Texas’ deregulated energy market.
The decision seems likely to protect the companies from lawsuits filed against them after the blackout. It leaves the families of those who died unsure where next to seek justice.
In February of 2021, a massive cold front descended on Texas, bringing days of ice and snow. The weather increased energy demand and reduced supply by freezing up power generators and the state’s natural gas supply chain. This led to a blackout that left millions of Texans without energy for nearly a week.
The state has said almost 250 people died because of the winter storm and blackout, but some analysts call that a serious undercount.
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Cops don’t have to serve and protect or abide by the law. Power companies don’t have to supply power. People who sell you things can deny you access to them.
Hey this is fun, let’s do more!
Health Insurance companies don’t have to provide payment for health services you pay them to cover.
The more and more I hear about these terrible decisions made in Texas, no exception abortion (even if medically deemed necessary) and now this, the more and more I am grateful I don’t live in that trainwreck state.
A recent study showed that Texans have the least personal freedom of any state
Oh the irony
It is almost like natural monopolies, such as primary power generation and supply, should be under the control of the Government and not private individuals.
They all used to be. Then Reagan and Clinton happened.
ding ding ding. We have a winner! Give that man a prize!
Thank you, thank you.
My prize will sit proudly in my woman cave.
Woman caave… go on
Down, boy.
Can you point me to where I might learn more about this?
This is pretty good article about how and why.
Most places that are not Texas still have something resembling the old school utility model where the state effectively grants a license to a private company to operate and manage the grid, which is itself a public right of way. This is governed by a state appointed utility board.
And in RI, when everyone objects loudly, they nod their heads, and then do it anyway.
That’s communism and we are a capitalist country.
The right thing to do under a capitalist economy is to buy the government and give yourself a monopoly.
This isn’t a natural monopoly, it’s protected by legislature and cronyism.
A proper capitalist approach to utilities, then the pipes and wires need to be considered no different then the road they are installed on. Recoup money by selling metered wholesale access to the carriers and utilities.
But we don’t have proper capitalism. We have this bastardized American version that sucks.
We the People of the United States, in Order to form a more perfect Union, establish Justice, insure domestic Tranquility, provide for the common defence, promote the general Welfare, and secure the Blessings of Liberty to ourselves and our Posterity, do ordain and establish this Constitution for the United States of America.
We settled it before the damn constitution even started. How these nitwits in DC don’t see how publicly run infrastructure doesn’t provide for the common defense or promote general welfare is beyond me. But I guess running water, heat, affordable healthcare, and an ability to communicate with each other and the rest of the world doesn’t count under that, somehow.
Maybe if the courts took the founders intent from the Prologue instead of the secret letters to their mistresses, we’d have a functional system. But that’s just my opinion.
A government providing services is not communism, it’s a first-world standard.
Production can be liberalised, but it requires good regulation. Regulation failed to include a rule for responsibility to provided a minimum of energy, the judge can’t do more than the regulation law. It works in EU, we didn’t have blackout past year even though the situation was dramatic mostly due to the Russian invasion, because the liberalised market allowed efficient sharing of energy where it was most needed.
I wouldn’t be so certain a public monopoly could have managed it in such an efficient way (in terms of finance, energy usage and service). People tend to idealize public administration.
Deregulating the electricity industry has been a complete and utter disaster.
Phew. Worried this could lead to overturning that cops have no duty to protect you.
If you don’t like the service you’re getting then just vote in new leaders who can change things /s
Thankfully nobody in their right mind chooses to live in this state, those that remain were born with a death wish, or since sort of moral ambiguity to life.
Supreme Court: How expensive could it possibly be to sue a utility for breach of contract? $10?
Or they just can’t leave for one reason or another – moving is tough
Texans must love the abuse, they keep voting for it.
There’s also a lot of voter suppression and gerrymandering.
Suckers with no self esteem.
This election’s got me so low
If they keep it up, people might pack up and go
Hot take: The ruling is accurate.
Vote for candidates who privatize utilities. Get what you vote for.
Only sucks for those that can’t leave and are stuck with a system they can’t correct.
In the opinion, Justice Adams noted that, when designing the Texas energy market, state lawmakers “could have codified the retail customers’ asserted duty of continuous electricity on the part of wholesale power generators into law.”
Wow, so helpful to say that 20 years after the fact
I agree with the problem, but I also kind of agree with the judge. The point of separation of powers is that the judicial system interprets the will of the legislative. We have had similar cases in Finland , where the law clearly should say one thing and the courts conclude that the law in fact says another thing. Fortunately, this situation occasionally leads the parliament into saying ‘well fuck’ and changing the law.
I will admit I don’t really understand the role of courts making law in the US and other common law countries, so it might be different there.
It’s a tough spot because most people, and maybe legislators themselves, didn’t think they had to write down “power companies must provide power to the best of their ability” and whatever other legalese that would force companies to do something about winterization. It feels like there should be an implicit “hey, if you’re aware of an issue that might kill people and destroy homes, maybe try to fix it.” The new laws around winterization are little comfort to those who have already lost loved ones to an avoidable problem. Of course, then you have litigious idiots who will sue because the tractor company didn’t say you shouldn’t try to play jumprope with the harvester blades. I don’t know what the solution is there, it seems we can only really be reactive.
Well, I guess the saying “regulations are written in blood” didn’t come from nowhere.
Well, they were providing it “to the best of their abilities”. With those maxed out prices, they were sure as hell trying to squeez out every kilowatt. Their abilities just sucked due to underinvsetment in reserve capacity. But you can hardly blame them for that. Unlike in most states, they don’t get paid for reserve capacity in Texas (and are not required to have any either). Therefore, whichever power company invests in it will have to raise prices, become uncompetitive and go bankrupt. Its not the companies to be blamed, its the politicians/officials who set up Texas electricity market like that. Capitalism can’t work if you don’t set up and regulate markets to align consumer and public incentives with company incentives.
I recommend practical engineerings video for technical details.
It’s not just about reserve capacity, ERCOT was warned about insufficient winterization after the last power grid failure due to cold weather, they just didn’t act on it. Should the Texas government have mandated improvements at that time? Absolutely. Do I still believe that ERCOT has at least some blood on their hands because they knew about the problem and chose not to fix it despite the hardship it could cause their customer base? Absolutely.
Also I have seen the practical engineering video, love that guy.
Unless I am missing something, ERCOT is a distributor. They don’t own the power plants and would have hard time forcing power plant owners to make those improvements without government mandate, no? Or does ERCOT already make similar regulations for plants?
My understanding is that ERCOT manages the reliability of the entire grid. I won’t pretend to understand the exact nature of their purview and powers, but I’ll defer to what Abott describes as their role in this incident:
Five days before the winter storm hit Texas, Abbott said ERCOT ensured officials that the power generator was prepared for the cold temperatures, and even issued notices to power plants to ensure they were winterized properly.
And the statement from ERCOT
ERCOT officials have said that some power generators implemented new winter practices after the freeze a decade ago, but they were voluntary.
Admittedly, I don’t know the extent of ERCOTs control over the individual companies that manage the generators or infrastructure of the power grid, but it does appear they had enough oversight to claim that the grid could weather another storm, which it could not.
Source: https://www.texastribune.org/2021/02/18/greg-abbott-winter-storm/
Well, even if they had no power to do anything, saying things have been fixed and are fine should make them liable. How should anyone (legislature, public) work on fixing the issue if they hide it? They should be the ones raising the issue in the first place.
Nah. Thanks for the info but I’m totally fine with blaming both the government and the shady utility company.
I mean, if it really is shady then blame away. I am just saying you can’t blame a company for not paying out of their own pocket for something the government should have secured.
It would be literally illegal for a corporation to do that. (breach of fedutiary duty, corporations are required by law to make as much profit for investors as they legally can. I am oversimplifying incredibly but it is mostly true)
The one time I remember something like that happening in the US was the 2003 Do Not Call telemarketing act. There was a court case that concluded that Congress had not properly authorized regulators to enforce the Do Not Call registry. Congress then took a day or two to pass a new law authorizing the thing they forgot to the first time.
This comes down to two things:
- Americans really, really hate taking telemarketing calls, regardless of party affiliation
- The telemarketing industry didn’t have significant lobbying at the time to tell anyone in Congress to argue against it
So bizarre, you’d think there would be some implicit realities of what is constituted by contracting for grid load power generation & even peaker plants. The grid has to be maintained to function and can’t lose frequency even if that does mean shedding there should be key named emergency services that should be maintained that would warrant liability on power generators. This is all upside with little cost or risk & also why there was no effort to coordinate because nobody is responsible.
As I understood it, critical circuits like hospitals were being prioritized and being kept (mostly?) online.
But house heating is generally not on a different circuit. They would normally rotate the houses which are blacked out so they would at least have power some of the time but this one was so bad all the power went into the priority circuits (like hospitals).
Let me guess, if I don’t like it I’m free to start my own power generation company, in a city that’s had only one provider for over 60 years.
Oh no that’s California. In Texas there’s 500 providers and no service.
Man, Texas is a real shithole
Three cheers for privatization of public utilities! /s
As an aside, I am gutted by 250+ people losing their lives because Texan politicians can’t get their act together to hold companies responsible. Legislation works … and politicians can, and should, make the laws.
They do have their act together. It just doesn’t include doing anything good for Texans.
Is there legislation that says otherwise? What should the judges do here?
AFAIK it wouldn’t be legislation, it would be damages paid for some kind of breach of contract or some other contract-related issue, since the city delegated energy management to private companies. I’m sure there may be some contractual relationship with the city as well as the customers, but it’s not clear to me what type of contractual basis for damages this would amount to.
I suppose it could be gross negligence for not taking reasonable measures to prevent that kind of catastrophic failure, but honestly the standard of care would seem hard to establish. Still, a week without power seems excessive even by extreme weather standards.
Not saying this ruling doesn’t suck, just that it seems legally kind of ambiguous.
Second only to the lack of responsibility that Texan judges have.
Yikes. You’d think in a place where they know they will have extraordinary weather events, they would legislate special requirements to ensure everyone’s safety.
Incidentally, I first heard about this saga when I saw a report a while ago about people being scammed by solar panel grifters (who overcharge for installing systems that provide little to no independence from the grid despite making those claims in their ads).
It’s a good opportunity to remind people: solar panels without a grid disconnect and/or a battery are not independent of the grid. The utility company will shut them off while the power is out.
The whole social contract thing in the USA is giving off an EULA vibe these days.
