[House Hearing, 117 Congress]
[From the U.S. Government Publishing Office]


                  POWER STRUGGLE: EXAMINING THE 2021 TEXAS 
                               GRID FAILURE

=======================================================================

                             VIRTUAL HEARING

                               BEFORE THE

              SUBCOMMITTEE ON OVERSIGHT AND INVESTIGATIONS

                                 OF THE

                    COMMITTEE ON ENERGY AND COMMERCE
                        HOUSE OF REPRESENTATIVES

                    ONE HUNDRED SEVENTEENTH CONGRESS

                             FIRST SESSION

                               __________

                             MARCH 24, 2021

                               __________

                           Serial No. 117-17
                           
[GRAPHIC NOT AVAILABLE IN TIFF FORMAT]                           


     Published for the use of the Committee on Energy and Commerce

                   govinfo.gov/committee/house-energy
                        energycommerce.house.gov
                        
                              __________

                    U.S. GOVERNMENT PUBLISHING OFFICE                    
46-582PDF                    WASHINGTON : 2022                     
          
-----------------------------------------------------------------------------------                           
                        
                    COMMITTEE ON ENERGY AND COMMERCE

                     FRANK PALLONE, Jr., New Jersey
                                 Chairman
BOBBY L. RUSH, Illinois              CATHY McMORRIS RODGERS, Washington
ANNA G. ESHOO, California              Ranking Member
DIANA DeGETTE, Colorado              FRED UPTON, Michigan
MIKE DOYLE, Pennsylvania             MICHAEL C. BURGESS, Texas
JAN SCHAKOWSKY, Illinois             STEVE SCALISE, Louisiana
G. K. BUTTERFIELD, North Carolina    ROBERT E. LATTA, Ohio
DORIS O. MATSUI, California          BRETT GUTHRIE, Kentucky
KATHY CASTOR, Florida                DAVID B. McKINLEY, West Virginia
JOHN P. SARBANES, Maryland           ADAM KINZINGER, Illinois
JERRY McNERNEY, California           H. MORGAN GRIFFITH, Virginia
PETER WELCH, Vermont                 GUS M. BILIRAKIS, Florida
PAUL TONKO, New York                 BILL JOHNSON, Ohio
YVETTE D. CLARKE, New York           BILLY LONG, Missouri
KURT SCHRADER, Oregon                LARRY BUCSHON, Indiana
TONY CARDENAS, California            MARKWAYNE MULLIN, Oklahoma
RAUL RUIZ, California                RICHARD HUDSON, North Carolina
SCOTT H. PETERS, California          TIM WALBERG, Michigan
DEBBIE DINGELL, Michigan             EARL L. ``BUDDY'' CARTER, Georgia
MARC A. VEASEY, Texas                JEFF DUNCAN, South Carolina
ANN M. KUSTER, New Hampshire         GARY J. PALMER, Alabama
ROBIN L. KELLY, Illinois, Vice       NEAL P. DUNN, Florida
    Chair                            JOHN R. CURTIS, Utah
NANETTE DIAZ BARRAGAN, California    DEBBBIE LESKO, Arizona
A. DONALD McEACHIN, Virginia         GREG PENCE, Indiana
LISA BLUNT ROCHESTER, Delaware       DAN CRENSHAW, Texas
DARREN SOTO, Florida                 JOHN JOYCE, Pennsylvania
TOM O'HALLERAN, Arizona              KELLY ARMSTRONG, North Dakota
KATHLEEN M. RICE, New York
ANGIE CRAIG, Minnesota
KIM SCHRIER, Washington
LORI TRAHAN, Massachusetts
LIZZIE FLETCHER, Texas
                                 ------                                

                           Professional Staff

                   JEFFREY C. CARROLL, Staff Director
                TIFFANY GUARASCIO, Deputy Staff Director
                  NATE HODSON, Minority Staff Director
              Subcommittee on Oversight and Investigations

                        DIANA DeGETTE, Colorado
                                  Chair
ANN M. KUSTER, New Hampshire         H. MORGAN GRIFFITH, Virginia
KATHLEEN M. RICE, New York             Ranking Member
JAN SCHAKOWSKY, Illinois             MICHAEL C. BURGESS, Texas
PAUL TONKO, New York                 DAVID B. McKINLEY, West Virginia
RAUL RUIZ, California                BILLY LONG, Missouri
SCOTT H. PETERS, California, Vice    NEAL P. DUNN, Florida
    Chair                            JOHN JOYCE, Pennsylvania
KIM SCHRIER, Washington              GARY J. PALMER, Alabama
LORI TRAHAN, Massachusetts           CATHY McMORRIS RODGERS, Washington 
TOM O'HALLERAN, Arizona                  (ex officio)
FRANK PALLONE, Jr., New Jersey (ex 
    officio)
                            
                            
                            C O N T E N T S

                              ----------                              
                                                                   Page
Hon. Diana DeGette, a Representative in Congress from the State 
  of Colorado, opening statement.................................     2
    Prepared statement...........................................     4
Hon. H. Morgan Griffith, a Representative in Congress from the 
  Commonwealth of Virginia, opening statement....................     5
    Prepared statement...........................................     6
Hon. Michael C. Burgess, a Representative in Congress from the 
  State of Texas, prepared statement.............................     7
Hon. Frank Pallone, Jr., a Representative in Congress from the 
  State of New Jersey, opening statement.........................     7
    Prepared statement...........................................     8
Hon. Marc A. Veasey, a Representative in Congress from the State 
  of Texas, prepared statement...................................     9
Hon. Cathy McMorris Rodgers, a Representative in Congress from 
  the State of Washington, opening statement.....................    10
    Prepared statement...........................................    12

                               Witnesses

Sylvester Turner, Mayor, City of Houston.........................    14
    Prepared statement...........................................    17
    Answers to submitted questions...............................   189
Bill Magness, President and Chief Executive Officer, Electric 
  Reliability Council of Texas...................................    20
    Prepared statement...........................................    23
    Answers to submitted questions \1\
Christi Craddick, Chairman, Railroad Commission of Texas.........    26
    Prepared statement...........................................    28
    Answers to submitted questions...............................   192
Michael D. Shellenberger, Founder and President, Environmental 
  Progress.......................................................    31
    Prepared statement...........................................    33
    Answers to submitted questions...............................   197
James B. Robb, President and Chief Executive Officer, North 
  American Electric Reliability Corporation......................    44
    Prepared statement...........................................    46
    Answers to submitted questions...............................   199

                           Submitted Material

Letter of March 4, 2021, from Mr. Pallone, et al., to Bill 
  Magness, President and Chief Executive Officer, Electric 
  Reliability Council of Texas, submitted by Ms. DeGette.........    95
Letter of March 18, 2021, from Bill Magness, President and Chief 
  Executive Officer, Electric Reliability Council of Texas, to 
  Mr. Pallone, et al., submitted by Ms. DeGette..................    99
Letter of February 19 2021,from Mr. Pallone, et al., to Governor 
  Greg Abbott, submitted by Ms. DeGette..........................   116
Letter of March 19, from Luis Saenz, Chief of Staff, Office of 
  the Governor, to Mr. Pallone, et al., submitted by Ms. DeGette.   121

----------

\1\ Mr. Magness' response to submitted questions for the record has 
been retained in committee files and is available at https://
docs.house.gov/meetings/IF/IF02/20210324/111365/HHRG-117-IF02-Wstate-
MagnessB-20210324-SD004.pdf.
Report, ``Review of February 2021 Extreme Cold Weather Event--
  ERCOT Presentation,'' by Bill Magness, President and Chief 
  Executive Officer, ERCOT, submitted by Ms. DeGette.............   132
Chart, ``Supply Side: ERCOT Energy Sources in 2020,'' ERCOT, 
  submitted by Ms. DeGette.......................................   155
Report, ERCOT Charts by Prof. Mack Grady and Dr. Andrew Mattei, 
  Texas Synchorphasor Network, Baylor University, submitted by 
  Mr. Griffith...................................................   156
Article of March 18, 2021, ``Texas power crisis prompts Texas 
  House panel to advance several bills, including one requiring 
  plants to prep for extreme weather,'' by Erin Douglas, Texas 
  Tribune, submitted by Mr. Burgess..............................   157
Texas House Bill No. 10, submitted by Mr. Burgess................   160
Texas House Bill No. 11, submitted by Mr. Burgess................   164
Texas House Bill No. 12, submitted by Mr. Burgess................   167
Texas House Bill No. 13, submitted by Mr. Burgess................   173
Texas House Bill No. 16, submitted by Mr. Burgess................   177
Texas House Bill No. 17, submitted by Mr. Burgess................   178
Commentary of March 19, 2021, ``Texas' Blackouts Blew In on the 
  Wind,'' by Wayne Christian, Wall Street Journal, submitted by 
  Mr. Joyce......................................................   180
Blog post of September 30, 2020, ``Clean Energy Is Canceling Gas 
  Plants,'' by Molly Keleher, et al., RMI, submitted by Mr. 
  Crenshaw.......................................................   183

 
         POWER STRUGGLE: EXAMINING THE 2021 TEXAS GRID FAILURE

                              ----------                              


                       WEDNESDAY, MARCH 24, 2021

                  House of Representatives,
      Subcommittee on Oversight and Investigations,
                          Committee on Energy and Commerce,
                                                    Washington, DC.
    The subcommittee met, pursuant to call, at 11:30 a.m., via 
Cisco Webex online video conferencing, Hon. Diana DeGette 
(chair of the subcommittee) presiding.
    Members present: Representatives DeGette, Kuster, Rice, 
Schakowsky, Tonko, Ruiz, Peters, Schrier, Trahan, O'Halleran, 
Pallone (ex officio), Griffith (subcommittee ranking member), 
Burgess, McKinley, Long, Dunn, Joyce, Palmer, and Rodgers (ex 
officio).
    Also present: Representatives Castor, Fletcher, Veasey, and 
Crenshaw.
    Staff present: Mohammad Aslami, Counsel; Kevin Barstow, 
Chief Oversight Counsel; Jeffrey C. Carroll, Staff Director; 
Austin Flack, Policy Analyst; Waverly Gordon, General Counsel; 
Tiffany Guarascio, Deputy Staff Director; Perry Hamilton, 
Clerk; Judy Harvey, Counsel; Anne Marie Hirschberger, FERC 
Detailee; Chris Knauer, Oversight Staff Director; Mackenzie 
Kuhl, Digital Assistant; Jon Monger, Counsel; Elysa Montfort, 
Press Secretary; Kaitlyn Peel, Digital Director; Peter Rechter, 
Counsel; Chloe Rodriguez, Clerk; Nikki Roy, Policy Coordinator; 
Benjamin Tabor, Junior Professional Staff Member; Sarah Burke, 
Minority Deputy Staff Director; Diane Cutler, Minority 
Detailee, Oversight and Investigations; Theresa Gambo, Minority 
Financial and Office Administrator; Marissa Gervasi, Minority 
Counsel, Oversight and Investigations; Brittany Havens, 
Minority Professional Staff Member, Oversight and 
Investigations; Nate Hodson, Minority Staff Director; Peter 
Kielty, Minority General Counsel; Emily King, Minority Member 
Services Director; Bijan Koohmaraie, Minority Chief Counsel; 
Clare Paoletta, Minority Policy Analyst, Health; Olivia 
Shields, Minority Communications Director; Alan Slobodin, 
Minority Chief Investigative Counsel, Oversight and 
Investigations; Michael Taggert, Minority Policy Director; and 
Everett Winnick, Minority Director of Information Technology.
    Ms. DeGette. The Subcommittee on Oversight and 
Investigations hearing will now come to order.
    Today the committee is holding a hearing entitled, ``Power 
Struggle: Examining the 2021 Texas Grid Failure.'' Today's 
hearing will examine the causes and consequences of Texas' 
electric grid failure last month due to severe winter weather.
    Due to the COVID-19 public health emergency, today's 
hearing is being held remotely. All Members, witnesses, and 
staff will be participating via video conferencing. And as part 
of our proceeding, microphones will be set on mute for the 
purpose of eliminating inadvertent background noise.
    Members and witnesses, as we've seen already in the 
presession, will need to unmute your microphone every time you 
want to speak. And if at any time during the hearing I'm unable 
to chair the hearing, the vice chair of the subcommittee, Mr. 
Peters, will serve as chair until I return.
    Documents for the record can be sent to Austin Flack at the 
email address we've provided to your staff. All documents will 
be entered into the record at the conclusion of the hearing, 
and the Chair now recognizes herself for the purposes of an 
opening statement.

 OPENING STATEMENT OF HON. DIANA DeGETTE, A REPRESENTATIVE IN 
              CONGRESS FROM THE STATE OF COLORADO

    Last month an extreme weather event in Texas triggered a 
crisis of an enormous scale and took a staggering toll on the 
State. While State and local and Federal officials are trying 
to decide exactly why the electric grid failed, some of the 
contributing factors are already becoming clear. For instance, 
we know that the power sources were not adequately winterized. 
This caused the power supply to falter just as constituents 
were demanding more electricity to counter the cold as the 
storm swept across Texas.
    To preserve the stability of the system, the grid's 
operator initiated power outages to reduce energy demand, 
reportedly avoiding a cascading blackout by mere minutes. 
[Audio malfunction] unfortunately lasted for 5 days.
    As many as 4 million customers lost power, and many more 
struggled to get food or access to safe drinking water. At one 
point an estimated 14 million people were under boil water 
notices. Even hospitals had to make do with limited water and 
power. Tragically, people resorted to dangerous and sometimes 
fatal methods to stay warm.
    At least 57 Texans lost their lives, some dying from carbon 
monoxide poisoning or hypothermia in their own homes. And, 
though power has been restored, life has not returned to normal 
for many in the State. Many Texans are now confronting the 
extensive damage caused by water pipes that froze, ruptured, 
and flooded homes and businesses.
    Adding further misery, the crisis also wreaked havoc on the 
price of electricity, with prices soaring to the maximum 
permitted under State law. This left many Texans with sky-high 
power bills, some totaling in the thousands just for a few days 
of power.
    And while the storm impacted millions, this event appears 
to have been particularly harmful to low-income individuals. 
Sadly, people with the least are often hit the hardest by 
disasters, as many even lack basic financial safety nets to 
endure the events that they ever can recover from.
    The massive scope of economic harm to Texas, while still 
coming into focus, could be as high as nearly $300 billion, 
which is more than Hurricanes Harvey and Ike combined.
    Unfortunately, weather events like this are no longer a 
surprise. Every year we seem to break new climate records and 
see more frequent extreme weather events. Catastrophic storms, 
floods, and fires, once considered rare, have now become the 
norm. The Houston region, as Mayor Turner will tell us, has 
faced multiple catastrophic weather events over a very short 
period of time, including Hurricane Harvey, which inundated the 
city with more than 51 inches of rain.
    In the Mountain West, wildfires are larger, and the 
wildfire season goes even longer. In California, wildfires have 
resulted in widespread power outages, a topic on which this 
committee held a hearing in January 2020. In Puerto Rico and 
the U.S. Virgin Islands, Hurricanes Irma and Maria in 2017 
caused unprecedented devastation and the longest electricity 
blackout in U.S. history.
    Mr. Griffith and I traveled to that region, along with Mr. 
Pallone and many of our other colleagues, to examine the impact 
that those storms had on the islands' healthcare system and 
electricity grid, an issue that this subcommittee held a 
hearing on in April of 2018. These are just some of the most 
recent extreme weather events.
    As the Energy and Commerce Committee, it's our duty to 
examine crises like these and to try to explore ways that we 
can prevent the massive damage they're causing. Hearings like 
that we're having today are essential if we're going to learn 
to adapt to a changing climate and to increase the resiliency 
of our Nation's grid.
    What happened in Texas makes clear that extreme weather 
events can affect all forms of energy, including coal, wind, 
natural gas, and even nuclear. And while the focus today is 
greatly on Texas, the testimony we will hear will also provide 
insights applicable to reliability risk in all parts of our 
country.
    Which brings me to my broadest point. The key lesson from 
what happened in Texas is that extreme weather events are 
devastating and happening more frequently. We need to accept 
this fact and prepare. We need to stop kicking the can down the 
road.
    Adapting and confronting to a changing climate will not 
come cheap, and it will not come easily. But if we don't do 
anything, we will continue to incur huge losses in human lives, 
property damages, and threats to our power supply. Climate 
change is here, and we need to recognize this reality by taking 
action to ensure our electric grids are designed with the 
resiliency and reliability that we need in a climate-changed 
world.
    So I want to conclude by thanking our witnesses for being 
here, because I know all of you are just up to your eyeballs in 
dealing with this crisis, and it means a lot to this committee 
that you took the time.
    I also want to thank the leadership of two of our 
colleagues, Representatives Fletcher and Veasey, who have been 
tireless advocates for their constituents in this time of 
crisis.
    I'm looking forward to hearing from our witnesses today.
    [The prepared statement of Ms. DeGette follows:]

                Prepared Statement of Hon. Diana DeGette

    Last month's extreme weather event in Texas triggered a 
crisis of an enormous scale and took a staggering toll on 
Texans.
    While State and Federal officials are working to determine 
exactly why the electric grid failed, some of the contributing 
factors are already becoming clear.
    For instance, we know that power sources were not 
adequately winterized. This caused the power supply to falter 
just as consumers were demanding more electricity to counter 
the cold as the storm swept across Texas.
    To preserve the stability of the system, the grid's 
operator initiated power outages to reduce energy demand--
reportedly avoiding a cascading blackout by mere minutes. 
Outages that were supposed to be temporary ended up lasting for 
days.
    As many as 4 million customers lost power, and many more 
struggled to get food or access to safe drinking water. At one 
point, as estimated 14 million people were under boil water 
notices. Even hospitals had to make do with limited water and 
power.
    Tragically, people resorted to dangerous and sometimes 
fatal methods to stay warm. At least 57 Texans lost their 
lives--some dying from carbon monoxide poisoning or hypothermia 
in their own homes.
    And though power has been restored, life has not returned 
to normal for many in the State. Many Texans are now 
confronting the extensive damage caused by water pipes that 
froze, ruptured, and flooded homes and businesses.
    Adding further misery, the crisis also wreaked havoc on the 
price of electricity, with prices soaring to the maximum 
permitted under State law. This left many Texans with sky-high 
power bills, some totaling in the thousands for a few days of 
power.
    And while the storm impacted millions, this event appears 
to have been particularly harmful to many low-income 
individuals. Those without resources are often hit hardest by 
disasters, as many lack even a basic financial safety net to 
endure the event or recover.
    The massive scope of economic harm to Texas, while still 
coming into focus, could be as high as nearly $300 billion, 
which is more than Hurricanes Harvey and Ike combined.
    Unfortunately, weather events like this are no longer a 
surprise.
    Each year, we seem to break new climate records and see 
more frequent extreme weather events. Catastrophic storms, 
floods, and fires, once considered rare, have become routine.
    The Houston region--as Mayor Turner will tell us--has faced 
multiple catastrophic weather events over a very short period, 
including Hurricane Harvey, which inundated the city with more 
than 51 inches of rain.
    In the Mountain West, wildfires are larger, and the 
wildfire season goes longer.
    In California, wildfires have resulted in widespread power 
outages, a topic on which we held a hearing in January 2020.
    In Puerto Rico and the U.S. Virgin Islands, Hurricanes Irma 
and Maria in 2017 caused unprecedented devastation and the 
longest electricity blackout in U.S. history.
    Mr. Griffith and I traveled to that region with many of our 
colleagues to examine the impacts those storms had on the 
islands' healthcare system and electricity grid--an issue we 
held a hearing on in April of 2018.
    These are just some of the more recent extreme weather 
events. As the Energy and Commerce Committee, it is our duty to 
examine crises like these and explore ways to prevent the 
massive damages they are causing.
    Hearings like we are having today are crucial if we are 
going to learn to adapt to a changing climate and increase the 
resiliency of our Nation's power grid. What happened in Texas 
makes clear that extreme weather events can affect all forms of 
energy, including coal, wind, natural gas, and even nuclear.
    And while our focus today is rightfully on Texas, the 
testimony we will hear will also provide insights applicable to 
reliability risks in other parts of the country.
    Which brings me to my broadest point. The key lesson from 
what happened in Texas is that extreme weather events are 
devastating--and happening more frequently. We need to accept 
this fact and prepare.
    We must quit kicking this can down the road.
    Adapting and confronting a changing climate will not come 
cheap or come easy. But if we do nothing, we will only continue 
to incur huge losses in human lives, property damage, and 
threats to our power supply.
    Climate change is here, and we need to recognize this 
reality by taking action to ensure our electric grids are 
designed with the resiliency and reliability needed in a 
climate-changed world.
    So, let me conclude by thanking our witnesses for being 
here today. Let me also take a moment to recognize the 
leadership of two of my colleagues, Representative Fletcher and 
Representative Veasey, who have been tireless advocates for 
their constituents throughout this crisis.
    I look forward to hearing from our witnesses today. Thank 
you.

    Ms. DeGette. And with that, I'm pleased to recognize our 
ranking member, Mr. Griffith, for 5 minutes for purposes of an 
opening statement.

 OPENING STATEMENT OF HON. H.MORGAN GRIFFITH, A REPRESENTATIVE 
         IN CONGRESS FROM THE COMMONWEALTH OF VIRGINIA

    Mr. Griffith. Thank you very much, Chairwoman DeGette.
    And I would be remiss if I didn't recognize our Texans on 
the committee. We have Dr. Burgess, who I'll yield to in a few 
minutes, and Dan Crenshaw, who are going to participate in 
today's hearing. And they have been working very hard for the 
people of Texas in this disaster situation as well.
    I appreciate you holding this hearing on the challenges 
that we're facing in our power grid, both in Texas and 
nationally. I also want to thank the witnesses for taking the 
time to join us today, and I want to extend my condolences to 
all those who have suffered or died due to last month's tragic 
winter storm.
    Given the recent extreme weather event in Texas, it is 
critical for us to examine the problems and discuss solutions 
to prevent another crisis. However, it would be a mistake to 
focus only on Texas when electric grids across the country have 
shown vulnerability to a variety of issues and hazards.
    First, other States have been and continue to be threatened 
by widespread power outages due to extreme weather. The extreme 
cold that brought blackouts to Texas also brought them to 
Oregon, Oklahoma, Kentucky, West Virginia, and Louisiana around 
the same time. These outages followed the extreme heat of last 
summer, which led to rolling brownouts in California.
    Valuable perspectives would be gained by studying these 
types of failures across the country, especially as we discuss 
weatherization and other ways to make our grid more resilient. 
I believe the lessons to be drawn from these examples may be 
numerous, which is why we should be inclusive in looking at 
them.
    Texas' problems occurred, despite the State's leadership in 
achieving a diversified, all-of-the-above energy mix, which 
includes coal, natural gas, nuclear, renewables, and storage 
and indicates a need for better weatherization. The need for 
proper planning and preparation of all hazards emphasizes the 
need to broaden our scope to vulnerabilities affecting the grid 
nationally and stemming from other causes, such as cyber 
attacks or even physical attacks.
    Our colleague Representative Soto mentioned at one of our 
hearings earlier this week that a cyber attack targeted a 
Florida water system in his district. And that could happen to 
any of our necessary utilities.
    These are all issues we should be looking into, and I know 
we will. As more events occur across the country, the 
importance of grid resilience is further highlighted. We must 
address the energy emergencies that millions of Americans have 
faced across our country, not just those in Texas.
    I hope that we can look for solutions in a bipartisan way 
to prevent blackouts for all Americans, since these energy 
resource interdependency issues are not unique to Texas.
    I now yield the rest of my time to Dr. Burgess from the 
great State of Texas.
    [The prepared statement of Mr. Griffith follows:]

             Prepared Statement of Hon. H. Morgan Griffith

    Thank you, Chairwoman DeGette, for holding this hearing on 
the challenges facing our power grid, both in Texas and 
nationally. I also want to thank the witnesses for taking the 
time to join us today, and I want to extend my condolences to 
all of those who have suffered due to last month's tragic 
winter storm.
    Given the recent extreme weather event in Texas, it is 
crucial to examine the problems and discuss solutions to 
prevent another crisis. However, it would be a mistake to focus 
only on Texas when electric grids across the country have shown 
vulnerability to a variety of issues and hazards.
    First, other States have been and continue to be threatened 
by widespread power outages due to extreme weather. The extreme 
cold that brought blackouts to Texas also brought them to 
Oregon, Oklahoma, Kentucky, West Virginia, and Louisiana around 
the same time. These outages followed the extreme heat of last 
summer which led to rolling brownouts in California. Valuable 
perspectives would be gained by studying these types of 
failures across the country, especially as we discuss 
weatherization and other ways to make our grid more resilient.
    I believe the lessons to be drawn from these examples may 
be numerous, which is why we should be inclusive in looking at 
them. Texas' problems occurred despite the State's leadership 
in achieving a diversified, all-of-the-above energy mix which 
includes coal, natural gas, nuclear, renewables, and storage, 
and indicates a need for better weatherization.
    The need for proper planning and preparation of all hazards 
emphasizes the need to broaden our scope to vulnerabilities 
affecting the grid nationally and stemming from other causes 
such as cyber attacks or even physical attacks. Our colleague 
Representative Soto mentioned at one of our hearings just 
earlier this week the cyber attack targeted at a Florida water 
system in his district that could happen to any of our 
necessary utilities. These are all issues we should be looking 
into.
    As more events occur across the country, the importance of 
grid resilience is further highlighted. We must address the 
energy emergencies that millions of Americans have faced across 
our country--not just those in Texas. I hope that we can look 
for solutions in a bipartisan way to prevent blackouts for all 
Americans since these energy resource interdependency issues 
are not unique to Texas.
    Thank you, Chair, and I yield the rest of my time to Dr. 
Burgess from the great State of Texas.

    Ms. DeGette. The gentleman is recognized.
    Mr. Burgess. Thank you, Mr. Griffith, and a special thanks 
to our Texans who've agreed to be on the panel today. I know 
this is not an easy task and certainly want to welcome Mayor 
Turner, as well as Bill Magness from the Electric Reliability 
Council of Texas and Commissioner Christi Craddick who made a 
special effort to be here today, and look forward to hearing 
from all of you.
    So our crisis in Texas--although it was nationwide, in 
Texas it was tragic. There were blackouts. And it impacted over 
5 million Americans across Texas, Oklahoma, Louisiana, and 
other States. Lives were lost, livelihoods were ruined, and our 
faith in the electric system was shaken. Americans, Texans, are 
angry and deserve answers.
    Unfortunately, we cannot overlook the fact that this is 
only the latest in a number of tragedies. In recent years 
similar events have occurred in California and the Northeast 
and indeed Texas. While the causes of each blackout are unique, 
the results are the same: suffering and economic disruption. 
This committee has direct jurisdiction over much of the energy 
sector and has a responsibility to address many of the 
shortcomings in the electrical system.
    I would like to express my support and appreciation for the 
work done at the State level of Texas. This is our first 
hearing. The events occurred 5 weeks ago, but the State House 
in Texas, the State Senate in Texas has been very active in 
that timeframe. Significant criticism has been levied against 
Texas, criticism against the grid operator, Public Utility 
Commission. But the State legislature has already held no less 
than six hearings to find answers and to bring accountability 
and to make the necessary reforms.
    Texans can and will solve the problem within its borders. 
Let me say that again: Texans can and will solve this problem 
within their borders.
    Finally, I'd like to voice my strong concern about the 
politicization of this crisis. No one single policy, no one 
single energy source caused this crisis, and no one policy 
could have prevented it. I ask my colleagues to use this 
hearing to study the crisis in full. The reliability of our 
country's electric supply is not a partisan priority. It is a 
national priority.
    Thank you for that, and I yield back.
    [The prepared statement of Mr. Burgess follows:]

             Prepared Statement of Hon. Michael C. Burgess

    Thank you, Ranking Member Griffith. Last month's crisis in 
Texas and the surrounding region was utterly tragic. The worst 
winter storm in nearly one hundred years caused blackouts that 
impacted over 5 million Americans across Texas, Oklahoma, and 
Louisiana, among other States. Lives were lost, livelihoods 
were ruined, and our faith in our electric system was shaken. 
Americans are angry and deserve answers.
    Unfortunately, we cannot overlook the fact that this is 
only the latest such tragedy. In recent years similar events 
have occurred in California and the Northeast. While the causes 
of each blackout are unique, the results are the same: 
unnecessary suffering and economic disruption. This committee 
has direct jurisdiction over much of the energy sector and has 
a responsibility to address many shortcomings of our electric 
system.
    I'd also like to express my support and appreciation for 
the work at the State level in Texas. Significant criticism has 
been levied against my State, the grid operator, and the public 
utility commission. The State legislature has already held no 
less than six hearings to find answers, bring accountability, 
and make necessary reforms. Texans can and will solve this 
problem within its borders.
    Finally, I'd like to voice my strong concern about the 
politicization of this crisis. No one policy caused this crisis 
and no one policy could have prevented it. I implore my 
colleagues to use this hearing to study the crisis in full. The 
reliability of our country's electric supply is not a partisan 
priority, it's a national priority.
    Thank you and I yield back.

    Ms. DeGette. I thank the gentleman, and I agree with you 
too.
    The Chair now recognizes the chairman of the full 
committee, Mr. Pallone, for 5 minutes for his opening 
statement.

OPENING STATEMENT OF HON. FRANK PALLONE, Jr., A REPRESENTATIVE 
            IN CONGRESS FROM THE STATE OF NEW JERSEY

    Mr. Pallone. Thank you, Chairwoman DeGette.
    Today we are examining the causes of the recent widespread 
power outages in Texas and how to fortify the electrical grid 
against extreme weather events and climate change.
    The enormity of this disaster and its aftermath can't be 
overstated. At one point almost half of the generation capacity 
of Texas' electricity grid was lost, causing more than 4 
million homes and businesses to lose electricity. And Texans 
struggled to get food, medical treatments, and safe drinking 
water.
    This storm resulted in extensive property damage, 
unprecedented energy bills, and, most tragically, loss of life. 
And the challenges brought on by this storm were particularly 
acute for low-income communities which often lack the resources 
to prepare for or quickly recover from the effects of extreme 
weather disasters.
    So today I look forward to hearing from our witnesses, 
particularly from the president and CEO of the Electric 
Reliability Council of Texas, or ERCOT, which functions as the 
air traffic controller of the Texas energy grid, about what 
went wrong and why it happened and also look forward to hearing 
from the North American Electric Reliability Corporation, or 
NERC, on why its recommendations to weatherize the Texas grid 
were not sufficiently implemented following another major storm 
there 10 years ago and how we should prepare nationwide for 
extreme weather events.
    Indeed, these extreme weather events are becoming more and 
more frequent. They're unmistakable signs that the climate is 
changing and creating extreme risks. Life-threatening weather 
events are happening more frequently, and we can no longer 
afford to delay action. Much of today's discussion will be 
about what went wrong in Texas and how to make the grid more 
resilient, but we need to go one step further and tackle the 
climate crisis. We need to really get our arms around these 
catastrophic events.
    And that's why I recently introduced the CLEAN Future Act, 
comprehensive climate legislation, which would achieve net-zero 
greenhouse gas pollution no later than 2050. The bill also 
empowers American workers and creates millions of homegrown 
jobs in a climate-resilient economy. The CLEAN Future Act, 
along with our LIFT America Act, will modernize our electric 
grid for the future. On Monday we held a full committee hearing 
on the LIFT America Act, and this afternoon our Energy 
Subcommittee will hold a legislative hearing on the CLEAN 
Future Act, and these hearings, along with this oversight 
hearing, are critical as we discuss solutions to help make the 
grid more reliable and resilient.
    And with that, I'd like to yield the remainder of my time 
to two of my colleagues from Texas who have been leading from 
the front lines on this--during this crisis, 1 minute each or 
maybe even a little more to Representative Veasey and 
Representative Fletcher. And I'll start with Marc Veasey.
    [The prepared statement of Mr. Pallone follows:]

             Prepared Statement of Hon. Frank Pallone, Jr.

    Today, we are examining the causes of the recent widespread 
power outages in Texas and how to fortify the electrical grid 
against extreme weather events and climate change.
    The enormity of this disaster and its aftermath cannot be 
overstated. At one point, almost half of the generation 
capacity of Texas' electric grid was lost, causing more than 4 
million homes and businesses to lose electricity. Texans 
struggled to get food, medical treatments, and safe drinking 
water. This storm resulted in extensive property damage, 
unprecedented energy bills, and, most tragically, loss of life.
    The challenges brought on by this storm were particularly 
acute for low-income communities, which often lack the 
resources to prepare for or quickly recover from the effects of 
extreme weather disasters.
    Today, I look forward to hearing from our witnesses, 
particularly from the president and CEO of the Electric 
Reliability Council of Texas (ERCOT)--which functions as the 
air traffic controller of the Texas energy grid--about what 
went wrong and why it happened. I also look forward to hearing 
from the North American Electric Reliability Corporation (NERC) 
on why its recommendations to weatherize the Texas grid were 
not sufficiently implemented following another major storm 
there 10 years ago, and how we should prepare nationwide for 
extreme weather events.
    Indeed, these extreme weather events are becoming more and 
more frequent. They are unmistakable signals that the climate 
is changing and creating extreme risks. Life-threatening 
weather events are happening more frequently, and we can no 
longer afford to delay action.
    While much of today's discussion will be about what went 
wrong in Texas and how to make the grid more resilient, we need 
to go one step further and tackle the climate crisis if we are 
going to really get our arms around these catastrophic events.
    That's why I recently introduced the CLEAN Future Act, 
comprehensive climate legislation which would achieve net-zero 
greenhouse gas pollution no later than 2050. This legislation 
also empowers American workers and creates millions of 
homegrown jobs in a climate-resilient economy.
    The CLEAN Future Act, along with our LIFT America Act, will 
modernize our electric grid for the future. On Monday, we held 
a full committee hearing on the LIFT America Act and this 
afternoon, our Energy Subcommittee will hold a legislative 
hearing on the CLEAN Future Act. These hearings, along with 
this oversight hearing, are critical as we discuss solutions to 
help make the grid more reliable and resilient.

    Mr. Pallone. I yield to you, Marc.
    Ms. DeGette. The gentleman's recognized for 1 minute.
    Mr. Veasey. Madam Chair, thank you very much.
    Mr. Chairman, thank you for yielding some of your time to 
me.
    I want to talk with you today about something that was very 
serious and just want to remind everyone that we were literally 
5 minutes--less than 5 minutes--away from the entire grid 
crashing. I want you to think about that, 25 to 30 million 
people, the second most populous State in our Union without any 
power, and how it could have been so much worse had certain 
actions not been taken.
    We had people that were literally sleeping inside of their 
kitchens next to their stoves so they could stay warm, people 
that were trying to sleep inside of their cars. We had a record 
number of individuals that had to be checked into hospitals 
across the State. People died because of carbon monoxide 
poisoning. It was serious.
    And this happened because of the neglect that the 
Republicans in Austin have shown towards the grid for a very 
long time now. The lack of oversight, the lack of planning, 
just the approach on how this entire system is run has been 
neglected for far too long.
    Look, we have 57 people that died, including a little boy 
that got to see snow for the first time in his life and he 
wanted to go outside and play, and 24 hours later he was dead.
    [The prepared statement of Mr. Veasey follows:]

               Prepared Statement of Hon. Marc A. Veasey

    Last month, 57 Texans lost their lives and millions across 
the State were left without power.
    We were just seconds--yes, SECONDS--away from our entire 
State's power grid from completely imploding. This could have 
left me and my fellow Texans in the dark and cold for months.
    Madame Chair, I want to thank you for holding today's 
hearing about last month's catastrophic winter storm in Texas, 
because a massive failure cannot happen again.
    Last month, families across Texas were huddled under 
blankets in freezing houses, hospitals struggled to keep their 
lights on to help patients, Texans had limited access to water, 
and shelves were barren in grocery stores.
    The scenes were apocalyptic and happened because 
Republicans turned their back for years on the fact that Texas' 
power grid was not prepared to handle these cold temperatures. 
Their lack of oversight, planning and a lack of taking a 
multifaceted approach in diversifying our energy sector led to 
this crisis.
    Today's hearing is critical because it will examine why 
this happened and call on leaders across our State to come up 
with commonsense solutions so this does not happen again.

    Mr. Pallone. Marc, I've got to----
    Mr. Veasey. We have to do something about this, Mr. 
Chairman. I apologize for going on so long.
    Mr. Pallone. We have just got 30 seconds left. We want to 
go to Lizzie Fletcher. Thank you, Marc.
    Mrs. Fletcher. Well, thank you so much, Chairman Pallone, 
for yielding to me, and Chairman DeGette and Ranking Member 
Griffith for holding this hearing today.
    As one of the members of this committee who lived through 
the Texas winter storm without power and water, like millions 
across our State, I cannot overstate the seriousness of the 
cascading failures before and during this event, from the 
physical markets to the financial markets, from communications 
to legislation, or lack thereof, and nor can I overstate the 
importance of making sure that we don't fail to respond now.
    I agree with my colleague Mr. Veasey. You know, the 
scientists have told us repeatedly that severe weather events 
will continue to occur more frequently and more intensely in 
our changing climate. And we have to be prepared. As Mr. Veasey 
noted, you know, there was a little boy not far from where I 
live who froze to death in his own bed. We have to learn 
exactly what happened, why it happened, and what we need to do 
to make sure it doesn't happen again in Texas or anywhere else.
    So I thank you for holding this hearing, and I yield back.
    Ms. DeGette. I thank the gentlelady.
    The Chair now recognizes the ranking member of the full 
committee, Mrs. McMorris Rodgers, for 5 minutes.

      OPENING STATEMENT OF HON. CATHY McMORRIS RODGERS, A 
    REPRESENTATIVE IN CONGRESS FROM THE STATE OF WASHINGTON

    Mrs. Rodgers. Thank you, Chair DeGette, Leader Griffith for 
this hearing to examine the power failures in Texas from the 
winter storm last month. I want to join in thanking the 
witnesses for bringing your expertise, your advice. I want to 
express my sorrow to all the families and friends who lost 
loved ones during this terrible event.
    It's my hope that we will focus on solutions today so that 
this tragedy never happens again, not just in Texas but in 
other States with dangerous energy-reliable problems too. There 
should be a full accounting of what went wrong with Texas' grid 
failures. We have a good idea generally of what went wrong, but 
we still lack the specifics of what caused the failures.
    The freezing conditions and record winter power demand in 
Texas and the South Central U.S. were extremely rare. For the 
sake of the Nation's energy security, the subcommittee should 
be looking at what happened in Texas and, more broadly, at all 
issues that threaten the resiliency of the energy grid.
    Recent trends show a transition away from coal and nuclear 
power plants designed to function as baseload capacity toward 
variable renewable energy sources with just-in-time natural gas 
backup. States like California that rely more on weather-
dependent renewables experience energy failures on a regular 
basis. Indeed, California residents experience blackouts on an 
ongoing annual basis as the State fails to manage summer 
electricity demands and wildfire risk. These events suggest 
that replacing nuclear plants with variable renewable energy 
sources could make energy grids less resilient. Policies that 
drive renewables at the expense of firm baseload put lives at 
risk.
    People are suffering, not just from power loss but 
devastating storms. The frequent public safety power shutoffs 
to prevent wildfires from being started by electrical equipment 
during strong winds and dry weather impact people on a regular 
basis. Power failures interrupt healthcare, transportation, 
public safety, and the welfare of individuals, especially 
seniors and those with disabilities.
    We should review these events across the country with unity 
and urgency on what this committee can do to strengthen the 
power grid reliability and resilience. The recent crisis in 
Texas is a wake-up call. While our country moves towards 
integrating renewables, integration must be achieved through 
diverse energy sources that include nuclear, hydropower, 
natural gas, clean coal, and wind and solar.
    A resilient power grid is not a one-size-fits-all 
operation, and it shouldn't be imposed by DC. Texas has the 
most integrated renewable energy sources of any State, but it 
still didn't prevent the power failure.
    The United States of America has reduced our greenhouse gas 
emissions more than any other country in the last 20 years, but 
this progress and the resiliency of our power grid will be put 
at risk without assuring the bulk energy supply and not 
overestimating the contribution of weather-dependent 
renewables.
    With that, I look forward to today's testimony. As a part 
of the Securing Cleaner American Energy Agenda, I'm leading on 
hydropower clean energy. And I've introduced legislation that 
would expand this clean, renewable, reliable, and affordable 
production of hydropower in America. It's part of the solution. 
We could double hydropower and save billions in avoided 
greenhouse emissions.
    This is just one part of a diverse energy mix that we need 
in the United States of America to keep the lights on and keep 
our citizens safe.
    [The prepared statement of Mrs. Rodgers follows:]

           Prepared Statement of Hon. Cathy McMorris Rodgers

INTRO
    Thank you, Chair DeGette and Leader Griffith, for holding 
today's hearing to examine the impact of the recent power 
failure in Texas from the winter storm last month.
    Thank you to the witnesses for bringing your expertise and 
advice towards solutions to this ongoing problem of weather-
related power failures.
    We hope no American will ever suffer harm, especially 
death, because of power failures.
    I want to express my sorrow to all the families and friends 
who lost loved ones during this terrible event.
LOOKING BROADLY AT GRID RESILIENCY
    There should be a full accounting of what went wrong with 
Texas's grid failures.
    We have a good idea of generally what went wrong.
    But we still lack the specifics of what caused the 
failures.
    The freezing conditions and record winter power demand seen 
throughout Texas and the south-central U.S. were extremely 
rare.
    For the sake of the Nation's energy security, the 
subcommittee should be looking at what happened in Texas, and 
more broadly at all issues that threaten the resiliency of the 
energy grid.
    Recent trends show a transition away from coal and nuclear 
power plants, designed to function as baseload capacity, toward 
variable renewable energy sources with just-in-time natural gas 
back-up.
    States like California that rely more on weather-dependent 
renewables, regularly experience energy failures.
    Indeed, California residents experience blackouts on an 
ongoing, annual basis as the State fails to manage summer 
electricity demand and wildfire risks.
    These events suggest that attempting to replace nuclear 
plants with variable renewable energy sources could make 
electricity grids less resilient.
    Policies that drive renewables at the expense of firm 
baseload put lives at risk.
    People are suffering not just from power loss from 
devastating storms but from frequent ``public safety power 
shutoffs'' to prevent wildfires from being started by 
electrical equipment during strong winds and dry weather.
    Power failures interrupt healthcare, transportation, and 
impact public safety and the welfare of individuals, especially 
senior citizens and those with disabilities.
    We should review events across the country with a sense of 
what our committee can do to support an all-hazards approach to 
power grid reliability and resilience.
DIVERSE ENERGY BASE
    The recent crisis in Texas is a wake-up call.
    While our country moves towards integrating renewables, 
integration must be achieved through diverse energy sources 
that include nuclear, hydropower, natural gas, clean coal, and 
wind and solar.
    A resilient power grid is not a one-size-fits-all operation 
imposed by Washington . . . nor should it be.
    Texas has the most integrated renewable energy sources of 
any State, but that still did not prevent the power failure.
    The U.S. has reduced more greenhouse gas emissions than any 
other country over the last twenty years.
    But this progress and the resiliency of our power grid will 
be put at risk without assuring the bulk energy supply and not 
overestimating the contribution of weather-dependent 
renewables.
    Now some want to argue that Texas power failed in part 
because it runs its own power grid for about 85 percent of the 
State without being part of one of the two major interstate 
interconnections.
    However, east Texas and other States that were part of an 
interconnection lost power anyway. It is not clear at all that 
the interconnections would have had much power to spare to 
curtail the Texas power failure.
HYDROPOWER CLEAN ENERGY FUTURE ACT
    With that, I look forward to today's testimony and 
continuing the conversation with my colleagues about some 
legislative solutions.
    As part of our Securing Cleaner American Energy Agenda, I 
have reintroduced the Hydropower Clean Energy Future Act to 
expand clean, renewable, reliable, and affordable hydropower 
production in America, as well as to promote the innovation of 
the next generation of hydroelectric technology.
    If the U.S grows hydropower production from 101 gigawatts 
to nearly 150 gigawatts by the year 2050, that growth could 
save $209 billion in avoided greenhouse emissions according to 
the Department of Energy.
    Reforms in the Hydropower Clean Energy Future Act will help 
the country achieve this goal and will create good-paying jobs 
that can ensure our transition to a cleaner energy future.
    But hydropower is only one very important part of the total 
diverse energy mix that the United States must have to keep the 
lights on and keep our citizens safe.
    Thank you. I yield back.

    Mrs. Rodgers. With that, I'd like to yield to another Texan 
on our committee, Dan Crenshaw.
    Ms. DeGette. The gentleman is recognized.
    Mr. Crenshaw. Thank you, Mrs. Rodgers. Greatly appreciate 
it. Greatly appreciate everyone for allowing me to be a special 
guest on this hearing.
    And, look, I live in an apartment here in Houston. We had 
to go scoop water out of the community pool to get water for a 
few days. It was a little rough. Luckily I'm used to cold 
water.
    Look, I hope that this will be an informed and objective 
conversation about what problems we need to fix. So far I've 
heard some extremely partisan rhetoric, for instance, Mr. 
Veasey. That's not helpful. It's also not smart. And we're 
going to spend the rest of this, what, next couple of hours, I 
think, debunking some of the myths. Look, there was a baseload 
problem here in Texas.
    I hear about environmental justice a lot. I think we should 
also talk about energy justice and reliability for that energy. 
The only way you get that reliability is through baseload 
energy--coal, gas, and nuclear.
    Now, we can make that cleaner. We can look at carbon 
capture. We could invest in nuclear, and yet none of those 
investments are in any of the bills that we've seen or debated 
in the last couple weeks. We're on the same page when it comes 
to reducing carbon emissions and I hope everybody here 
understands that, but we also need to talk about energy 
justice. And I think that's a lot of points that get missed 
sometimes in these discussions.
    Thank you for having me on. I look forward to the 
discussion.
    Mrs. Rodgers. I yield back.
    Ms. DeGette. I thank the gentleman and the gentlelady.
    The Chair now asks unanimous consent that the Members' 
written opening statements be made part of the record, and 
without objection, so ordered.
    I now want to introduce our witnesses for today's hearing.
    And to introduce our first witness, I'd like to yield to my 
colleague, Representative Fletcher, who represents Texas' 7th 
Congressional District.
    Mrs. Fletcher. Well, thank you so much, Madam Chairwoman.
    I am proud to welcome and introduce my mayor, Mayor 
Sylvester Turner, a lifelong Houstonian, a graduate of the 
University of Houston--go Cougs--and Harvard Law School. Mayor 
Turner has put his passion for our hometown and his skills as a 
leader to work for Houstonians for decades, first in the Texas 
legislature for more than 25 years and now as our mayor.
    He has led our city through some of the greatest challenges 
we've ever faced, from Hurricane Harvey to Winter Storm Uri 
and, of course, the coronavirus pandemic. His experience with 
both the legislative and regulatory matters, as well as the on-
the-ground impacts of this power disaster, make his insights 
particularly useful today. And I'm so glad to welcome him to 
this hearing and to introduce him to all of you.
    Thank you so much. I yield back.
    Ms. DeGette. Thank you so much, Congresswoman.
    Our additional witnesses for today's hearing are Bill 
Magness, the president and chief executive officer of the 
Electric Reliability Council of Texas, ERCOT; the Honorable 
Christi Craddick, Chairman of the Railroad Commission of Texas; 
Michael Shellenberger, founder and president of Environmental 
Progress; and James Robb, the president and chief executive 
officer of North American Electric Reliability Corporation, or 
NERC.
    I want to thank all the witnesses for appearing before the 
subcommittee today and I know you're all aware the committee is 
holding an investigative hearing, and when doing so we've had 
the practice of taking testimony under oath.
    Does anyone here object to testifying under oath?
    Let the record reflect the witnesses have responded no.
    The Chair then advises you that, under the rules of the 
House and the rules of the committee, you're entitled to be 
accompanied by counsel.
    Does anyone wish to accompanied by counsel today?
    Let the record reflect the witnesses have responded no.
    And so if you would, please, raise your right hand so I may 
swear you in.
    [Witnesses sworn.]
    Let the record reflect the witnesses responded 
affirmatively. And you're now under oath and subject to the 
penalties set forth in Title 18, Section 1001 of the United 
States Code.
    The Chair will now recognize our witnesses for 5-minute 
summaries of their written statements. As you can see, there's 
a timer on your screen that counts down the time, and it turns 
red when your 5 minutes have expired. And so now I will turn 
first to Mayor Turner.
    Mayor, you're recognized for 5 minutes.

 STATEMENTS OF SYLVESTER TURNER, MAYOR, CITY OF HOUSTON; BILL 
   MAGNESS, PRESIDENT AND CHIEF EXECUTIVE OFFICER, ELECTRIC 
   RELIABILITY COUNCIL OF TEXAS; CHRISTI CRADDICK, CHAIRMAN, 
RAILROAD COMMISSION OF TEXAS; MICHAEL D. SHELLENBERGER, FOUNDER 
   AND PRESIDENT, ENVIRONMENTAL PROGRESS; AND JAMES B. ROBB, 
PRESIDENT AND CHIEF EXECUTIVE OFFICER, NORTH AMERICAN ELECTRIC 
                    RELIABILITY CORPORATION

                 STATEMENT OF SYLVESTER TURNER

    Mr. Turner. Thank you, Madam Chair, and members of the 
Energy and Commerce Committee, and thank you, Congresswoman 
Fletcher, for your introduction.
    In the last 6 years Houston has faced four 500-year storms 
and an unprecedented winter storm. Without question, these 
extreme weather events are coming with greater frequency and 
greater intensity, with rising costs in damages and the loss of 
life.
    After the winter storm of 2011, I filed House Bill 1986 
that specifically would have authorized the Public Utility 
Commission to mandate ERCOT have sufficient reserves to prevent 
blackouts like what occurred in 2011 and 2021. That bill was 
not given a hearing. I also wrote a letter to the PUC in 2011, 
specifically saying that allowing power generators to increase 
their charges from a few hundred dollars per megawatt to $9,000 
per megawatt when demand exceeded supply would be very costly 
to the entire system.
    The Texas grid was designed and constructed for the summer 
heat, and policymakers bet on the belief that what happened in 
2011 was an anomaly. ERCOT, the PUC, and the State leadership 
intentionally chose to be dismissive of climate change and the 
science associated with it. As a result, in February 2021 there 
was massive statewide system failure. There was no power for 
several days. Local water systems, specifically water pressure 
like Houston, fell below the regulatory requirement. Boil water 
notices were required. The combination of no power and low 
water pressure affected hospitals, police stations, dialysis 
clinics, people with special needs, and the ability of 
firefighters to fight fires.
    When power was restored and water pressure started to 
return, we estimate 50,000 homes and 400 apartment complexes in 
Houston had busted water pipes. Fifty-seven people in Texas 
died from hypothermia, carbon monoxide poisoning. Some people 
faced very high electricity bills.
    Madam Chair and Members, the magnitude of the damages was 
foreseeable and preventable. The Texas grid must be designed 
with a full appreciation that climate change is real and 
extreme weather events can occur throughout the year. We must 
build a system that is resilient and sustainable. The current 
infrastructure is outdated, and any claim that this systemwide 
failure was caused primarily by the use of renewables is 
blatantly false
    If the Texas grid covering 90 percent of the State remains 
closed, then Texas must take the necessary steps to ensure the 
availability of power in times of peak demand to have a 
reliable system with affordable prices to the end user, the 
consumers.
    On the local level, Hurricane Harvey was a game changer 
that impacted the energy capital of the world, our refineries, 
the Port of Houston, and our families. Putting things back 
where they were would have been a failed plan. We chose a 
forward-looking strategy.
    In February 2020, the city adopted its Resilient Houston 
plan, underwritten by Shell: 18 goals, 62 action items. On 
Earth Day 2020, the city announced the Houston Climate Action 
Plan and formally adopted it in December with the support of 
community leaders, environmentalists, and some in the energy 
sector like BP, NRG, Shell, and CenterPoint.
    We are not trying to move away from the energy industry, 
but we are working with them to move the energy industry 
forward and for Houston to be the world leader in energy 
transition. A part of the plan is to create 50 new clean energy 
2.0 companies by 2025. And we are well on our way, working 
directly with Greentown Labs, the Nation's largest climate-tech 
incubator.
    Working with NRG as of July 1st, 2020, all of the city's 
facilities are 100 percent powered by renewables. And the city 
is the largest municipal purchaser of renewables in the 
country.
    During the 1930s the city of Houston placed a 240-acre 
landfill in the middle of Sunnyside, one of our oldest African-
American communities. The landfill closed in 1970, leaving a 
toxic hole in the heart of Sunnyside. Working with energy 
partners, there are plans to turn the former landfill into the 
largest urban solar farm in the United States, estimated to 
generate 50 megawatts of power, enough to power 5,000 homes, 
offset 120 million pounds of carbon emissions annually, create 
green jobs, and revitalize the neighborhood.
    And to minimize any future blackouts, the city is adding 
even more redundancy to its water and wastewater systems, 
priority assets, and exploiting pilot initiatives using micro 
grids, which tie in directly to the Texas grid and stays on 24/
7, never turns off.
    Local governments are on the front lines, but we must have 
action by all levels of government in order to address our 
shared challenges or we risk being overwhelmed.
    [The prepared statement of Mr. Turner follows:]
    [GRAPHICS NOT AVAILABLE IN TIFF FORMAT]
    
    Ms. DeGette. Thank you so much, Mayor.
    I'm now very pleased to recognize Mr. Magness for 5 
minutes.

                   STATEMENT OF BILL MAGNESS

    Mr. Magness. Thank you, Chairwoman DeGette, Ranking Member 
Griffith, and distinguished members of the subcommittee. My 
name is Bill Magness. I'm currently president and chief 
executive officer of the Electric Reliability Council of Texas, 
commonly known as ERCOT.
    Last month's winter storms had a devastating affect on 
Texas. The extended disruption of electric service to millions 
of Texans during this extreme cold weather event resulted in 
impacts to health and safety of many. Texans suffered 
enormously during the winter storm. We can't afford for it to 
happen again, and ERCOT is committed to working on solutions to 
the problems we identify that led to the February outages.
    Let met give you a bit of background to explain ERCOT's 
role in the provision of electric power in Texas. We manage the 
flow of electric power to more than 26 million Texas customers. 
That's about 90 percent of the State's electric load and about 
75 percent of the land mass of Texas. ERCOT does not own power 
plants. We do not own poles and wires. We are the grid 
operator, like air traffic control for the grid. We're also the 
settlement agent for the market. We do the bookkeeping and 
billing. We don't participate in the financial side of our 
market. Our number-one job is to see that supply and demand on 
the grid are in balance at all times.
    As the independent system operator for the region, ERCOT 
schedules power on their electric grid that connects more than 
46,500 miles of transmission lines and over 680 generating 
units. It also performs financial settlement for the 
competitive wholesale bulk power market and administers retail 
switching for 8 million premises in the competitive areas at 
ERCOT. We are a membership-based 501(c)(4) nonprofit 
corporation, governed by a board of directors and subject to 
oversight by the Public Utility Commission of Texas and the 
Texas legislature.
    Our members include consumers, cooperatives, generators, 
power marketers, retail electric providers, investor-owned 
electric utilities, transmission and distribution providers, 
and municipally owned electric utility.
    ERCOT's not a policymaking body. We implement the policies 
adopted by the Public Utility Commission and the Texas 
legislature, and we operate under reliability rules adopted by 
the North American Electric Reliability Corporation, or NERC.
    Generators produce power from a variety of sources in ERCOT 
such as gas, coal, wind, solar, and nuclear. These are private 
and public entities, subject to regulation by various State and 
Federal agencies. Transmission and distribution providers own 
the wires and transport the power to consumers, subject to 
their own sets of Federal and State regulation.
    Twenty-four hours a day, 7 days a week, ERCOT monitors the 
entirety of the system to make sure that, when transmission 
lines go down, we can work around them. We talk to generators, 
instructing them to bring load onto the system or to back it 
down as needed. We oversee the scheduling of maintenance and 
more.
    The work is done with one purpose, to maintain the 60 hertz 
frequency that's needed to ensure the stability of the grid. 
It's a constant balancing act to manage the supply and demand 
to ensure a stable frequency.
    During the week of February 15, the Texas electric market 
experienced more demand than available supply. At its worst, 
the storm took out 48.6 percent of the generation available to 
ERCOT to balance the grid. We always keep reserves. But when 
you lose nearly half your generation, you're going to have a 
problem. As supply quickly diminished, the frequency of the 
grid dipped perilously low. Many generators stayed off for 
days, and this left the system unable to serve that high 
demand. We used the last tool in our toolkit, planned outages, 
calling for load shed to manage the stability of the grid.
    This crisis required ERCOT using procedures established for 
emergencies like this to call on transmission providers to use 
controlled load shedding to balance the system and prevent a 
devastating blackout for the entire grid. Avoiding a complete 
backout is critical. Were it to occur, the Texas grid could be 
down for several days or weeks while the damage to the 
electrical grid was repaired and the power was stored in a 
phased and highly controlled process. The cost of restoration 
of the system, the economic loss for Texas, and the personal 
cost to the well-being of Texas citizens would be unfathomable.
    As terrible as the consequences of the controlled outages 
in February were, if we had not stopped the blackout, power 
could have been out for over 90 percent of Texans for weeks. 
The steps we took were difficult, but they had to be taken, and 
when power was able to be fully restored, the Texas electric 
delivery system immediately returned to its preemergency 
conditions.
    That's why, when demand for power exceeds supply, ERCOT 
must issue directives to all electric transmission providers to 
shed load, to take those measures to reduce power consumption. 
In severe cases these brief directives result in outages. The 
rotating outages that we managed by the trans--managed by the 
transmission providers are managed according to plans and 
protocols determined by the transmission providers themselves 
who know their local areas much better than ERCOT ever could. 
ERCOT issues the directive to reduce power consumption under a 
predetermined formula necessary to maintain the integrity of 
the grid and avoid a catastrophic blackout. Based on their 
plans and protocols, it is the transmission providers who 
decide whose power stays on and who's interrupted during the 
outages.
    And the Texas legislature and our Public Utility Commission 
are currently engaged in an effort to determine what changes in 
law and regulations are needed in order to avoid a repeat of 
the events in the week of February 15. Bills are moving in the 
Texas House and Senate under an emergency declaration from 
Governor Abbott that takes on key issues--winter preparedness, 
public safety communications, and the various grid and market 
issues brought to life by the storm.
    We at ERCOT are working day and night to provide 
policymakers with the information they need to ensure that 
Texas electric supplies remain sufficient going into the 
future. Within the next few days we anticipate completion of a 
survey sent to all power generators and end suppliers 
requesting information on when, where, and why the power supply 
failed during the week of February 15. This information will be 
helpful to the Texas legislature and policymakers in seeking 
solutions.
    We look forward to working with our stakeholders, State 
leaders, and with you to implement improvements to Texas' grid 
resiliency and the ERCOT wholesale market.
    Thank you.
    [The prepared statement of Mr. Magness follows:]
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    Ms. DeGette. Thank you so much, Mr. Magness.
    I'm now pleased to recognize Chairman Craddick for 5 
minutes.
    You're recognized.

                 STATEMENT OF CHRISTI CRADDICK

    Ms. Craddick. Chairwoman DeGette, Leader Griffith, and 
Members, thank you for having me here today. For the record, my 
name is Christi Craddick, and I'm the chairman of the Railroad 
Commission of Texas and--excuse me. West Texas dirt has blown 
into Austin, so it's caught my allergies today.
    The Railroad Commission has primary regulatory jurisdiction 
over oil and natural gas production, pipelines, natural gas 
utilities, alternative fuels such as propane, and coal and 
uranium mining activity. The Railroad Commission does not have 
any regulatory jurisdiction over electricity.
    In February, as we learned of the severity of the winter 
storm that was heading our way, my fellow commissioners and I 
convened an emergency meeting to prioritize human needs 
customers above all else for natural gas delivery. Safety is 
our number-one priority at the commission. So homes, hospitals, 
schools, and churches were granted priority status under our 
emergency amendment to the gas curtailment order.
    As the situation developed and further need was identified, 
we waived transport requirements for out-of-State alternative 
fuel haulers to allow expedited access for Texans, should our 
State supply need to be supplemented. We authorized local 
distribution companies, or LDCs, to track and account for 
extraordinary expenses as a result of the storm, including but 
not limited to gas costs and transportation costs.
    This agency is committed to preventing undue financial 
burden on LDC customers, and this instruction will allow us to 
collect the data we need to help prevent that from happening, 
and we provided alternative options for saltwater disposal 
companies while maintaining our environmental safety standards 
to prevent wastewater from becoming a hazard in the freezing 
weather.
    The commission continues to communicate with both operators 
and legislators. We are working with stakeholders to collect 
and analyze data in an effort to prevent high consumer gas 
bills. We've been in constant communication with legislators at 
the State capital to offer reasonable and responsible 
recommendations.
    These include, first, formalizing TERC, the Texas Energy 
Reliability Council, an ad hoc group made up of industry 
professionals, agency leaders, and key agency staff. The 
council's purpose is to streamline communication during an 
event, and this organization should be formalized.
    Second, the Railroad Commission has proposed a mapping 
committee to overlay critical natural gas production 
infrastructure with the ERCOT and PUC grid to ensure that power 
is not cut off at critical facilities.
    Third, the Railroad Commission will hold a hearing to 
update the 1972 natural gas curtailment order to reflect the 
modern-day needs of the State.
    The final recommendation would require natural gas-fired 
power plants to secure firm gas contracts from their suppliers. 
When reliability is crucial, allowing interruptible supply 
contracts at power-producing facilities should be reevaluated 
by the legislature. The Texas legislature's currently 
deliberating these proposals, among many others.
    As the storm sat over Texas, wind, solar, coal, nuclear, 
oil, and natural gas all experienced challenges. Through 
numerous conversations with the oil and gas industry and 
operators, we learned of frozen roadways preventing crews from 
accessing the fields. But the number-one problem we heard 
reported from operators was the lack of power at the production 
sites.
    As outages spread across the State, operators were unable 
to keep their systems functioning as power was cut. Some 
operators did need to preemptively shutter their wells for 
safety and well integrity purposes prior to the storm beginning 
as early as February 9.
    Starting on Tuesday, February 16, as it was safe to return 
to the oil fields, crews arrived to find that their facilities 
were experiencing electricity outages. The oil fields simply 
cannot run without power, making electricity the best 
winterization tool.
    Working along with industry partners, we were able to 
directly communicate with the chairwoman of the PUC as well as 
electric transmission and distribution companies and provide 
specific coordinates for areas and facilities to have power 
restored and get gas flowing again. As operators got back 
online, storage capacity across the State was depleted to keep 
supply up. Continuous communication with our partners at TERC 
served to expedite solutions. Daily communications between 
regulators, operators, and providers was critical to 
understanding storage withdrawals, supply needs, and 
infrastructure capabilities.
    And for just one moment I'd like to highlight the overall 
success of our LDCs, our local distribution companies. They are 
the companies that provide gas directly to residential 
customers. If you have a gas-powered stove, fireplace furnace, 
heat, you're an LDC customer. As millions of homes lost 
electricity in Texas, only 2,153 LDC customers experienced 
service disruption. That means that 99.95 percent of all 
customers did not lose gas. Four point six million households 
in Texas utilized natural gas in their homes, representing 
about 13 million Texans. And these families were able to 
continue to heat their home.
    We look forward to continuing to work with the Texas 
legislature as we find real solutions to the challenges, and 
thank you for having me here today.
    [The prepared statement of Ms. Craddick follows:]
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    Ms. DeGette. I thank the gentlelady.
    The Chair's now pleased to recognize Mr. Shellenberger for 
5 minutes.
    Mr. Shellenberger, you're recognized.

             STATEMENT OF MICHAEL D. SHELLENBERGER

    Mr. Shellenberger. Thank you and good morning, Chairperson 
DeGette, Leader Griffith, and members of the committee. I'm 
grateful to the committee for inviting my testimony.
    In the past, some have argued that variable renewable 
energies would make electricity service more reliable. This 
argument was that the distributed and localized production of 
renewable energy, the build-out of additional required 
transmission networks, and increased storage to smooth out 
fluctuating production would all make electricity service more 
reliable than depending on a small number of large, centralized 
power plants connected by a few major transmission lines.
    But the recent power outages in Texas and California have 
challenged that argument. Adding more weather-dependent sources 
to electricity grids, all else being equal, might not in itself 
make electricity less reliable. But all else is not equal.
    The significant integration of variable energies has led to 
the loss of traditional power plants and the construction of 
new transmission lines to weather-dependent energy projects 
that are unreliable in extreme weather events.
    The policy interventions required to ensure friendly 
investment conditions for variable renewable energies--
including the lowering of acceptable reserve margins or the 
counting of average contributions, even if reduced from 
variable renewals--are interfering with grid resiliency. The 
roughly $50 billion spent on wind energy by Texans is 50 
billion that did not go to winterizing equipment.
    Weather dependency matters. When a continent-sized mass of 
freezing air moved all the way into Texas in February and 
remained there for several days, different energy sources 
performed differently, both absolutely and against 
expectations.
    Consider the average performance for the different fuel 
types over all 4 days of the blackouts in Texas. During the 4 
days of emergency operations during the cold snap from early 
February 15 to midnight, February 18, output levels of nuclear, 
natural gas, coal, and wind to the grid were 79 percent, 47 
percent, 52 percent, and 14 percent, respectively, of winter-
rated total installed capacity.
    ERCOT in its prewinter 2020 report on winter power 
availability for the 2020/2021 season expected some of the coal 
and gas fleet to experience winter outages, along with the loss 
of some capacity in normal winter high-demand periods, with 
further losses in extreme weather. ERCOT also expected during 
peak demand events in winter to have power from wind represent 
about 27 percent of installed capacity. In its most severe 
appraisal of the loss of wind capacity, ERCOT expected 8 
percent of wind power compared to capacity.
    Therefore, here's the performance of nuclear, gas, coal, 
and wind over 4 days of emergency as compared to normal 
expected winter peak conditions: Nuclear, 79 percent; gas, 54 
percent; coal, 58 percent; and wind, 50 percent. When examined 
this way, the issue of low wind and solar output during many 
hours of the emergency becomes more severe than previously 
reported. If ERCOT actually modeled simultaneous extreme loss 
of thermal generation along with extreme low wind, it did not 
add the scenario to its winter adequacy report.
    For nuclear, the lowest hourly value of production was 73 
percent output compared to installed capacity, which is also 73 
percent of expected based on winter adequacy reporting. For 
coal, it was 41 percent of total, or 46 percent of winter 
adequacy expectations. For natural gas, it was 40 percent, or 
46 percent based on winter adequacy expectations. For wind, it 
was 2 percent, or 9 percent of winter adequacy expectations.
    The main implication of this reality has been left unsaid. 
Efforts to expand transmission for the purpose of increasing 
the use of variable renewable energy cannot be justified as a 
means of preventing power outages like the ones that occurred 
in Texas and California.
    In a conference call with reporters last August that I was 
a part of, the main grid operator, the CEO of California's grid 
operator, said very clearly that the shortfall of power was due 
to lack of reliable power sources. It was not due to inadequate 
transmission or batteries. In fact, the grid operator said very 
clearly that those were not--those would not have solved the 
problem.
    So there's--I think this is an issue that, Chairperson and 
members of the committee, that has been the victim of a lot of 
mystification over many years. There is no emergent resiliency 
or reliability after making more parts of the system less 
reliable or less resilient.
    More unreliable parts makes for a less reliable system. 
There is no--nothing magical occurs from adding all of that 
variable renewable energy to having a reliable system.
    So with that, I would thank the committee again for the 
time and for the opportunity to offer some of these, I hope, 
new facts into the conversation.
    [The prepared statement of Mr. Shellenberger follows:]
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    Ms. DeGette. Thank you so much.
    The Chair now is pleased to recognize Mr. Robb for 5 
minutes.

                   STATEMENT OF JAMES B. ROBB

    Mr. Robb. Good morning, Chair DeGette, Ranking Member 
Griffith, and members of the committee.
    And, Chair DeGette, I want to send my company's heartfelt 
condolences on the senseless events in Boulder earlier this 
week.
    The recent tragic loss of lives and human suffering in 
Texas and the middle south States starkly demonstrate the 
essentiality of a reliable electric system. I appreciate the 
opportunity to be here today to put the recent events in Texas 
in a broader context.
    Insufficient and inadequately weatherized generation in 
Texas and the middle south States has been a growing concern 
for us since 2012. After a cold weather event caused load 
shedding for 3 million customers in Texas in 2011, we developed 
a winter preparation guideline to focus industry on best 
practices and started conducting significant outreach on winter 
preparedness. We monitored performance, noted performance 
improvements, and made further recommendations after the 2014 
polar vortex.
    However, after another cold snap in the middle south 
resulted in unplanned load shedding in 2018, we concluded that 
severe cold in the south could no longer be treated as rare and 
that a mandatory and auditable approach to weatherization was 
required. As a result, NERC began the process of adding 
mandatory weatherization requirements into our mandatory 
reliability standards.
    As you know, the FERC chairman and I have initiated a joint 
inquiry into the root causes of this most recent event. We're 
committed to quickly getting to the facts as to what actually 
happened, implementing appropriate measures within our 
authority, and communicating other implied actions to 
policymakers in industry.
    Extreme weather, coupled with the growing reliance on 
variable and just-in-time resources, is stressing the electric 
system in new and different ways. As a result, we are 
developing more advanced ways to study energy supply risks.
    NERC's reliability assessments are one important way we 
evaluate the performance of the grid, identify reliability 
trends, anticipate challenges, and provide a technical platform 
for important policy discussion. Along with Texas, our 
assessments consistently identify California and New England as 
regions particularly exposed to these dynamics.
    Last August, a massive heat wave across the west caused an 
energy supply shortage in California in the early evening. 
Solar energy was ramping down, and the grid operator was unable 
to import power as planned due to high demand throughout the 
west. CAISO was forced to cut power to approximately 800,000 
customers. This event reaffirms the increasing need for 
reliable ramping resources to balance variable generation and 
improve decimation of resource availability when the system is 
under stress.
    In New England, cold weather exacerbates its dependence on 
limited pipeline capacity in a handful of critical fuel assets. 
An early January cold snap in 2018 led to natural gas 
shortages, and fuel oil was burned to preserve reliability. Had 
that cold snap not abated when it did, the fuel oil inventory 
would eventually have been exhausted. And ISO New England 
almost certainly would have needed to shed load. It was a 
classic near-miss event.
    These issues that we've seen in Texas, California, and New 
England are the result of three major trends that are 
transforming the electricity industry.
    First, the system is decarbonizing rapidly. And this 
evolution is altering the operational characteristics of the 
grid.
    Policies, economics, and market designs are resulting in 
significant retirements of traditional generation. New 
investment is increasingly focused on developing carbon-free 
generation with variable production profiles. And in this 
resource mix, natural gas-fired generation is becoming ever 
more critical, both for bulk energy to be able to serve load as 
well as balancing energy to support the integration of variable 
resources.
    Second, the grid is becoming more distributed. The improved 
economics of solar is the key driver of this dynamic. And grid 
operators need more control of and visibility into these 
resources than they have today.
    And, third, the system is becoming increasingly digitized 
through smart meters and advanced control systems. These 
investments greatly enhance operational awareness and 
efficiency but at the cost of heightened exposure to 
cybersecurity risk.
    In addition to the weatherization requirements that NERC is 
now proposing, I would like to leave this subcommittee with 
four main points to consider.
    First, more investment in transmission and gas 
infrastructure is going to be needed to improve the resilience 
of the grid.
    Next, the regulatory structure and oversight of natural gas 
supply for the purposes of electric generation needs to be 
rethought. The natural gas system was not built and operated 
with electric reliability first in mind. Policy action and 
legislation will likely be needed to assure reliable fuel 
supply for power generation. And as the critical balancing 
resource, gas is the fuel that keeps the lights on.
    Third, the electric and natural gas systems need to plan 
for and be better prepared for extreme weather conditions, 
which are, frankly, becoming more routine. Regulatory and 
market structures need to support this planning and a necessary 
investment to assure reliability.
    And then, finally, investment in energy storage or 
alternative technology needs to be supported to have a viable 
alternative to natural gas for balancing variable resources. A 
technology which can be deployed cost-effectively and at 
massive scale with adequate duration to deal with supply 
disruptions that could last for days, rather than hours, will 
be required.
    Thank you again for the opportunity to be here today.
    [The prepared statement of Mr. Robb follows:]
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    Ms. DeGette. Thank you so much, Mr. Robb. I appreciate your 
testimony.
    And I want to again thank all of the witnesses for being 
with us today.
    It's now time for Members to ask questions of our panel, 
and the Chair will recognize herself first for 5 minutes.
    I did appreciate the testimony of all of our witnesses and 
also the comments of our colleagues on both sides of the dais 
this morning. This is a complex issue and, as is often the 
tendency when something like this happens, people look at one 
thing to blame and I saw in the press a lot of people were 
blaming only renewable energy. But it's clear from the 
testimony today and the evidence as it's coming out this is a 
very complex issue.
    And I want to start with you, Mr. Magness, because ERCOT 
has stated publicly that the recent extreme weather in Texas, 
quote, ``caused many generating units across fuel types to trip 
offline and become unavailable.'' Isn't it true that during the 
extreme weather event natural gas, wind, coal, solar, and even 
nuclear power were forced offline?
    Mr. Magness. Yes, Chairman, we did see----
    Ms. DeGette. Thanks.
    Mr. Magness [continuing]. Time where each one of those 
types of generation tripped offline.
    Ms. DeGette. Thanks.
    And, you know, as devastating as this was, I guess a lot of 
people were surprised because, Mayor, you were in the Texas 
legislature for more than 25 years and you said in your written 
testimony the magnitude--and also today--the magnitude of 
damages was foreseeable and preventable. The Texas grid must be 
designed--that with the full appreciation that climate change 
is real and extreme weather events can occur throughout the 
year.
    Is it your view that Texas ignored these warnings and 
missed several opportunities to fortify the grid against the 
threat of extreme weather?
    Mr. Turner. Madam Chair, the answer is yes. I was in the 
legislature when the winter storm occurred in 2011. In fact, I 
filed House Bill 1986 that specifically would mandate the 
Public Utility Commission to have ERCOT have a sufficient 
reserve to prevent blackouts. That was in 2011. The bill was 
not----
    Ms. DeGette. Thank you.
    Mr. Robb, I understand that NERC has issued a series of 
recommendations in recent years warning about reliability risks 
to the Texas grid, including after the same storm that hit 
Texas in 2011. Now I know NERC's inquiry is ongoing. But based 
on the information you have, did Texas winterize its power 
infrastructure to the degree NERC had recommended after the 
2011 storm?
    Mr. Robb. Well, the inquiry will affirm this. But evidence 
would suggest absolutely not.
    Ms. DeGette. Absolutely not.
    Now, Mayor Turner, what do you think Texas needs to do 
going forward to make sure that it's prepared for the 
inevitable next storm?
    Mr. Turner. It must build in resilience. I do agree, for 
example, infrastructure needs to be improved. It is outdated. I 
do agree we need to rely more on technology, and I do agree we 
need to have energy storage. But you have to factor into the 
equation that the storms are coming with greater frequency and 
greater intensity.
    Ms. DeGette. Well, and, you know, that's my next question: 
What do cities need to do to--and communities need to do--to 
sort of harden their preparation for these coming storms?
    Mr. Turner. And I will tell you we're not just relying on 
generators. We had a number of generators at water waste 
facilities. When the grid failed, some of those generators 
didn't kick in. What we are doing now is looking at piloting 
microgrids that actually tie into the Texas grid, and they're 
always on. They never turn off. They're on 24/7. And so we are 
looking at power, utilizing that for our key infrastructure 
projects within the city facilities as well as the low-income 
communities in the city.
    Ms. DeGette. Thank you.
    And, finally, back to you, Mr. Robb. As extreme weather 
events become more common, the energy market is in the midst of 
a significant transition to cleaner and more renewable energy 
sources. I think several of the witnesses mentioned that. So, 
recognizing that reality, how can we account for the 
transition, particularly the increased use of renewables, as we 
consider how to make the grid more reliable and resilient going 
forward?
    Mr. Robb. Well, the key to integrating large amounts of 
renewable resource is the balancing resource that picks up 
generation when the renewable resources can't perform because 
of weather conditions or what have you. And to date, the only 
real resource we have that can do that would either be hydro, 
as was mentioned earlier, or natural gas. And natural gas of 
those fuels is the most easily transported to where it is 
needed, so gas is the answer to making this transition work.
    Ms. DeGette. Thank you.
    And, you know, for all of you, we've experienced some of 
the same issues here in Colorado, and as several people said, 
we've had them in California and many other places. It's a 
national issue with the grid that I'm hoping, as we develop an 
infrastructure bill, we can start to think about how we can 
harden the grid because we know the weather is getting more 
extreme.
    With that, I'm delighted to recognize the ranking member, 
Mr. Griffith, for 5 minutes for his questioning.
    Mr. Griffith. Thank you, Madam Chair.
    Mr. Shellenberger, in your testimony you highlight that 
significantly expanding variable renewables requires 
significantly expanding the size and complexity of the grid to 
make up for both variable energy supply and low-power density. 
You also note that the National Academies of Sciences has 
clearly and repeatedly said that complexity will make 
electricity grids less resilient, all else being equal, than 
simpler grids. How can we maintain grid resiliency while also 
building a diverse energy supply?
    Mr. Shellenberger. Well, thank you for the question, 
Congressman. I think the first obvious thing is that we need a 
diversity of supply. I think it would be very risky and radical 
to depend entirely on natural gas and variable renewable energy 
sources. You know, the final comment I made was that, at their 
lowest, wind was 2 percent of Texas' electricity grid. Not all 
energy sources are the same. The fact that there was some 
failures among power plants is not the same as the essential 
weather dependence of some energy sources.
    And I interviewed the authors of the three National 
Academies of Sciences reports. They stressed emphatically that 
complexity reduces resiliency, adding microgrids reduces 
resiliency, that these things have consequences. The more 
complex the grid, the more people are involved, the higher the 
costs.
    I just will also mention, this talk, this idea that there 
is some inevitability to a transition towards variable 
renewable energy sources is incorrect. It is not shared by most 
energy experts. It is a consequence of policy choices. And if 
we want to have affordable, reliable, resilient electricity 
sources, we need reliable sources of electricity produced in 
large, efficient power plants, whether nuclear, natural gas, or 
coal.
    And if we want sustainability, I think it's clear too that 
you need to have nuclear because, every time we shut down a 
nuclear plant, it's replaced by natural gas, carbon emissions 
go up, prices go up. This has been proven now in California. 
It's been proven around the world. And now we have many nuclear 
plants across the United States that are at risk of shutting 
down prematurely and being replaced by natural gas, which would 
reduce resiliency and reliability, reduce affordability. And, 
in fact, I think this push to just continue to expand variable 
renewable energy sources would accelerate the premature and 
unnecessary closure of those power plants.
    Mr. Griffith. All right. I appreciate that.
    Madam Chair, I would like to insert into the record at the 
end of the hearing a chart on renewable generation in Texas 
from March 2021 from the Texas Synchrophasor Network created by 
Professor Mack Grady and Dr. Andrew Mattei--if I spelled that 
correctly--at Baylor University.
    This chart shows how renewables in ERCOT can swing from 10 
to 60 percent of the total electricity generation. This huge 
variation exemplifies the challenge of integrating renewables 
onto the grid. One of the major issues that contributed in both 
California and Texas are blackouts.
    Given, Dr. Shellenberger--or Mr. Shellenberger--given that 
more States are continuing to increase the percentage of 
renewable energy sources in their power grid systems, can you 
discuss the predictably--unreliable--the predictably unreliable 
properties of some renewables, especially during extreme 
weather?
    Mr. Shellenberger. Well, sure. I mean, we saw in the power 
outage in California last summer, part of the reason it was 
such high demand for electricity was because it was so hot, and 
demand for air-conditioning was so high. Those were the same 
conditions that meant the wind was not blowing. So we did not 
have wind energy resources available during that heat wave, and 
that means that more transmission lines to more wind farms 
would not have made any difference whatsoever.
    Similar story in Texas, those very--you have to look at the 
lowest output levels because that's the levels at which you are 
ultimately dependent on to avoid the cascading failures that 
everybody fears. So we saw in Texas, it reached 2 percent of 
its capacity whereas nuclear only went down to 73 percent. And 
the only reason we lost one of those reactors is because they 
had a sensor that was unnecessarily triggered by cold water and 
could actually be prevented in the future whereas the weather-
dependent nature of wind, meaning it only produces electricity 
when the wind is blowing, is not fixable. You can weatherize 
the turbines, but they still depend on the wind energy.
    Mr. Griffith. Yes, I appreciate that. I read your book over 
the weekend. I was doing it o audio. I loved it so much I 
bought the hardback. And I appreciate you being here to testify 
today, and I look forward to chatting with you in the future.
    And I yield back, Madam Chair.
    Mr. Shellenberger. Thank you, sir.
    Ms. DeGette. I thank the gentleman.
    The Chair now recognizes Chairman Pallone for 5 minutes.
    Mr. Pallone. Thank you, Madam Chair.
    I'm going to try to get in three quick questions to three 
of you, but I wanted to say that, while it's clear that the 
Texas electric grid was unprepared for the extreme winter storm 
last month, it's also evident that Texans were not adequately 
warned about the storm's potential impacts and were dangerously 
vulnerable to the storm's effects. I just got a text from 
Sheila Jackson Lee, Congresswoman Jackson Lee, mentioning how 
her low-income constituents are still suffering.
    So, if I could ask, Mr. Magness, Texas Governor Abbott 
contends that ERCOT failed to adequately sound the alarm about 
the potential seriousness of the storm and how it might impact 
the public's power supply. You told the Texas legislature, and 
I quote, ``We weren't talking enough to those impacted by the 
outages.''
    So, Mr. Magness, what could ERCOT have done to better 
communicate with the public, and how can communication be 
improved in future extreme weather events? You've got about a 
minute to answer that.
    Mr. Magness. OK. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. And I think, you 
know, ERCOT communicates at, I'd say, three levels every day 
we're talking, whether through our control room or through 
other mechanisms with the generators, with the transmission 
owners where we're doing the air traffic control. There was 
certainly a lot of communication going on with the industry 
about expectations, getting ready for the storm, knowing what 
we needed to do.
    The second level is sort of more public communications from 
ERCOT the company. And we issued a press release the Thursday, 
I believe, about the 11th or--the 11th, regarding the storm, 
calling out that it was, you know, looked like it was going to 
be one of the most powerful winter storms we've seen in years 
and the concerns we had for the system.
    We worked with the Governor's Office and the State 
Operations Center, appeared at the press conference with the 
Governor the Saturday before the storm came in, so the warning 
that we were starting to see supply get outstripped by demand. 
And we issued a conservation notice the following day to try to 
urge Texans and, you know, amplify that as much as we could to 
conserve.
    Now, the third level, I think, is the real challenge for us 
and where we need to see some change, which is when this became 
a public safety issue, when--once the outages happened and then 
it became clear that we were not going to be able to get that 
generation back up as quickly as we'd anticipated, as quickly 
as it's always happened when we'd have these kind of rotating 
outages, understanding that there was a strong need to get a 
public safety communication out very, very broadly to Texans to 
understand that this could go on for a while, and that's 
something that, you know, frankly, we're going to need to work 
and the legislature has--the House I know and Senate have filed 
bills in Texas to have some sort of weather amber alert or 
other, you know, broad notification when this becomes a public 
safety issue.
    Because that's sort of well beyond the communications 
capabilities this company has, and it's a system that we think 
would be wise to set up so, if we have these kind of weather 
emergencies in the future, that public safety word can get out 
a lot faster to supplement everything we're doing along with 
the company and with the media.
    Mr. Pallone. Thank you.
    Let me go to Mr. Robb. I know you recommend in your 
testimony rethinking how we regulate and oversee natural gas 
use for electric generation, and is this even more important in 
light of what we saw recently in Texas? In a minute or less.
    Mr. Robb. No, I think so. The natural gas system is 
designed primarily to meet the LDC load, as Commissioner 
Craddick mentioned, and it does that incredibly well. Natural--
power generation is not its first priority, or has not been its 
first priority. Yet, at this point, the power generation is the 
fuel that keeps the lights on, as I have said.
    There are multiple policies at multiple levels that need to 
be rethought. For example, when gas gets scarce, power 
generation is typically the first load to get interrupted to, 
again, to protect the LDC customer. The gas system is designed 
primarily to focus on high utilization of its assets, whereas 
the electric industry needs tremendous flexibility to meet 
increasingly rapid power plant ramp rates to accommodate 
generation.
    Environmental policies typically preclude dual fuel use to 
have an onsite fuel to make up for any shortfall that the gas 
system can't deliver. Siting is really difficult. And we see 
places like New England, which desperately needs more pipeline 
or pipeline infrastructure, they can't be built, they can't be 
sited, and they can't--the public resistance is too great.
    And the operational planning between the electric and gas 
system is not coordinated. For example, it's surprising that 
the TDSPs in Texas didn't know that they were shutting off 
power to compressor stations, if that indeed happened. Again, 
we'll find that out through our inquiry, but these are the 
examples of coordination that needs to happen because the 
systems are so inextricably intertwined at this point.
    Mr. Pallone. Thank you so much.
    Thank you, Madam Chair.
    Ms. DeGette. Thank you.
    The Chair now recognizes Mrs. Rodgers for 5 minutes.
    Mrs. Rodgers. Thank you, Madam Chair.
    NERC's written testimony examines bulk power system 
reliability through the lenses of recent extreme weather 
events, including a central U.S. cold weather event and the 
Western heat wave event of August 2020. Mr. Robb, why is it 
important to examine bulk power system reliability through the 
lenses of recent extreme weather----
    Mr. Pallone. I knew we weren't going to get to the mayor. 
There was no way.
    Mrs. Rodgers. Mr. Chairman?
    Ms. DeGette. He's on mute now.
    Mrs. Rodgers. OK. And--so just why is it important to 
examine that bulk power system reliability through the lens of 
recent extreme weather events and not just the Texas power 
failure?
    Mr. Robb. Well, because I think this is a broader issue 
than just Texas. Texas may be the most dramatic recent example 
of extreme weather overwhelming the system, but these extreme 
weather events are happening more frequently and more regularly 
and across the country. As you said, we've seen them in the 
middle South, we've seen them in the Northeast, we've seen them 
in Texas--or in California.
    And we need to expand our--the range of scenarios that we 
plan for and operate to because, you know, as we found out in 
Texas, right, when the power is out for an extended period of 
time, that's a really bad period of time for the people who 
live there.
    Mrs. Rodgers. Thank you. Yes.
    Recent articles on the Texas power grid crisis point to 
insufficient weatherization across the entire energy systems 
supply, and this wasn't just a Texas problem. It's happening in 
neighboring States. Everything froze up, from the wind turbines 
to natural gas to the compressor stations. It seems there needs 
to be a discussion around what types of energy equipment are 
weatherized and to what extent. We have to balance the cost and 
reliability and to take into consideration all the potential 
hazards and operating conditions.
    Ms. Craddick, the Federal Government has no role over 
energy production on State and private land. That's the 
responsibility of the Texas Railroad Commission. Given your 
jurisdiction over natural gas supply, what did you hear from 
those companies about the difficulties in weatherizing the 
production wells and processing equipment?
    Ms. Craddick. Well, the bottom line has been when the power 
went off, it is difficult to weatherize, right. We've heard 
about putting a heat strip on. OK, a heat strip requires 
electricity to run. We've heard about compressors being off in 
the field. You require electricity for those compressors.
    So we had a whole conversation, and I think that was where 
the challenge has been for our State and where we as an agency 
believe and already have a lot of the system online available 
that mapping so people will know where critical infrastructure 
is would be very helpful.
    We had a conversation with ERCOT and PUC on the 16th in a 
phone call that they said they didn't realize how integrated we 
all were, and that they didn't know they needed to turn back on 
the oil fields for us to flow gas.
    So I think that's a--something we've learned that is going 
to be very important long term for us to make sure that we've 
identified better critical infrastructure, even ERCOT's form 
that nobody knew to fill out, that we didn't know until that 
Tuesday, Wednesday, did not put oil fields and specs 
specifically precluded oil fields and oil from being in the--
and natural gas fields from being on that list. So hopefully 
they're----
    Mrs. Rodgers. Thank you.
    Ms. Craddick [continuing]. Going to prioritize. Thank you.
    Mrs. Rodgers. Good. Would you speak to how energy producers 
coordinate with the gas power plants, and what's the role of 
the Railroad Commission?
    Ms. Craddick. Actually, we--it's a private contract, so we 
do not--don't have those conversations between a power producer 
versus our gas operators. Those are private contracts.
    Mrs. Rodgers. OK. Thank you.
    Mr. Shellenberger, with all the new capacity being added in 
Texas, do you believe it makes it easier or harder to prevent 
blackouts?
    Mr. Shellenberger. Well, unfortunately, it will make it 
harder because we're just--Texas is just planning on adding 
more variable renewable energy sources and natural gas, so it 
increases--anytime you increase your overreliance on a single 
fuel, which is what you're effectively doing when you rely on 
gas, because we saw wind and when it goes to 2 percent of 
capacity, it's effectively unavailable at the time that you 
need it most.
    So that is what concerns me about the situation, is just 
the inadequate amount of reliable baseload capacity and this 
just growing reliance on unreliable sources of energy, which 
you can compensate for, but the only way to compensate for it 
is by keeping around baseload power plants. So the reason that 
Germany has been able to keep its electricity reliable is 
just--while it's doing a lot of renewables--is just by keeping 
its coal plants operating.
    Mrs. Rodgers. And what about the impact on nuclear plants 
in Texas?
    Mr. Shellenberger. Well, we're very concerned about all 
nuclear plants because they don't get the heavy production 
subsidies that renewables get.
    Mrs. Rodgers. OK. Thank you.
    Thank you, everyone. I yield back.
    Ms. DeGette. I thank the gentlelady.
    The Chair now recognizes Ms. Kuster for 5 minutes.
    Ms. Kuster. Thank you, Madam Chair, and thank you for 
holding this important oversight hearing. Excuse me. Oh, dear. 
My apologies. Oh, I'm sorry, Madam Chair. I am going to have to 
pull up my remarks, I apologize. If you'd like to go to the 
next person, Madam Chair, I'll come back. I apologize.
    Ms. DeGette. OK. Miss Rice, are you prepared?
    Miss Rice. Yes. Thank you, Madam Chair.
    Ms. DeGette. OK. We'll recognize you for 5 minutes.
    Miss Rice. OK. Extreme weather events pose significant 
challenges across the country, not just in Texas. But in the 
case of Texas, what's particularly troubling to me is the fact 
that warning signs were missed, and there were opportunities to 
avoid the worst effects of the recent catastrophe.
    Mr. Robb, in 2011, we talked about a prior severe winter 
storm that hit Texas which caused extensive power disruptions. 
And after that, NERC and FERC issued a report offering 
recommendations on cold weather preparedness, including 
winterization best practices. It was notable that the report 
concluded the single largest problem during the cold weather 
event was the freezing of instrumentation and equipment.
    So, Mr. Robb, it sounds like this same problem may have 
persisted 10 years later in this most recent storm that we're 
talking about. So did Texas miss opportunities to make its grid 
more resilient to extreme winter weather?
    Mr. Robb. Yes, I think the answer is yes. The report that 
we put out in 2011 called for very clear freeze protection on 
the generating plants and raised the issue as to whether that 
should extend into the natural gas supply as well. And what I 
understand Texas did was to put in place legislation that 
required weatherization but not to a specific level, and it was 
not an aggressively enforced standard. I think it was spot 
checked, and enforcement against that was relatively modest, is 
my understanding.
    Miss Rice. Is there----
    Mr. Robb. That's one of the reason why we're--I'm sorry.
    Miss Rice. No, no, go ahead.
    Mr. Robb. No, I said that's one of the reasons why, after 
the 2018 event, we concluded that we needed to move to a 
mandatory freeze protection standard for equipment and to have 
that be monitored and enforced by us.
    Miss Rice. Well, had they made those--taken those 
recommendations, the specific ones that were recommended post-
2011, would that have--what would that impact have been last 
February, this past February?
    Mr. Robb. It's hard to say. I think it clearly would have 
mitigated what we would've seen in Texas, but our inquiry will 
shed some light as to, again, why wasn't the generation there, 
and had it been winterized to the level that we had talked 
about in 2011, would it have been? That's the core question 
that we need to answer in this inquiry.
    Miss Rice. OK.
    Mr. Magness, in its most recent winter reliability 
assessment, NERC warned of the potential for extreme generation 
resource outages in ERCOT due to severe winter weather, which 
is precisely what happened last month when nearly 50 percent of 
Texas' power generation was forced offline at one point. In 
light of these warnings, what more could ERCOT have done to 
prepare?
    Mr. Magness. Well, certainly, every winter we have--we 
undertake efforts, and some of these are based on the 
recommendations in the 2011 NERC report. While the mandatory 
winterization was not authorized by our legislature, as has 
been pointed out, a number of the actions that ERCOT has taken, 
that our market has taken--including having winterization 
workshops, having spot checks for winterization issues at power 
plants and, you know, making recommendations for things they 
can be doing, including changes that we made internally to make 
sure that everyone is trained for emergencies in the winter 
context, changes in our ancillary services and other sort of 
technical components, making sure that the temperature limits 
on units are baked into our models--a lot of these things have 
been undertaken, as well as looking at severe weather scenarios 
in our seasonal assessment of resource adequacy.
    So a number of steps are taken each winter to get ready. 
One of the things is, our meteorologists reported in November 
we expected to see at some point in the winter a very harsh 
storm. We couldn't predict exactly the nature of what it would 
be. But, certainly, the activities that generators have 
undertaken over the past few years, based a lot on performing 
many of the recommendations of the 2011 report, have shown some 
progress.
    For example, the second-coldest day after February 2nd of 
2011 in Texas was in December of 2018. I think Mr. Robb 
mentioned the 2018 South Central event. And we saw outages, 
forced outages dramatically lower than we had seen in 2011. 
Similarly, in 2014, when the polar vortex hit Texas to some 
extent, we saw dramatically lower outages. So there appeared to 
be some evidence that these winterization efforts were, you 
know, taking effect and having an impact.
    Now, that said, we did not anticipate and we certain--the 
generators who told us what to plan to have available in mid-
February did not anticipate the kind of outages that we saw. 
And as Mr. Robb said, that merits, you know, very deep 
investigation into what happened. And if the things that we 
have done on winterization so far have not had the impacts that 
are needed, I think that's why our legislature is looking at 
something else, some other approach that can ensure that we 
don't see this sort of impact again.
    Miss Rice. Let's hope that that can be done in a 
nonpartisan way because this is an issue that must be 
addressed, and we all have to put the politics aside. I'm over 
my time, Madam Chairwoman. Thank you very much.
    Ms. DeGette. Thank you so much.
    The Chair now recognizes Mr. Burgess for 5 minutes.
    Mr. Burgess. Thank you. And just to--this is a nonpartisan 
issue because deregulation of the electricity market in Texas 
actually was passed by the State legislature in 1999, when 
Democrats were in control of that body.
    Mr. Magness, you've actually just answered most of the 
questions that I had for you that basically were the question 
of, what--did weatherization occur following the 2011 
blackouts? I think the evidence is that more can be done, more 
should be done, but we mustn't forget that in Texas most of our 
extreme weather is summer weather. It's hot weather. In fact, 
most of us don't move to Texas because of the cold weather. We 
move to get away from the cold weather.
    I remember very well in August of 2006, there was a high 
demand period at the end of April. It was kind of early in the 
summer season, and that put an extreme strain upon ERCOT to the 
point where Governor Perry at the time recommended building, I 
forget the number, but it was a substantial number of new, 
modern coal-fired power plants, and of course he was rebuffed 
in that effort.
    Mayor Miller of Dallas--Mayor Bill White of Houston, Mr. 
Turner's predecessor--strongly objected to the creation of any 
more coal-fired power plants in Texas. But it's just that 
diversification and that resiliency that Mr. Shellenberger has 
talked so much about that I think might have prevented some of 
the problems that we encountered. You know, you can only 
winterize so much and for so many storms.
    Madam Chair, I am going to ask unanimous consent to insert 
into the record a Texas Tribune article that outlines the work 
being done in Texas in the legislature, along with several 
bills that would address this crisis at the State level.
    Ms. DeGette. As the ranking member said, we will consider 
all of these requests at the end of the hearing.
    Mr. Burgess. Very well. And let me just ask, Mr. Robb, do 
the Federal grid reliability standards apply to ERCOT?
    Mr. Robb. They do.
    Mr. Burgess. And would more interconnection between ERCOT 
and the eastern or western grids have prevented the problems 
that we saw last month?
    Mr. Robb. That question is complicated and would require a 
fair amount of study. What I can say is what I understand, is 
that the interties between the--the small interties between 
Texas and the eastern and western grid were closed with--very 
little power was flowing over them. But I think Mr. Magness can 
probably confirm that view.
    Mr. Burgess. Well, in fact, I do recall Mr. Magness' 
organization putting on a statement on Saturday--this crisis, 
of course, began at 1 o'clock in the morning on Monday--but on 
Saturday that ERCOT was purchasing power from the Southwest 
Power Pool as well as some power from northern Mexico. The 
problem is those areas got extremely cold as well Sunday night, 
and as a consequence I imagine that there was no further power 
available for purchase. Is that basically correct, Mr. Magness?
    Mr. Magness. Yes, Dr. Burgess. We had some minor imports 
from Mexico and from the eastern interconnection, but you're 
connect, the other grid operators that operate in Texas, the 
Southwest Power Pool and the Midcontinent Independent System 
Operator, both ended up experiencing rotating outages during 
some point of the winter storms.
    So there was just--that storm was of a size and scope that 
there was just no available power to be imported or exported 
during that time. So, for this particular one, both Mexico and 
the U.S. grids, there wasn't a lot of relief available.
    Mr. Burgess. Right.
    And, Mr. Robb, let me just ask you as a final question, are 
there any electric grids around the country that are 
invulnerable to extreme weather events, whether hot or cold?
    Mr. Robb. I would say no.
    Mr. Burgess. Yes, I think that's right. So--and maybe this 
is a question for Mr. Shellenberger. You know, we talked about 
this being an unprecedented event, but in fact we had a very 
bad event, cold weather event, in 2011, one in 1983. We had the 
hot weather event that I referenced in 2006. And, in fact, 
going back and looking at some of the writings of 
meteorologists, there was actually a very similar occurrence in 
Texas in the 1890s. So it's not new that it gets that cold in 
Texas. What's different is we have so many more people living 
in Texas and so many more people depending upon the grid. But 
could you speak to that, Mr. Shellenberger?
    Mr. Shellenberger. Yes. Thank you, Congressman. You know, 
of course, if there had been bigger connections between Texas 
and those other places, all of that cheap Texas wind and that 
solar would have ended up undermining the economics of those 
plants during the good times that would've been needed in the 
emergency. Important to understand that, I think.
    But, yes, exactly, your point is well taken. I don't think 
we know whether or not climate change played a role in these 
extreme events. There's just so few of them. No good scientist 
would look at an N of 3 or an N of 4 and try to suggest a 
trend.
    Mr. Burgess. Excellent answer. Thank you.
    I yield back, Madam Chair.
    Ms. DeGette. I thank the gentleman.
    The Chair now goes back to Ms. Kuster for 5 minutes.
    Ms. Kuster. Thank you very much, Madam Chair, and I 
apologize. Great to be with you. This is an important hearing 
about the Texas grid failure, a tragic event resulting in the 
death of over 40--30 fellow Americans.
    The blackouts that occurred across Texas and much of South 
Central United States were extreme in many ways, most notably 
because they were entirely preventable if precautions and 
preparation had been prioritized. The power didn't just go out. 
It went out for days during one of the coldest weeks of the 
year. When millions of people go this long without power in 
subfreezing temperatures, there's no disputing that things went 
seriously wrong.
    In New Hampshire, we had more than our fair share of 
subfreezing days in the winter, and, yes, the power does go out 
from time to time when there's high wind or ice storms. But the 
failure of Texas' deregulated energy grid poses serious 
questions that the subcommittee must examine going forward. I 
think I speak for many people when I say simply, how could this 
have happened in the United States of America?
    So, Mr. Magness, 5 days before the storm began hammering 
Texas, ERCOT held a board meeting during which you stated, and 
I quote, ``We're ready for the several days of pretty frigid 
temperatures to come our way.'' But, clearly, Texas was not 
ready. Why were ERCOT and the State's power generators so 
unprepared for this storm?
    Mr. Magness. From ERCOT's perspective, we were beginning a 
process on the 8th, actually, the day before that board 
meeting, of talking with the generators, talking with the 
transmission providers to make sure as much as we could that 
they knew this storm was coming and to be ready. And by the 
time the storm came in, they certainly did.
    Sunday night we had the highest winter peak we had ever 
had, breaking a prior peak by a few thousand megawatts, and the 
system was there to serve it. We had told everyone to 
anticipate--and I mean at, you know, at our State Operations 
Center and elsewhere--to anticipate there could be rotating 
outages Monday morning and Tuesday morning based on the demand 
we saw and the supply we expected to have.
    But what we saw later in the evening, after we got over 
that peak and served more power in Texas in the winter than we 
ever have, was an enormous drop in generation as the storm came 
into Texas. So the root causes of why that generation came off 
and stayed off for as long as it did are the subject of some 
data that we're gathering that we hope to be able to finalize 
the data-gathering effort and get it out to the public 
hopefully next week.
    To answer that why question, because these were power units 
that told ERCOT we're going to be there for the highest load 
that you expect. There may have to be some rotating outages but 
not the kind of loss of almost half the generation fleet that 
we saw. So it's an analysis of that root cause of why the 
problem was as large as it was that we need to investigate.
    But, certainly, coming into the storm we saw that we were 
facing something like we had never seen, and it may cause 
shortages that would require some outages, just nothing like 
the loss of generation that we experienced.
    Ms. Kuster. And can we ask that you provide that to this 
subcommittee as well for our further investigation?
    Mr. Magness. I certainly will, yes.
    Ms. Kuster. Mr. Turner, Mayor Turner, I understand you were 
in the command center during the winter storm. Can you describe 
for us what issues you were seeing in the command center and 
exactly what went wrong?
    Mr. Turner. And let me just say what we were told even on 
Sunday, we were told that there would be rolling blackouts that 
would last no more than 1 to 2 hours. And at a press conference 
at 5 p.m. on Sunday, that's what we told the people in the 
Houston region. That information was provided to us from the 
power companies: rolling blackouts, 1 to 2 hours.
    On Monday morning at 2 o'clock, when the power went out, 
for most Houstonians they thought it was only going to be out 
for 1 to 2 hours. These were not rolling blackouts. These were 
power outages that lasted for 3 to 4 days. You cannot prepare 
for this sort of winter storm in 5 days. The State of Texas 
failed to do it over 10 years.
    And the system that we have in Texas is a market-driven 
system, and they were hoping that, by allowing the power 
generators to increase their charges per megawatt over the last 
10 years, that they would have built in resilience into their 
system. That did not happen. There was not enough supply, and 
in Texas it's ERCOT. It's--90 percent of our Texas grid is a 
closed system. The only city in a sense that didn't experience 
what the rest of us experienced in Texas was El Paso because 
they upgraded their system, and they were able to pull power 
from another source.
    And last thing--and I have to say this, because I oversaw 
the electric utility market in the State of Texas for 23 of my 
27 years in the legislature--OK, your natural gas plant, your 
coal-fired plants, and your nuclear plants went offline. That 
represents well about 65 to 67 percent of your electricity 
market, your power. You cannot blame this on renewables. You 
absolutely cannot. That's a false issue.
    Ms. Kuster. Well, thank you very much, Mr. Mayor. I've gone 
over time, and I yield back to the chair.
    Ms. DeGette. I thank the gentlelady.
    The Chair now recognizes Mr. McKinley for 5 minutes.
    Mr. McKinley. Thank you, Madam Chair.
    And to, Mr. Shellenberger, I'm going to address my 
questions to you, but I wanted you to know upfront: I just 
ordered your book this week. I've heard some great raves about 
that, so I wanted to see what's in this.
    So, listen, my point is to lead in the questions is that 
these recent extreme weather events across Texas and the 
Midwest have highlighted this need to focus on grid reliability 
and resilience. But keep in mind, other areas of the country 
share these same concerns, so this is not--we want to take what 
we learned from Texas and apply that elsewhere.
    Keep in mind, one, a 2020 National Security Council memo 
stated that secure, onsite fuel supply, specifically coal and 
nuclear, are essential to the Nation's critical energy 
infrastructure. A 2018 report from the National Energy and 
Technology Laboratory, NETL: without the resilience of coal, 
the eastern U.S. would have suffered widespread blackouts 
during the 2018 bomb cycle. And ISO New England said their most 
significant--the most significant resiliene challenge is fuel 
security, and coal and nuclear power plants are needed to 
maintain reliability.
    So trying to apply this lesson we have seen in Texas, and 
all these other reports I want to go down because there is a 
statement that has been--there's a general consensus that we 
can't get to net zero in this country without having carbon 
capture.
    So my question to you, Mr. Shellenberger: Do you expect 
that we'll get carbon capture by 2030 in a commercial-grade 
technology?
    Mr. Shellenberger. Thank you, Congressman, for the 
questions. You're absolutely spot on. You must have fuel 
availability. This is essential for any kind of disaster and 
resilience, which is recovery from power outages and extreme 
events. You know, if you're going to shut down all of our--if 
we're going to shut down all of our nuclear plants, which are 
20 percent of our electricity, then we better keep our coal 
plants around. And I say this as somebody that has long 
advocated the transition from coal to natural gas and nuclear, 
but nonetheless, when----
    Mr. McKinley. Thank you. I've got a couple more questions 
to you on this thing.
    Mr. Shellenberger. Sorry.
    Mr. McKinley. So, obviously, you understand the 80 percent 
by 2030 and 100 percent by 2035. So the power that was 
generated, that coal provided during the cold snap, that saved 
Texas. I think in your testimony you said the electricity that 
coal provided during the cold snap saved Texas from more 
widespread blackouts and lowered fatalities. I thank you for 
that.
    So, if we don't have carbon capture by 2030 and the 
Democrats and President Biden are successful in decarbonizing 
our power grid by then, could America be experiencing--should 
we experience more--plan to experience more blackouts and 
fatalities?
    Mr. Shellenberger. Yes. I mean, the risk of becoming 
overdependent on natural gas, I think, is very real. That's 
what would be occurring if we phased out our nuclear and coal 
plants, so yes, that would be a significant concern.
    Mr. McKinley. OK.
    Mr. Shellenberger. The alternative is much more expensive 
electricity.
    Mr. McKinley. The RTOs, the regional transportation 
organizations, that are enduring all these severe weathers are 
becoming increasingly more using coal during these--like in 
2019, MISO increased its use of coal by 50 percent, PJM by 40 
percent. In 2018, coal increased in MISO by 51 percent, PJM by 
40. So how are they going to respond if we don't have--if these 
coal-fired power plants are shuttered and the nuclear plants 
are no longer available? How are RTOs going to respond?
    Mr. Shellenberger. Well, what they're saying is that 
they're going to--they're encouraging a significant purchase of 
batteries, but most people don't think that that's going to 
provide any significant quantity of seasonal storage, so it 
just means we're becoming more dependent on gas.
    Mr. McKinley. Well, let my chat on that. So the battery 
storage, we're going to be relying on battery storage for our 
utilities, but yet we're also trying to move over to electric 
vehicles by 2035. We're trying to get to all our cars are being 
driven by batteries.
    So my question, if we've got these two competing forces, 
the auto manufacturers trying to find the critical 
ingredients--the lithium, cobalt, lead, nickel--that's needed 
in the battery and the utilities are trying to find it, isn't 
that going to drive up the price of batteries in this country? 
So, for car owners, they're going to pay more for it, or 
utilities are going to pay more for utilities?
    Isn't that going to put competition between the two for the 
higher price? So didn't we learn anything from PPE when we were 
competing for the plastics?
    Mr. Shellenberger. Absolutely, sir. I mean, I think most 
experts agree that significantly increasing electric vehicle 
and battery consumption would significantly impact materials, 
demand, and prices. And, of course, if we do move either to 
fuel-cell vehicles or electric vehicles, we're talking about 
something close to a doubling of total electricity demand.
    Mr. McKinley. And that opens up a whole other can of worms. 
So I thank you for that, and I yield back my time.
    Mr. Peters [presiding]. Madam Chair, are you----
    Ms. Schakowsky. Well, I could call on myself.
    Mr. Peters. I'll recognize, as vice chair, Ms. Schakowsky 
for 5 minutes.
    Ms. Schakowsky. Thank you, Mr. Vice Chair. I appreciate it.
    So, Mayor Turner, I just want to express how sorry I am 
that your city is once again reeling from an extreme weather 
event, and it looks like, as you said, that it's almost every 
year over the last 5 years. And it appears that this one was 
entirely foreseeable and preventable if action had been taken 
earlier.
    So I want to ask you, in the time that has elapsed--which 
is only really a little over a month now, but yet only 11 
months until next winter or even earlier next winter--that 
problems are going to occur, and I want to know what you are 
hoping to see between now and next winter. And what are the 
things that are happening now, right now, and what needs to be 
happening right now, and tell us if it is?
    Mr. Turner. Well, one thing, and I think--and Mr. Magness I 
know will agree, and that is the Texas grid is designed for the 
summer heat. It is not designed for winter storms. And I am 
hopeful that, before the Texas legislature ends, that unlike 
2011 and the years in between, that there will be substantive 
reform made to our system, that we will build in resilience.
    Having said that, what we are doing locally is that we are 
focusing on resilience and redundancy, that just in case this 
should happen, a winter storm comes again, that on the local 
level we're making sure that we protect our water and 
wastewater treatment facilities, our police stations, that we 
make sure that we maintain water pressure so that our 
firefighters can fight fires.
    And in this particular storm what I do want to note, there 
were hospitals throughout the city of Houston that did not even 
have enough water for their chillers to keep their patients 
warm. Our fire departments were having to take waters to the 
hospitals just to keep the patients warm in the hospitals.
    So we are building in redundancy within all of our major 
facilities. And then at the same time, in our communities that 
are very at risk and vulnerable, we want to make sure that we 
are doing everything we can to build some redundancy into those 
key assets in these communities. We're doing that now.
    Ms. Schakowsky. Thank you so much.
    Mr. Magness, in recent testimony that you had before the 
Texas legislature, you suggested that you didn't think you 
would have done anything different during the crisis. And so 
I'm asking now that you've had more time to reflect, do you 
think there is anything that ERCOT could have done differently, 
and what lessons have you learned on how to do better in a 
similar situation?
    Mr. Magness. Thank you, Congresswoman.
    And I regret if I didn't mention this to the Texas 
legislature, but I think the communication during that time--
and Mayor Turner mentioned it--when it became clear that these 
outages could not rotate because they were so large and so 
extensive, the communication and the understanding that that's 
the situation people are going to be in and the public safety 
communication that could've come from that is something that I 
think will be critical in the future, and something that I, as 
I look back, those times when we saw how large this would be 
and began to understand how long it would last, the 
communications around that I think we certainly could've done 
better and hope to advance that in the future.
    Ms. Schakowsky. Well, I thank you for that and that you do 
find some things that could be done better.
    Chairman Craddick--Craddick, I'm sorry--in your testimony 
you contend that natural gas production and the frozen 
transmission pipes, quote, ``were not the problem that was 
caused.'' Do you still think that, that there was no problem 
with that?
    Ms. Craddick. I believe that transmission pipes are in the 
ground, and that's natural insulation. Where we do have some 
challenges when you had the electricity roll off into fields 
and across the State, then we did have problems with 
compressors that are electric compressors and/or natural gas 
compressors. Look, you can't move stuff in a pipe if you've 
got--in a compressor without electricity, so, but the pipes 
themselves did not freeze, and I think that's been a 
miscommunication across the--when you've looked at the press 
communication.
    Ms. Schakowsky. But there were some problems. And I just 
wanted to end with this in saying I think everyone has to fess 
up to the ways that it can be done better and to get to work 
right now to make sure that we don't have another situation 
next year.
    And I thank you, Madam Chair, and I yield back.
    Ms. DeGette [presiding]. I thank the gentlelady. And I'm 
back too. Thanks for carrying on without me.
    I'm now going to recognize Mr. Long for 5 minutes.
    Mr. Long. Thank you, Madam Chair.
    And thank you all for being here today. I don't know how 
many of you the name Kohlberg, Kravis & Roberts means anything, 
but Mr. Turner said earlier--my question is for Mr. 
Shellenberger, but Mr. Turner said a while ago that you cannot 
prepare for an event like this in 5 days. You might have been 
able to prepare for it in 14 years, though, and that's kind of 
my question today, Mr. Shellenberger.
    In your testimony, you emphasized that efforts to expand 
transmission for the purposes of increasing use of variable 
renewable energy cannot be justified as a means of preventing 
power outages like the ones that occurred in Texas and 
California.
    Take you back to 2007. Texas Pacific and Kohlberg, Kravis & 
Roberts, the famous KKR, purchased Texas Utility Corporation 
and agreed to terminate 8 of 11 proposed coal-fired power 
plants. And I bet a lot of folks in Texas would have loved to 
have those extra 8 coal-fired power plants on during this 
latest event that you were not able to prepare for within 5 
days. But they did that in Texas due to pressure from 
environmental groups. The agreement also included the company's 
pledge to double the purchase of wind power.
    How effective are wind and solar resources during storms 
like we've seen in Texas and California, Mr. Shellenberger?
    Mr. Shellenberger. Well, thank you, Congressman, for the 
question. I think it's a very important one. I think we're 
hearing--I heard from the mayor of Texas--the mayor of Houston, 
rather--that they're focused on deploying solar and wind but 
also very concerned about power outages. Well, you can't have 
it both ways. You can't--we can't rely on solar and wind.
    We saw that at its lowest level--and this effort to 
conflate weather-dependent energies and nonweather-dependent 
energies I think is deeply misleading and troubling and creates 
risks. At its lowest level, wind was producing 2 percent of its 
installed capacity. At nuclear's lowest level it was producing 
73 percent, and that's due to the nonexistence of wind.
    So, yes, to your point, sir, I mean obviously, you know, 
weatherization and winterization needed to occur with all of 
the power plants. But this essential question of the weather-
dependent nature of these technologies cannot be waved away. 
This idea that they're sort of--it's like a minor thing or 
something, or the idea that there's some sort of--that it's a 
matter of quantity rather than of quality, that's not a view 
shared by any major energy experts. The essential variability 
is what makes it so dangerous to rely on those energy 
technologies alone.
    Mr. Long. Before I got on this Zoom hearing I was on a Zoom 
call with our Missouri utility co-ops, and they did not have 
any blackouts, brownouts here in Missouri in our utility co-
ops, and we got down to 13 to 15 below. One report said 13, one 
said 15. I know that it was colder than anything I've 
experienced in my 65 years in southwest Missouri. Some of our 
city utilities, municipal-owned utilities, did have rolling 
blackouts.
    And, Mr. Shellenberger, with you again, I spoke with a lot 
of my utilities in my district over the last couple weeks 
because the storms also brought, as I mentioned, the 13-below 
temperatures here at our State. They said on a normal day they 
receive 25 percent of their energy from renewable resources, 
but during the cold streak that number went from 25 percent to 
3 percent. How did the wind power generation in Texas compare 
to that of baseload generation like nuclear and coal during the 
storm?
    Mr. Shellenberger. Thank you, Congressman. It's absolutely 
right. You know, I pointed out that, as compared to normal 
expected winter peak conditions, nuclear performed at 79 
percent, coal at 58 percent, and wind at 50 percent, but you 
have to look at the lowest hourly output, the lowest output, 
because if you don't look at that number, then you're not 
paying attention to the major issue, which is that you just 
lacked sufficient supply. And so the lowest level, what wind 
went to, was 2 percent of its total capacity, 9 percent of 
winter adequacy expectations. Nuclear was at 73, coal was at 
40, natural gas was at 40 or 46 under winter adequacy.
    So I think this is what--I mean, I--civilization depends on 
reliable electricity. I think everybody agrees with that, but 
then you need--people need to explain how it is that variable 
renewable energy sources, which are weather dependent, are--
somehow add up to being reliable and resilient at grid levels. 
They don't. It actually just adds up to less reliability and 
less resilience, all else being equal.
    Mr. Long. I have no doubt that someday we'll get there with 
all the renewables, but today is not the day. And like I say, I 
think the folks in Texas would have loved having eight extra 
coal-fired power plants on during the latest event.
    And, Madam Chair, I'm a few minutes--few seconds over my 
time, and I yield back.
    Ms. DeGette. Thank you.
    The Chair now recognizes Mr. Tonko for 5 minutes.
    Mr. Tonko. Thank you, Madam Chair.
    One factor frequently cited by experts for why the recent 
storm was so devastating is the lack of winterization of the 
Texas power plants, natural gas pipelines, and other power 
infrastructure. Winterizing these assets would better protect 
them from potentially failing during extreme cold weather and 
would make the grid in Texas more resilient overall. The 
Governor of Texas has now called on the State legislature to 
mandate the winterization of its power system.
    So, Mr. Robb, NERC has long recognized the risk that 
inadequate weatherization can pose to grid reliability. NERC is 
currently developing nationwide standards for addressing cold 
weather events. So why did NERC choose to develop mandatory 
reliability standards for cold weather events rather than issue 
voluntary guidelines, which had been NERC's previous approach?
    Mr. Robb. Yes, I think it became clear to us after the 2018 
event--which is also in this part of the country, more in the 
Arkansas, Louisiana area, and east Texas--when we peeled that 
event apart in a joint inquiry with FERC, we concluded that 
many of the precepts of the voluntary guidelines that we had in 
place were not being adhered to, and that's what motivated us 
to pivot to a mandatory structure.
    Mr. Tonko. Thank you.
    And, Mayor Turner, there are different estimates of what it 
would cost to fully weatherize the grid and energy sources, but 
failing to invest in the protection of these systems would also 
be costly. In fact, an early economic analysis projected that 
the total cost of this storm alone could be as high as $295 
billion, more than Hurricanes Harvey and Ike combined.
    So, Mr. Mayor, do you agree that it's long past time to 
make the necessary investments to better weatherize Texas--the 
Texas grid?
    Mr. Turner. Absolutely. And I will tell you that, when you 
track all of these storms--we've talked about the storm in 
2011, the one in 2018, and now the one last month in 2021, and 
I do have to emphasize again, it is important to weatherize the 
grid, the system, because when you look at the plants that went 
offline, your natural gas plants went offline, your coal-fired 
plants went offline, and your nuclear plants went offline. As 
much--we can talk about renewables. That's a red herring. But 
if everything was coal-fired and natural gas, they went 
offline.
    Mr. Tonko. Well, that's an interesting point. Thank you.
    Chairman Craddick, in your testimony, you assert that 
natural gas producers, and I quote, ``were not the problem 
behind the power shortages.'' However, multiple natural gas 
producers reported to State authorities that their own 
equipment failed during the storm because of cold temperatures.
    So, Madam Chair, given the devastation we've seen in Texas, 
isn't weatherization something that natural gas generators and 
operators need to at least consider?
    Ms. Craddick. Well, we don't get involved with the 
generators, natural gas generators, so you'll have to ask NERC, 
I think would be the appropriate person to ask as far as 
generators. Natural gas operators have advised us 82 percent of 
the people we have received information back from as we 
continue to analyze data--82 percent of the operators who are 
drilling and work in the field with natural gas tell us that 
their biggest problem for not--for going offline was no 
electricity in the field.
    Mr. Tonko. Well, to protect the grid, we can and I believe 
we must ensure that our power infrastructure can withstand all 
types of extreme weather, including winter storms.
    So, Mr. Magness, you recently said that Texas legislature 
should consider weatherization mandates and called the Texas 
Governor's decision to add that item to the emergency 
legislative session a good idea. So do you agree that it's 
finally time to better prepare the grid of Texas and energy 
infrastructure for severe cold weather conditions?
    Mr. Magness. Yes, and there are bills going through the 
Texas House and I believe the Texas Senate currently that 
include increased weatherization mandates, and I think they 
certainly took up the Governor's call and are looking at that 
right now.
    Mr. Tonko. But do you agree that it's finally time to 
better prepare the grid?
    Mr. Magness. I think that the steps that have been taken so 
far, we saw progress in previous winter storms. But certainly 
what we saw this time as we learn what the causes are, taking 
stronger steps to make sure those causes don't create 
additional problems in the future, yes, that would certainly 
help the grid reliability.
    Mr. Tonko. So there is a need for better steps going 
forward?
    Mr. Magness. I believe there are, yes.
    Mr. Tonko. OK. Well, I thank you.
    And, Madam Chair, I yield back.
    Ms. DeGette. I thank the gentleman.
    The Chair now recognizes Mr. Palmer for 5 minutes.
    Mr. Palmer, we can't hear you.
    We still can't hear you. Mr. Palmer. I'm going to go to Mr. 
Dunn, and then we'll come back to you. OK.
    Mr. Dunn, you're recognized for 5 minutes.
    Mr. Dunn. Thank you very much, Chairwoman DeGette.
    The Texas energy crisis should certainly serve as an 
important example for policymakers for years to come. In this 
hearing, we've spent time already focusing on what didn't work, 
and there is certainly plenty of material to work on there. I'd 
like to talk about one thing that largely did work, and that's 
nuclear energy.
    During this crisis, three out of four nuclear reactors in 
Texas were able to remain online the entire time running at 100 
percent capacity. And, ultimately, the problem that caused the 
one unit to fail was identified, solved, and it too was able to 
get back up and running while the freeze was still ongoing.
    Further, during the historic 2011 freeze, none of the 
reactors experienced any interruption. We should all note how 
much worse these events would have been without the presence of 
nuclear energy in Texas. A firm and resilient baseload energy 
generation must be a priority for every State in the Union. We 
need to make it easier to keep our existing nuclear reactors 
online as well as construct new ones.
    Mr. Shellenberger, briefly, can you explain how much worse 
this crisis could have been had Texas not had the benefit of 
its fleet of nuclear reactors?
    Mr. Shellenberger. Thank you, Congressman, and you are 
absolutely correct.
    And just to correct the mayor of Houston, no nuclear plant 
failed. A single reactor at one of Texas's nuclear plants 
tripped.
    And I would add something important I think for 
policymakers to understand, is that the Nuclear Regulatory 
Commission has in its power to change the regulation so that 
that automatic tripping does not occur during such cold weather 
events, that it was a sensor that was triggered by cold water 
in tubing. It needs to be changed so that there would be a 
human to investigate whether there's a real problem or whether 
it was just unnecessarily tripped.
    Each of these reactors provides electricity for somewhere 
around 1 million, 1.5 million Texans. So, if you consider 
having lost all four reactors, you're talking somewhere between 
4 million to 6 million people additionally without power, and 
that would have obviously been catastrophic.
    So I do think that you're right to point out that there is 
a significant difference here between weather-dependent energy 
sources and energy sources that are fundamentally not weather 
dependent. You can weatherize----
    Mr. Dunn. Thank you for clarifying----
    Mr. Shellenberger [continuing]. A wind turbine, but you 
can't make the wind blow.
    Mr. Dunn. I want to thank you for clarifying what happened 
there. I actually was--that was a little fuzzy to me. I knew 
there was a sensor problem. I didn't know exactly what it was. 
Thank you for that.
    Are you aware of any energy source that is more resilient 
than nuclear, particularly in the face of extreme weather 
events?
    Mr. Shellenberger. No, sir. Coal obviously could be made 
weather--much more weather resilient. But nuclear overall is by 
far our most sufficient source of energy. It's----
    Mr. Dunn. We're going to run out of time, so I'm going to 
keep asking you questions if I could. As States begin to shift 
their energy portfolios to favor renewables, do you think that 
goal can be met without a strong presence of nuclear energy 
generation, particularly if you're concerned about carbon 
emissions?
    And let me say, I count nuclear as a renewable too. I mean, 
we have massive quantities of nuclear waste that could and 
should be reprocessed and used for fuel as well as massive 
untapped radioactive minerals, not to mention the steam that's 
the principal product of the heat produced is renewable.
    Mr. Shellenberger?
    Mr. Shellenberger. Yes, that's absolutely right.
    If we lose 20 percent of our nuclear electricity, we're 
going to suffer affordability, reliability, sustainability. And 
also our national security will suffer.
    So I think it's urgent. I think it's very risky to be--for 
the--to do legislation that would accelerate the closure of 
those plants, which is what some legislation proposed in the 
House would do, by so heavily favoring variable renewable 
energy sources.
    So I think there's serious risks that could actually be 
exacerbated towards national security, affordability, 
reliability, and resiliency if some of this headlong push 
without a lot of thinking in advance continues towards greater 
weather-dependent energy sources.
    Mr. Dunn. I can't tell you how much I enjoy you choosing 
that term, ``weather dependent'' and ``weather independent.'' 
That actually gets to the bottom line of our discussion on 
resiliency and security and, you know, baseload energy 
production. So thank you for your comments.
    With that, Madam Chair, I yield back.
    Ms. DeGette. I thank the gentleman.
    The Chair now recognizes Vice Chair Peters for 5 minutes.
    Mr. Peters. Thank you, Madam Chair.
    I wanted to direct questions to Mr. Robb. You know, in 
California we have seen a rash of devastating wildfires. And 
this year the committee held an important hearing on how these 
wildfires affect our power sector.
    According to the most recent National Climate Assessment, 
the primary cause of power outages in the U.S. is extreme 
weather--wildfires, hurricanes, intense cold periods--and many 
of the events are expected to become more intense and frequent 
due to changes in our climate.
    The Texas energy market has received a lot of praise for 
its deregulation, the simplicity of its reliance on price 
singles in competition to provide power cost effectively, but 
those market mechanisms never accounted for the possibility 
that the pipelines would freeze, and it's pretty clear that 
market incentives didn't generate the investment needed to 
provide the necessary resiliency.
    Mr. Robb, you indicated in response to Mr. Tonko's 
questions that you agree that there's a need for government to 
impose basic standards for resiliency on the electric and gas 
providers since the market forces themselves don't induce it.
    Can you tell us what actions utilities and regional 
transmission organizations need to take to address climate 
change? Can you flesh that out a little bit for us?
    Mr. Robb. Well, I--sorry. Yes, I guess I would say from a 
grid operations perspective is to have a very broad view as to 
the range of climate scenarios that you have to be prepared to 
serve, whether that's extreme hot weather in the summer, 
extreme cold weather in the winter, making sure that you have 
the resources lined up to be able to serve your customers 
during that period of time. That's where the main--that would 
be the main thing I would focus on.
    Mr. Peters. And any specific one or two things that Texas 
should have done in advance of a cold weather snap?
    Mr. Robb. Well, I think the weatherization that we've 
talked about, both of the entire fleet of resources, because 
every resource had issues. Even the coal plants had issues with 
frozen coal piles. So coal is not the only way out of this box.
    What I'm very concerned about, though, is the fuel side of 
this equation. One of the things that I think we've come to 
learn is that resources as we thought about them traditionally, 
we think about capacity being required. We haven't spent as 
much time thinking about the fuel behind them and the energy 
that they can produce.
    I think one of the things that the grid operators need to 
start shifting their operating paradigm to is to starting to 
think about, you know, seasonal energy planning and operating 
planning that takes into account fuel variability and fuel 
availability as well.
    Mr. Peter. It's pretty clear to me that leaving that to the 
market alone isn't going to generate the incentive to give 
those investments. That's got to be--that's got to come from 
some industry and government consensus, correct?
    Mr. Robb. I would leave it to market design experts to 
decide whether the markets could invent that kind of planning 
on their own.
    Mr. Peters. Well, it's been 10 years and the market hasn't 
done it, despite knowing that this was coming.
    Let me turn to Mayor Turner. The severe storm in Texas 
can't be classified as once in a century, and you've led 
Houston through multiple major storms, including Hurricane 
Harvey in 2017. In your statement you say, quote, ``The Texas 
grid must be designed with the full appreciation that the 
climate change is real and extreme weather events can occur 
throughout the year.''
    Mayor, what investments do you see that are necessary to 
improve Texas grid resiliency in the face of a changing 
climate? And when we think about investing in good resiliency 
more broadly, are there lessons all of us can learn from Texas?
    Mr. Turner. And when I was in the Texas House back in 2011, 
what I said to the Public Utility Commission and to ERCOT and 
to our State leaders, I said, if we--Texas was going to hold on 
to its closed grid, then we had to make sure that we had an 
adequate reserve, an adequate power to meet these extreme 
weather events.
    I agree with you, over the last 10 years Texas simply 
relied on market incentives. There were no mandates. The hope 
was that the market incentives would incentivize the power 
generators to weatherize their system.
    At this point the system--the mandate must come in place. 
The system has to be weatherized, and then we have to make sure 
to do everything we can to build in as much redundancy 
throughout our power generators all the way to the end users, 
and that's what we're doing even on the local level. We have to 
make sure that we build in redundancy at the local end as well 
as from the State end.
    Mr. Peters. And I agree. Mayor, I want to say I think that 
the Texas market, I like the way their market--I understand 
their markets allocate resources in an efficient way and I 
think it's terrific that Texas has employed that power, but 
that's only as far as it goes. And it hasn't--it hasn't built 
in the need to do this resiliency investment and then----
    Mr. Turner. And one other thing is that the hope was there 
was market incentive, the power generators would do it. But 
they're not going to produce power that people are not going to 
pay for. They're not going to do it, and that was the hope and 
it did not happen.
    Mr. Peters. Right. I agree.
    Thank you, Madam Chair. I yield back.
    Ms. DeGette. Thank you.
    Mr. Palmer, let's try you again for 5 minutes.
    Mr. Palmer. Am I on?
    Ms. DeGette. Yes. Thanks.
    Mr. Palmer. Great. I don't know what happened with my 
technology. It's not working. It's kind of like the Texas power 
grid.
    Mr. Shellenberger, some of my Democratic colleagues argue, 
if we don't convert to 100 percent renewables to get to zero 
CO2 emissions, that we're going to face a worldwide 
climate catastrophe in 10 years. Is there any reasonable 
expectation that we can replace power generation in that--and 
go completely to renewables in that timeframe?
    Mr. Shellenberger. Absolutely not.
    Mr. Palmer. Is there any reasonable expectation that--is 
the fact that there's 1 billion people with little to no access 
to reliable power--and that numerous people back that up--could 
these people have a reasonable expectation that they will one 
day soon have access to reliable power generated entirely by 
renewables?
    Mr. Shellenberger. No, sir.
    Mr. Palmer. So they wouldn't have a reasonable expectation 
that they could only----
    Mr. Shellenberger. In fact, the process of human 
development is moving from unreliable renewables mainly in the 
form of wood but also some amount of wind and water towards 
reliable energy sources. That's what the industrial revolution 
was all about.
    Mr. Palmer. I'm not totally--for the record, I'm not 
against renewables. I just want to make the point from an 
engineering and technological perspective that it's not 
possible to provide all of our energy through renewables. I 
agree with Bill Gates that our best solution is through 
nuclear.
    We had a hearing--I think it was yesterday, it may have 
been the day before yesterday. Former Secretary of Energy 
Ernest Moniz talked about the need to expedite our permiting 
for new construction. I pointed out that Pennsylvania's trying 
to build a new rapid transit system, and it took them 8 years 
just to do the paperwork. Well, according to the climate 
catastrophe folks, that's 2 years short of the worldwide 
calamity just to do the paperwork.
    I'd also like to point out, in regard to a number of people 
who attribute the polar vortex to climate change, it is a form 
of climate change. But this is not new. This was actually 
predicted in early January, as has been pointed out, but it--
the prediction was based on observation of atmospheric 
conditions that were very similar to the last major polar 
vortex on this magnitude that occurred in 1929.
    There was one that occurred in 1887 in which the 
temperature in Lafayette, Louisiana--Indiana; Lafayette, 
Indiana--went down to 33 below. It was first designated a polar 
vortex in 1843 and showed up in an English magazine, Household 
Words, which one of the editors was Charles Dickens, in 1853. 
These are not new.
    You know, prior to coming to Congress and running a think 
tank, prior to that I worked for two engineering companies. And 
when we would--when our structural engineers did engineering, 
for instance, they took into account earthquakes, for instance, 
or hurricanes and they designed the buildings to withstand 
certain seismic events or wind events. That's just part of 
understanding the history of weather, the history of natural 
disasters.
    And we get into these brand new deal type things that 
really don't make a lot of sense in terms of, first of all, 
mitigating against the climate change that we know is going to 
occur without doing irreparable harm to the economy.
    I'd like for you to comment on that, Mr. Shellenberger.
    Mr. Shellenberger. Yes, absolutely correct. May I point out 
Texas spent $50 billion on renewables rather than weatherizing 
its power generation sources. California spent $80 billion 
rather than clearing the brush from around the electrical 
wires, which is the main cause of power blackouts in 2019. And 
in 2020 it was energy shortfall.
    So if you--if we really think that extreme weather events 
are becoming more frequent, then why would we be moving towards 
weather--more weather-dependent energy sources and shutting 
down our most efficient forms of energy, including nuclear, 
which also happens to be our largest source of zero-carbon 
power?
    So I think if we're going to be consistent here and if 
we're saying that we're committed to action on climate change, 
then you can't have it both ways. You can't be shutting down 
our nuclear plants and also preventing the building of new 
ones.
    Mr. Palmer. I thank the gentleman for your work.
    And, Chairman DeGette, I appreciate your indulgence with my 
technical difficulties.
    I yield back.
    Ms. DeGette. We're all having them today. So no worries.
    The Chair now recognizes Ms. Schrier for 5 minutes.
    Ms. Schrier. Thank you, Madam Chair.
    First, based on my colleagues' recent comments, I just feel 
compelled to clarify for the record that we Democrats do 
understand the importance of baseload for which hydropower and 
nuclear are critical. And it is misinformation to state 
otherwise. However, it is also misinformation to suggest that 
wind energy was primarily to blame for the outages.
    So, Mayor Turner, your testimony makes clear that blaming 
renewables for the failure is blatantly false. Mayor Turner, 
isn't it true that all--during storms all types of power 
generation underperformed in Texas?
    Mr. Turner. Absolutely. Natural gas, coal-fired, what is 
it, nuke tripped? It didn't provide power. You can call its 
failure tripping, it doesn't matter. And renewables in Texas 
account for only about 30 percent of our total energy 
portfolio.
    Ms. Schrier. That's right. And during the winter, even less 
than that. Thank you very much for that clarification.
    Mr. Robb, in your testimony you explained the 
diversification of our energy grids with more reliance on 
natural gas as we introduce additional renewable resources. And 
I know that in States like my State, Washington, we have been 
proactively thinking about weatherization and energy 
reliability requirements as we aim toward net zero by 2045.
    You also highlight that extreme weather events are no 
longer rare, and they're no longer just in one area, they're 
everywhere. So it is clear that Texas will continue to 
experience cold snaps, hurricanes, and other extreme weather 
events. We should expect this everywhere in the country.
    And so, as efforts are made to fortify our grid in the face 
of increasing extreme weather events, we have to be cognizant 
of our diverse and changing energy mix. Contingency plans 
currently in place like load shedding are not really 
sustainable as evidenced and don't ensure sustainable, diverse 
electric grids.
    So, Mr. Robb, can you elaborate on the impact of this 
energy transition on grids' resiliency and reliability and also 
the importance of I'll call them beefy transmission lines that 
connect to States and what role NERC will play as Texas and our 
country fortify our energy grid?
    Mr. Robb. Well, there's a lot in there. I'll step back and 
say that at NERC we are resource--agnostic's not the right word 
but, you know, we don't select resources and we don't own 
assets. We don't own--site transmissions and so forth. So our 
main focus is making sure that as this new mix of energy 
resources and transmission lines get developed that the system 
works, integrates well, maintains frequency, maintains voltage, 
and has the energy and the capacity to be able to serve load. 
That's where our focus is going to remain, on the technical 
operability of the system.
    Ms. Schrier. Thank you very much.
    Now, Mayor Turner, Houston is known as the energy capital 
of the world and is also leading in the transition to cleaner 
energy. So, Mr. Turner, Mayor Turner, Mr. Shellenberger seems 
to imply that renewables only make the grid more unreliable, 
and yet Texas has made a significant investment in renewables, 
getting nearly a quarter of its supply from that class of power 
generation, looking forward, understanding the future, knowing 
what we need to do and thinking about decarbonizing.
    Do you agree with Mr. Shellenberger's assertion that 
renewables only make for a less reliable grid?
    Mr. Turner. I disagree. Let me cite to you Houston is the 
fourth-largest city in the country. One hundred percent of our 
city facilities are powered by renewables, 100 percent. We 
purchase more renewables than any other city in the United 
States.
    We are the energy capital of the world and we're proud of 
it, and we are seeking to lead in energy transition and we are 
working with our energy industry partners like BP and Shell and 
NRG and CenterPoint. They underwrote our Resilient Houston 
plan, as well as our climate action plan.
    Now we're focusing on climate tact and climate energy. 
Renewables are the way to get us to net zero. And bear in mind, 
the planet is getting warmer. The science is clear that these 
storms are going to continue to come unless we take proactive 
steps.
    Ms. Schrier. I appreciate your comments there, because 
industry sees this as well. And they are getting in on this and 
understanding that we need an energy mix.
    So given that, Mr. Magness, given the changing energy mix, 
what is ERCOT doing to ensure that Texas' power generation 
assets are reliable and can perform under extreme weather 
conditions? And then could you just comment on whether some 
power sources are easier or cheaper to weatherize?
    Ms. DeGette. If you can be brief, sir, because the 
gentlelady's time has expired.
    Ms. Schrier. Apologies.
    Mr. Magness. Sure. I guess the key thing for resilience I 
would say is having a diverse mix. The market in Texas has 
attracted a lot of wind, a lot of solar. But we have a lot of 
gas. We're led by gas. We have nuclear and coal. And I think 
overall having a mixture that can deliver in different types of 
weather situations, in different kinds of grid situations is 
the most important factor.
    Ms. Schrier. Thank you.
    And apologize for that indulgence.
    I yield.
    Ms. DeGette. I thank the gentlelady.
    The Chair now recognizes Mr. Joyce for 5 minutes.
    Mr. Joyce. Thank you, Madam Chair. And thank you for 
convening this important hearing today.
    Mr. Shellenberger, the recent event in Texas highlights the 
importance of natural gas for the grid. For example, certain 
renewables like wind power are not necessarily going to be 
there when you need them the most. And, while I personally 
support clean energy on every level, given how much of the 
baseload is comprised of fossil fuels, because you can call on 
it whenever you need it, would you agree that we cannot 
transition away from fossil fuels without reliable backup 
power?
    Mr. Shellenberger. Thank you, Congressman.
    Yes, absolutely I would agree. And just to correct 
something: If Houston were 100 percent reliable on solar and 
wind, then there would have been mass power outages, deaths, 
loss of hospitals, everything during that period. So the only 
way--I'm not sure what that even refers to, but the only way 
you can have solar and wind is if you have significant 
quantities of hydro, natural gas, or some other source of 
firming power.
    Mr. Joyce. And continuing with natural gas production: If 
natural gas production was to drastically be reduced in the 
next several years, based on what you've personally seen in 
California, would you please describe the impact that you 
estimate that this would have on utility prices?
    Mr. Shellenberger. Well, we've seen what's happened in 
California. And it's the same thing that's happened in Germany 
and everywhere else in the world that has done a significant 
deployment of weather-dependent energies. Our electricity 
prices went up 8 times more than the rest of the United States 
since 2011. We spent about $80 billion on renewables and all of 
the accompanying equipment and personnel, rather than doing the 
work to reduce the risk of fire hazard and the risks of extreme 
weather events.
    You know, obviously, you see the same thing in Texas. If 
you don't have sufficient amount of baseload-reliable front 
power supply, you're going to have power outages. In 
California, we shut down our nuclear plant, which was about 
2,200 megawatts. It was about that amount of electricity that 
we had to load shed in California in order to avoid the 
cascading failures.
    Mr. Joyce. Madam Chair, I ask unanimous consent that a 
recent article in the Wall Street Journal entitled ``Texas 
Blackouts Blew in on the Wind'' be included for the record.
    Ms. DeGette. And, as with the other submissions, we will 
consider it at the end of the hearing.
    Mr. Joyce. Thank you.
    According to this article, during the storm in Texas, 
energy generated from wind and solar decreased 52 percent, 
while the electricity generated from natural gas increased by 
72 percent. Given this information, Mr. Shellenberger, would 
the situation in Texas have been prevented if the State solely 
relied on renewable sources?
    Mr. Shellenberger. Absolutely not. I think the two numbers 
you have to keep in mind is, at the lowest levels of production 
wind produced 2 percent of its capacity in Texas, nuclear 
produced 73 percent. This is not just a difference of quantity. 
This is a difference of quality. These are qualitatively 
different power sources.
    One depends on when the wind is blowing or the sun is 
shining. The other one simply depends on weatherized equipment. 
If you weatherize all the wind turbines in Texas and the wind 
still doesn't blow, you don't have wind energy.
    This has been mystified, I think, by some ideas that 
somehow you can find solar and wind somewhere at some point. 
It's not true. It's also been mystified by the idea of 
batteries. They do not provide seasonal storage, which is what 
Texas needed in order to get through the crisis.
    So on the fundamental questions of the need for nonweather-
dependent energies, there's no debate. I mean, nobody--there's 
nobody that--of major energy analytical significance who denies 
that.
    Mr. Joyce. Could you summarize finally for the take-home 
message: Is the variability that we are reaching for in energy 
supplies, at this point in time does that variability lack 
reliability?
    Mr. Shellenberger. It does. And I did want to mention that 
there is a way to maintain the grid's resilience and 
reliability while adding a lot of variable renewable energy 
sources. And it's to do with what Germany has done, which is to 
keep their coal power plants online, in part so they don't 
become overly dependent on imported Russian natural gas.
    So you don't have to have an increasingly unreliable grid 
when you add a lot of weather-dependent renewables, but it 
seems you have to keep some of the source baseload power on, 
and if it's not going to be nuclear, then it has to be coal and 
natural gas.
    And I think it's just obvious to everybody that becoming 
overdependent on natural gas is extremely risky and very 
radical when it comes to the direction of electricity 
production.
    Mr. Joyce. I see my time has expired. I thank you.
    Madam Chair, I yield.
    Ms. DeGette. I thank the gentleman.
    The Chair now recognizes Mrs. Trahan for 5 minutes.
    Mrs. Trahan. Thank you, Madam Chair.
    Many Texans have indicated that they were unprepared for 
this storm and the resulting disruptions in part because they 
were not adequately warned of what was coming their way.
    Mayor Turner, even as ERCOT was telling the public to 
conserve energy in a statement released hours before the 
outages began, ERCOT was still maintained. It had, quote, ``the 
tools and procedures in place to maintain a reliable electric 
particular system,'' end quote.
    I'm worried this statement may have provided a false sense 
of reassurance. So Mayor Turner, can you describe just how 
unprepared your constituents were for the storm? Do you think 
they were adequately warned about what to expect?
    Mr. Turner. And the answer is no.
    Let me just give you a personal example. OK. We were told 
by our transmission distribution company that to expect rolling 
blackouts anywhere from 1 hour to 2 hours maximum. That's what 
we were told. When the power at my house went out at 2:00 a.m. 
in the morning, I assumed this was going to take place and in 
an hour or two the power would be restored. I didn't even worry 
about it. But at 4:00, 5:00, and 6:00 when the power didn't 
return, I was on the phone asking my transmission distribution 
company what is the problem. They were not rolling blackouts. 
They were power outages that lasted 3 and 4 days. No, they were 
not prepared. And we were not forewarned.
    Mrs. Trahan. That's helpful.
    You know, I'm duly concerned that communication between 
those responsible for the grid's reliability came up woefully 
short. You know, as I know from what is happening in New 
England, many parts of our country are relying more on natural 
gas to generate electricity, making coordination between the 
natural gas and electricity systems even more necessary during 
extreme weather events.
    Chairman Craddick, you testified before the Texas 
legislature that there was, quote, ``a lack of communication 
from ERCOT.'' You further testified that ERCOT, quote, ``didn't 
understand that they needed a continuous gas flow to be able to 
put gas into power plants.''
    So, Chairman Craddick, nearly half of the electricity 
generated on ERCOT's grid comes from natural gas, which you 
regulate. Why didn't you communicate with ERCOT proactively to 
ensure they were aware of this issue and could plan 
accordingly?
    Ms. Craddick. So we had not been involved with their 
planning about natural gas, but what we did do and were asked 
to do on the Thursday before, so the 11th, by the Public 
Utility Commission was prioritize natural gas for gas-fired 
power plants, which we did. They became the second in priority.
    We did an emergency order February 12 at 6:30 at night 
based on questions and recommendations from the Public Utility 
Commission to prioritize those natural gas power plants. Before 
that, we had not had a conversation about that at all. We'd 
always focused on summertime weather.
    So that has become a priority for us to again go back and 
relook at our curtailment orders for natural gas, which we will 
do, and see where the priorities need to continue to be.
    Mrs. Trahan. All right. So with my remaining time, Mayor 
Turner, you also chaired both the Resilient Cities Network and 
Climate Mayors organization. And under your leadership Houston 
developed an ambitious plan to mitigate climate change.
    Can you explain how climate adaptation and mitigation 
efforts go hand in hand and why we must do both to reduce 
future climate catastrophes? You know, what role does renewable 
energy play in trying to achieve that goal?
    Mr. Turner. It plays a vital role in order to reduce 
greenhouse gas emissions, and I will tell you that many of our 
energy companies recognize that. We recognize--and just from a 
factual point of view for myself, becoming mayor, I faced a 
500-year storm. That was in 2016.
    Twenty seventeen was Hurricane Harvey, 2019 was Tropical 
Storm Imelda. Last month was this winter storm. They're coming 
with greater frequency and greater intensity. Unless we take 
steps to mitigate our risk, unless we take steps in order to 
bring down greenhouse gas emissions, it's only going to get 
worse, more frequency, and greater loss of life.
    Fifty-seven people--and I want to underscore that--57 
people died in Texas from this winter storm, hypothermia, 
carbon monoxide poisoning. Hospitals, police stations, dialysis 
clinics. So the system failed, and it was a systemwide failure.
    By addressing resilience and also by putting in place 
renewables, we can make this a better situation for our 
businesses, for our energy companies, for moms and dads, you 
name it, across the board. And we can get to net zero. And the 
city of Houston, its facilities are 100 percent renewable, its 
facilities and we're moving forward and I think we're heading 
in the right direction.
    Ms. Trahan. Couldn't have said it better myself.
    Madam Chair, I yield back. Thank you.
    Ms. DeGette. I thank the gentlelady.
    We're now pleased to have several members of the full 
committee join us, and I am delighted first to recognize the 
chair of the Select Committee on Climate Change, Ms. Castor, 
for 5 minutes.
    Ms. Castor. Well, thank you very much, Chairwoman DeGette, 
for focusing our attention on the energy system failures and 
the catastrophe in Texas.
    Mayor Turner, it's very good to see you again. Thank you 
very much for your insightful testimony.
    You know, climate change will continue to fuel these 
unpredictable and costly events. So we all have a 
responsibility to act now to make our communities more 
resilient and incorporate modern American-led innovations into 
our energy systems.
    I think, Mayor Turner, I've heard you loud and clear. 
You've been very direct that Texas failed to address this issue 
after a similar event in 2011.
    And I want to thank Representative Rice and others who have 
pointed out how Texas has dropped the ball. They've failed to 
respond to make the grid more resilient after 2011, but the 
testimony that I've heard today largely has been in defense of 
the status quo, and that's a recipe for more climate-fueled 
disasters, pollution, and loss of life.
    Thermal power plants, the primary technology that went 
offline, and wind and solar performed as well or better than 
expected. Renewable resources are reliable. For example, at 
times wind energy provides 60 percent or more of the total 
electricity in the southwest power pool.
    It's a system that includes parts of 14 States and 
stretches from Texas to North Dakota. And when you look across 
the globe, wind turbines function well in extreme cold, but 
they have to be weatherized. And all technologies struggle in 
the face of severe conditions, and we just have to prepare for 
this.
    So here are a few ways. Grid enhancements and expanded 
transmission are going to be critical to preventing outages 
like this in the future. And as we head into what is going to 
be a very hot summer, we believe, we need to focus on 
protecting people from the consequences of these outages.
    And I want to thank Rep. Veasey, Rep. Fletcher for working 
with me to implement a number of the recommendations from our 
Climate Crisis Action Plan out of the Select Committee--one, 
improving planning for the resilience of the bulk electric 
system to climate impact and two, expanding the deployment of 
distributed energy resources to provide backup power.
    We recommend that FERC direct NERC to develop reliability 
standards, anticipating climate impacts, with the understanding 
that these threats will vary by region from wildfires to floods 
to cold snaps and hurricanes. So Congress also needs to provide 
the funding to DOE to evaluate climate threats to the grid and 
help share that information widely.
    So, Mayor Turner, thank you very much for your testimony 
today and congratulations for your very forward-looking climate 
action plan there in Houston. I'm sure many of the residents 
who lost power would have loved to have had distributed energy 
resources and microgrids and grid-connected storage.
    Is this something that you envision as part of your climate 
action plan, something that other communities around the 
country should be considering?
    Mr. Turner. Absolutely. We're looking at increasing 
resilience, and we've done this within our city facilities but 
as well as in our assets in these communities, because it 
wasn't just the city that hurt in terms of the facilities.
    But you have a number of people who have faced these 
seasonal storms over and over again, operating on the margins 
and we need to do everything we can to put them in a better 
position so these climate action resilient strategies are 
important for our at-risk and vulnerable communities even more 
so.
    Ms. Castor. Well, I think that's right. And that's one of 
the reasons, as we move forward to Build Back Better, we want 
to provide these kind of resources to communities on the front 
lines.
    Mr. Turner. Absolutely.
    Ms. Castor. So I'm looking to you for your partnership and 
your leadership. You come highly recommended from the Texas 
delegation, and we're going to need all of us to work in a 
bipartisan way.
    Really making our electric grid more resilient should not 
be a partisan endeavor. We know we've got to modernize it. It's 
going to take all of us working together to do that.
    So thank you, Madam Chair, and I yield back.
    Ms. DeGette. I thank the gentlelady.
    And I'd like to welcome Mr. Crenshaw to our full committee 
and to our subcommittee.
    And you're recognized for 5 minutes.
    Mr. Crenshaw. Thank you, Madam Chairwoman. I really 
appreciate you letting me come on and talk about my home State 
here.
    I want to get a few things straight. OK. There's been a lot 
of misconceptions in this hearing. First, the Texas market 
design is deregulated just like California, just like New 
Hampshire, just like many others. Our market design is more 
similar to California than it is to Georgia.
    Second, the Texas grid is not the Wild West. It is indeed 
regulated by Texas.
    Third, Texas energy market is not a free market. It's not 
some Wild West free market, as many have insinuated. There's 
actually enormous subsidies that have been eroding the market 
for the last 30 years.
    I'm going to submit an article for the record that talks 
about the eroding effects of the PTC on natural gas investment, 
for instance.
    And really quick, Mr. Shellenberger, you're good at putting 
out facts like this. By orders of magnitude, how much more does 
wind and solar get in subsidies than, say, nuclear?
    Mr. Shellenberger. The last estimate that was done I 
believe by either Congressional Research Service or GAO was 98 
times in the last year that they looked at it.
    Mr. Crenshaw. And that's right. I think gas is probably 
even more, and so by far not a free market.
    OK. Next fact check. No, thermal power didn't fail the 
most. OK. Because a lot of people simply refused to believe 
that during the storm electricity generated from wind and solar 
decreased by 52 percent, while the electricity generated from 
natural gas increased 72 percent. It wasn't enough.
    Everything failed to an extent, weatherization being a huge 
part of that. We've heard that ad nauseam. But let's stop 
building this straw man argument that Republicans are blaming 
wind. We are not blaming wind. In fact, no one in this hearing 
has said that, because you can't blame something that's 
inherently unreliable. OK.
    Next, next thing, Mr. Mayor, your city facilities are not 
powered by renewables when the wind isn't blowing and the sun 
isn't shining. They just aren't.
    Now, during the storm, 20 percent of the city's generators 
would not start. Mr. Mayor, why were these generators not 
maintained? Do you think it's the Federal Government's 
responsibility to maintain those, or can you take responsible 
for that?
    Mr. Turner. Well, Congressman, several things. I'm not 
asking the Federal Government to assume responsibility for a 
generator that did not perform. But what I will say to you is 
that 100 percent of our city facilities are powered by 
renewables. And number two--number three, what I would remind 
you is that over 67 percent of the power in the State of Texas 
is natural gas, coal-fired and nuclear. Renewables count for a 
far smaller percentage of gas. And, fourth, I voted to 
deregulate this market in 1999.
    So generation is deregulated. Our retail electric providers 
are deregulated. Transmission distribution is regulated.
    I'm quite familiar with----
    Mr. Crenshaw. Mr. Mayor, I've given you enough time there. 
If you want to respond to me more, you can actually text me 
back every once in a while. I've got a long list of 
nonresponses from you on my phone.
    But, no, again, it is not true that your city is getting 
power from solar when there's no sun shining. OK. Now you buy 
into a specific kind of market that allows you to pay a little 
bit extra so that you can say you're buying those electrons, 
but in reality they're not.
    This is the point. When you're talking about a reliable 
source of energy, you don't want your hospitals being powered 
by just wind and solar, right? You have to have backups. And so 
it would be good to look into those generators when 20 percent 
of them failed, because that's when what we rely on when things 
go bad.
    Mr. Shellenberger, you know, there's this talk about storms 
happening more and more. Can you talk about the data on that, 
the frequency and intensity of storms?
    Mr. Shellenberger. Yes, I mentioned--thank you, 
Congressman. I mentioned before you joined us that the number 
of these severe cold snaps is just too low for anybody to make 
any claim about increasing frequency, and you don't need to. We 
need to be resilient no matter what's happening.
    Mr. Crenshaw. Right. And if we completely decarbonize the 
grid, will this lead to zero extreme weather events? Is there 
any evidence of that, or is the weather going to look like San 
Diego?
    Mr. Shellenberger. Of course not. And I would like to 
correct something that was said earlier around hurricanes and 
frequency and intensity. The best available science from the 
National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration finds, 
concludes that the intensity of Atlantic hurricanes will rise 5 
percent but their frequency will decline 25 percent. So 
sometimes the data--sometimes the science doesn't go in one 
direction.
    Mr. Crenshaw. Interesting.
    Ms. Craddick, this committee and these witnesses have 
asserted time and time again that natural gas is key to the 
reliable grid. But recent administrative and legislative 
actions would indicate these words on the committee don't meet 
the actions. Can you tell us some the impact of some of the 
recent actions, the recent proposals on the production of this 
very critical resource, natural gas?
    Ms. Craddick. Well, if you look at where the Federal 
Government is today, we're blessed to be in Texas and not in a 
State that is--has Federal lands because there's no production 
or lack of production or limiting production of natural gas, 
first and foremost.
    And the other thing that's happened in Texas that we now 
recognize, when you're talking about compressors, we are now 
moving to electric compressors because Texas is a nonattainment 
State. We wanted to make sure in this State that we were 
continuing to use natural gas for air emissions quality.
    So those two things have led us to shift from natural gas 
and to look at other opportunities, electricity being one of 
them.
    Mr. Crenshaw. Thank you. I yield back.
    Ms. DeGette. I thank the gentleman.
    The Chair now recognizes Mrs. Fletcher for 5 minutes.
    Mrs. Fletcher. Thank you, Chairwoman DeGette.
    These issues are so important for Texans and for all of us 
across the country, as this hearing has shown. And as we're 
getting toward the end of the hearing, I just want to thank the 
witnesses for their time and their testimony. This is a 
conversation that will continue certainly in this Congress and 
in my home State of Texas. There's simply not enough time for 
me to ask all the questions that I have in these 5 minutes, but 
I do hope to touch on a few things.
    First of all, I think it's important to understand that all 
of our sources of electricity supply underperformed at the same 
time we had record demand. And that is just critically 
important to understand that we have and need a diversity of 
fuel sources.
    But we also have to be prepared for both having variable 
sources of energy and also having firm sources and being able 
to come up with a plan to structure our power supply that way.
    What we do know is that there are a lot of warnings that 
this could happen, that it might happen, ample warnings from 
FERC and NERC about how the Texas grid was vulnerable to winter 
resilience issues. And those have been documented. So I want to 
try to address a couple of things here quickly.
    Mr. Magness, you testified earlier that the transmission 
providers prepare plans and protocols to shed load and that 
those decisions are made by the providers, not ERCOT. That's 
correct, right?
    Mr. Magness. Yes, it is.
    Mrs. Fletcher. OK. And are those plans provided to ERCOT as 
the transmission providers?
    Mr. Magness. That's a good question, Congresswoman. I'm not 
sure that we--we don't have any role in reviewing or improving 
those plans. I can check and see if we received copies of them, 
but essentially we issue the directive and say we need this 
much load shed and then they implement those plans out of their 
communities.
    Mrs. Fletcher. Do you know--oh, I'm sorry. I lost audio.
    Mr. Magness. Can you hear me?
    Ms. DeGette. We can hear you.
    Mrs. Fletcher. I can hear you now.
    Mr. Magness. OK. OK.
    Mrs. Fletcher. I think I caught most of that answer. So 
that would be great if you could get back to us on that 
question and whether in general, you know, they are provided 
for review to any reviewing agency as more than our priority or 
whether the PUC or any other Texas agency reviews those would 
be very helpful. And if you could, if you have copies, if you 
could provide those to this committee or let us know who can 
provide those plans to this committee, that would be very 
helpful.
    Mr. Magness. We can get back to you.
    Mrs. Fletcher. That'd be great. Thank you.
    There's also some testimony earlier about requirements for 
weatherization, and I just want to be clear. As I understand 
it, neither Texas or ERCOT have requirements for weatherization 
except in certain limited circumstances for the power 
generators.
    Instead, as I understood in a call during the storm with 
ERCOT, the generators rely on best practices, industry 
practices shared amongst themselves. Is that correct?
    Mr. Magness. Yes. That's correct currently, yes.
    Mrs. Fletcher. OK. So would you characterize the failure of 
what we saw in this winter storm as one of market design?
    Mr. Magness. I wouldn't characterize it as market design in 
the sense that, when we saw the generation go off, it was 
related directly to the winter storm. Now how much of that was 
winterization or other impacts, we will find out.
    But I think the actual loss of generation that caused the 
outages was primarily had to do with the winter storm.
    Mrs. Fletcher. Thank you, Mr. Magness. I appreciate that.
    I want to ask my next few questions to Mr. Robb. Thank you 
very much for your testimony today as well.
    I want to follow up on the 2011 Texas winter storm report. 
You made numerous recommendations for ERCOT how to be better 
prepared going forward. To your knowledge, did ERCOT adopt 
those?
    Mr. Robb. I think most of our recommendations were aimed at 
the generation and utility segment of the business, not to 
ERCOT itself.
    Mrs. Fletcher. OK.
    Mr. Robb. So the one thing that I think is important that 
I'd like to underscore is that what's really important for the 
grid operator, for Mr. Magness and his organization, he needs 
to know what the state of play is out on the grid. He needs to 
know which resourses are going to be there or not.
    And I think one of the problems here is that they were 
counting on resources to show up that didn't, and that's a 
communication failure that needs to be addressed.
    Mrs. Fletcher. Yes. And I agree there are a lot of 
communication failures, and I think that that's an important 
part of the study across the board for everyone who's reviewing 
this.
    I have really limited time. So I'm going to submit a couple 
more questions to you for the record at the conclusion. But I 
do want to hear you talk briefly to this committee, while we 
have time.
    In your testimony you talked about how additional frontline 
infrastructure, including gas storage, is needed for 
reliability within the transmission system. Why are additional 
pipeline systems so key to maintaining reliability?
    Mr. Robb. Well, I think, as we've heard, right, the gas 
system and the electric system are like this, now, right? 
They're not two systems that can coexist separately with just, 
you know, touch points, right? The gas reliability and electric 
reliability are inherently connected.
    One of the issues that we see--and we see this most clearly 
in California, because we have the most solar build-out in 
California--is the ability of the gas system to support very 
rapid power plant ramps.
    So in the--particularly in the afternoon when solar comes 
off, the power demand continues to grow, and natural gas is 
currently the only resource that can meet that peak. And the 
amount of gas and the volume of gas that those power plants 
suck out of the gas system is extraordinary. And storage turns 
to be one of key assets to be able to maintain pressure in the 
gas system in that scenario.
    Mrs. Fletcher. Well, thank you so much for that. Five 
minutes goes very quickly.
    Chairwoman DeGette, thank you for giving them to me, plus a 
little extra. I appreciate it.
    And I yield back.
    Ms. DeGette. I thank the gentlelady.
    Mr. Veasey, are you--there are you. I recognize you now for 
5 minutes.
    Mr. Veasey. Thank you, Madam Chair.
    In last months's winter storm we had more than 4.5 million 
Texans that didn't have power during one of the coldest weeks 
really in our State's history. We are obviously blessed in 
Texas with a lot of natural resources, but what we saw can 
happen when proper steps aren't taken to prepare.
    And so I want to start off and asking questions to my 
former colleague and dear friend, the mayor of Houston, 
Sylvester Turner. When we served together in the legislature, 
this was--this area was Sylvester's wheelhouse. He knew the 
area of power probably more than any other legislator that I've 
served with.
    And because you're known in this area and we know the 
report from FERC and NERC that detailed the need for action 
following the 2011 outages went largely ignored, in your 
opinion, Mayor Turner, did the PUC do enough to address these 
issues with the information that they had?
    Mr. Turner. And the direct answer, Congressman Veasey, is 
no. And these issues were discussed in 2011, in 2012, and 
subsequent years. So the answer is no.
    Mr. Veasey. What do you think the legislature needs to do 
this session to prevent this from happening again? As you know, 
we're getting closer and closer to sine die. It's going to be 
the end of May before we know it. What do they need to do more 
than anything else to prevent this from happening again?
    Mr. Turner. I think, one, there needs to be a full 
acknowledgement that climate change is real. And once you 
acknowledge it, then you build it into your strategies.
    Number two, you can no longer--we can no longer rely just 
on a market incentive system. There will have to be 
requirements to weatherize our system. That's a must. And if 
we're going to continue to be a closed grid, ERCOT, 90 percent 
covering the State of Texas, then we have to take every 
necessary steps to make sure there's adequate energy supply in 
peak demands.
    Mr. Veasey. Yes. No, Mayor Turner, thank you very much.
    We know it's possible to maintain reliability in much more 
extreme weather conditions, but unfortunately no fuel source is 
perfect during the storm. In the coming months we're going to 
learn more about unweatherized wind turbines, unweatherized 
thermal power plants, or frozen pipes.
    One thing that we do know had a significant impact was the 
inability to produce natural gas from frozen wellheads and a 
loss of electricity at production and process and 
infrastructure. After similar blackouts in 2011, 2014, 2018, 
Federal investigators said that freezing of natural gas 
pipelines and compressor stations was one of the causes for the 
blackout. The Railroad Commission has failed to take action on 
that.
    We also know that many natural gas producers and processors 
failed to file the necessary paperwork with the electric 
utility to be listed as critical infrastructure. That meant 
that, when we had rolling blackouts and when they were 
initiated, these natural gas companies didn't have the 
electricity necessary to pull gas from underground, which in 
turn led to a natural gas shortage of power plants and created 
a downward spiral of more blackouts.
    Right now it's optional for these companies to file this 
paperwork, but Charlie Geren, also from Fort Worth, he has a 
bill, Commissioner Craddick, that he is going to file that will 
answer some of these concerns that I just laid out. And I want 
to ask you, Commissioner Craddick, should these energy 
producers--who we all know are critical to keeping the lights 
on so we won't have a repeat of what we saw--should they be 
required to file this paperwork? And should it be included on 
the electric utilities critical list?
    Ms. Craddick. I think it's an important piece that, 
frankly, my agency hadn't been communicated from ERCOT that 
this existed. But, too, if you look at for these forms the 
second--the time when we finally realized this form existed, 
because it was based on summertime, not wintertime, but when we 
realized that, we've now sent it from our agency, sent a letter 
to every single operator that we regulate, suggesting that they 
file this form.
    Mr. Veasey. But you don't think it should be required?
    Ms. Craddick. The challenge we still have though is ERCOT 
today doesn't prioritize gas fields. It's only gas processing 
plants forward. So we'd like to encourage ERCOT to remap the 
system and understand that the whole system needs to be 
included, not just part, because we had operators who told us 
they would have been happy to file the form had, one, they 
known about it and, two, had they been included in the form, 
and they were not.
    Mr. Veasey. And see, and Madam Chair, as I yield back my 
time, as it has expired, that's the problem, is that we are 
literally going to get to end of May and the Texas legislative 
session will have begun, and Republicans just want this problem 
to go away.
    They don't want to deal with this. They don't want to 
require anybody to have to do anything, which means we're going 
to be sitting in the cold again, and that is--and that is the 
problem. They're running out the clock. They are literally 
running out the clock, as I am 40 seconds over my time.
    Madam Chair, I give you back the gavel. Thank you so much.
    Ms. DeGette. I thank the gentleman and our other members 
from Texas for helping illuminate this, and I hope that this--
that this hearing will help bring some light and bring some 
changes to Texas.
    I also really want to thank every single one of our 
witnesses today. As I said, particularly those of you who are 
operating in Texas, your plates are full right now. And you 
really gave us a great overview on what's happening and what we 
need to do. We can use that as guidance as we look at national 
policy. So I really want to thank you.
    I will ask you, Mr. Griffith, do you have anything else?
    Mr. Griffith. Well, Madam Chair, I would just say that it's 
my understanding from the Texas delegation that there are six 
bills that are moving through the process, and they're 
bipartisan bills to try to make things better in the Texas 
legislature, and I just wanted to make sure that was in the 
record. I appreciate you----
    Ms. DeGette. Thank you. I thank the gentleman. I thank the 
gentleman.
    The Chair will remind Members that, pursuant to committee 
rules, they have 10 business days to submit additional 
questions for the record to be answered by our witnesses who 
have appeared today, and I hope that the witnesses will respond 
promptly to any questions if you would receive any.
    There have been a number of references to documents for the 
record in this hearing, and at this point we will insert them 
in the record by unanimous consent: A letter from 
Representative Pallone and others to ERCOT, dated March 4, 
2021; a letter from ERCOT responding to Representative Pallone 
and others, dated March 18, 2021; a letter from Representative 
Pallone and others to Governor Greg Abbott, dated February 
19th, 2021; a letter from the office of the Governor of Texas 
to Representative Pallone and others, dated March 19th, 2021; a 
presentation from ERCOT reviewing the February 2021 extreme 
cold weather event; a graphic detailing ERCOT's 2020 energy 
generation mix.
    Three charts showing ERCOT's grid frequency--all of those, 
by the way, are offered by me--there's three charts showing 
ERCOT's grid frequency, total generation, and generation source 
between March 1 and March 18th, by Mr. Griffith.
    An article from the Texas Tribune dated March 18, 2021, 
Texas House Bill 10, 11, 12, 13, 16, and 17--all of those 
documents are offered by Mr. Burgess. An op-ed from the Wall 
Street Journal dated March 19th, 2021, offered by Mr. Joyce, 
and an article from RMI dated September 30th, 2020.
    Without objection, these documents are all ordered.
    And, again, thanks to everybody. And with that, the 
subcommittee is adjourned.
    [Whereupon, at 2:22 p.m., the subcommittee was adjourned.]
    [Material submitted for inclusion in the record follows:]
    [GRAPHICS NOT AVAILABLE IN TIFF FORMAT]

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