By State Rep. Brooks Landgraf
Happy New Year! I’m thankful to have 2020 and 2021 in the rearview mirror and look forward to the opportunities that 2022 will bring. The last two years have been unique, so I am not going to try to make any predictions for 2022. All I know is that I will be keeping my nose to the grindstone, doing the work for West Texas and the Permian Basin in the Texas House of Representatives.
We’ve had a balmy winter so far, but colder weather is on its way. As I made my way around the district hosting town halls during the last couple of months, one of the most common topics of conversation regarding the legislature’s work in 2021 had to do with the Texas grid. I want to take the opportunity to provide an update on things here.
As we all remember, last February, record-setting subfreezing temperatures forced outages and left millions of Texans to endure the freezing cold without electricity for extended periods. Texans should have never been put through what they experienced that week.
These horrific events were a wake-up call for us in the Texas legislature and they served as a call-to-action to swiftly identify and address the root causes of the vulnerabilities in our power grid. However, the 2021 legislative session was already underway when the storm hit, leaving only a few months to provide solutions.
My colleagues and I started getting to work while the lights were still off. In the days and weeks that followed, we heard countless hours of testimony from industry stakeholders, state agencies, and everyday Texans regarding the causes and impacts of the blackouts. Lack of oversight, a breakdown of communication, and major failures in coordination between Texas’s regulatory agencies were some of the main contributors to our power grid’s failure to supply enough power to meet demand.
It was clear this undertaking would require solutions at different levels: emergency preparedness, grid resilience, and reform of ERCOT and the Public Utilities Commission (PUC). By the end of the regular session, the legislature successfully passed bills that provided solutions at each of those levels.
As your state representative, I was proud to support Senate Bill 3, a bill that introduced crucial steps to address both the power grid’s resiliency and the state’s energy emergency preparedness.
SB 3 establishes an emergency alert system to ensure Texans are properly notified when power demand may exceed supply. The bill also establishes strategic rules to help prevent lengthy rolling blackouts. Additionally, the bill requires generation, transmission, and natural gas facilities to weatherize and creates penalties of up to $1,000,000 per day for failure to comply. Lastly, it requires that all actors across the electricity supply chain submit annual emergency preparedness plans to the appropriate state agencies for review.
To achieve higher accountability and transparency of ERCOT and the PUC, I was also proud to support SB 2 and SB 2154 which completely overhaul the governing structure of both entities. SB 2, increases the legislature’s oversight of ERCOT and requires that ERCOT’s chairman and the members of its board of directors be residents of Texas. Furthermore, the bill sets the professional requirements necessary for selection to the board. SB 2154 addresses the PUC and establishes similar requirements.
I am proud of the strong proactive measures the legislature took to ensure that fellow Texans never go through this again. Let me be clear, there is still a lot of work to be done, but our power grid will be more prepared this winter than it has ever been. Nevertheless, as we continue the work to strengthen the power grid even more, know that I will be engaged in every way that I can.
You have my word that I will always be on the frontlines protecting Permian Basin jobs. Whatever work is left to be done to fix the grid must be focused on reliability. Oil and gas must always be a major part of the state’s portfolio. We love all forms of energy generation in the Permian Basin, but I refuse to allow big-city politicians who have never been west of Fort Worth to use this rare weather event as another way to wage the war on oil and gas.
Until next time, Shelby, Hollis Rose and I wish you and yours a Happy New Year!
God bless Texas!
