The Two Hours That Nearly Destroyed Texas’s Electric Grid

But it causes electric cars that avoid the carbon tax to have a market advantage over gasoline powered cars, so more people buy those. It causes non-carbon power generation methods to have a market advantage, so more people build those. As the infrastructure gets built to replace carbon, the amount of the dividend declines, but only because people are paying less in carbon tax because everyone is burning less carbon.

They did it in British Columbia.

I’m a big fan of this approach, which is actually bipartisan-ly designed.

https://clcouncil.org/

Check the video in that link.

A carbon tax is regressive. All energy and resource taxes are regressive, since the rich can easily afford more expensive energy. Carbon restrictions are also regressive on a macroeconomic global scale as poorer countries are often more reliant on older and simpler fossil fuel technologies. The only exceptions there are countries with a lot of hydroelectric resources (which is also an old proven tech). A stricter international climate accord would severely punish or even bankrupt many poorer countries, while richer countries would be able to afford newer "green" energy or nuclear power. Both of these are too expensive and technically sophisticated for early stage developing nations.

I really think just investing heavily in the build out of alternatives is a far better strategy and the only non-regressive way to do it. Build and scale the new stuff until it can compete on price with the old stuff and then set the market loose. Since the new stuff is now cheaper, the market will replace the old stuff. Meanwhile as we use more fossil fuels they are getting more costly to obtain, so it's really when the two curves intersect that change will happen.

You're right that it isn't entirely accurate, because Texas is a diverse state bigger than some countries, but being the quirky cowboy state is a lot better for tourism than being the... like... corn state or... whatever the hell a "Sooner" is. Some sort of groundhog I imagine.

It's unfortunate that you paint most of the the US with such a broad brush when complaining that those folks are painting you with a broad brush. I hope you can see the irony there.

I learned as a child that treating others as individuals is incredibly important. Mostly because it became clear that most folks (of every stripe) are decent human beings, but that there are a small number of people who are assholes.

The big problem with that small number of folks is that they aren't one particular group (whether that be geographic origin, ethnicity, melanin content, gender or profession, etc., etc., etc.). Rather they are pretty evenly distributed throughout society.

That allows people to point at those very few and ascribe their shortcomings to everyone in a particular group or groups.

The long and short of it is that, no "we" don't hate "you." In fact, most folks don't really care much (except in a general, "care about other human beings") one way or another about you or your fellow Texans.

Having spent time in Texas (I'm from the Northeast), I've found that just about everyone I've met in (or who is from) Texas are decent, kind human beings.

I suspect you'd be much happier if you were less concerned with what other folks think about you, and focused on living a decent life instead of shitting on people you don't know.

Just a crazy thought.

Those are voluntary though.

It was inevitable that someone would say the problem was that it wasn't deregulated enough, but let's at least stick to what's known. "Instead of taking any regulatory action, we ended up getting guidelines that were unenforceable and largely ignored in [power companies’] rush for profits," https://www.texastribune.org/2021/02/17/texas-power-grid-fai...

Do you have a link to this claim? If this is true what does enforcement of those regulations look like in Texas?

For comparison, THC is still schedule 1 drug according to federal regulations but weed is also a multi-billion dollar industry in states that ignore those regulations. Whats on the books often matters less than what is actually enforced.

Do you have a source for this? The entire purpose for Texas independent grid is to avoid federal regulation, so I find this hard to believe.

Also, the idea that democrats hate you is mostly from the right and IMO incorrect. Many on the left hate Trump, just like people on the right hate AOC. But that doesn't extend to the average person.

Right leaning media in the US is notorious for fear based reporting. You don't have to look far to see that there's no left leaning equivalence to Rush Limbaugh, Alex Jones, Tucker Carlson, and similar right wing icons that sell news largely on fear and outrage. They sell views based on the idea that democrats are destroying America. This is also the basis of the Tea Party, Pizza gate, and QAnon which also have no left equivalent.

There's a reason why most mainstream media is sedate and frankly boring. Democrats are the party of change, and Republicans have to keep their base afraid so they go vote against it. A lot more Republicans think democrats hate them than the other way around. Because Republicans need it that way to be competitive.

I used to be a republican until I got tired of the constant fear porn. Democrats have been in charge for a large part of my life and the only thing to directly effect me was the ACA which turned out to be a net positive in my life. Nothing scary the Republican pundits always raged about came to pass and I got tired of always being worried about the next big disaster that never came.

This a lie. The regulations are voluntary.

"ERCOT is a government regulated group, answerable to the Legislature. It's not meaningfully different from the rest of the country."

Except this is also a lie as Ercot as no power to enforce any of its regulations which is not the way utilities run in the rest of the country.

"People just assume Texas is a completely unregulated market because of the reputation given to us by Hollywood. Unsurprisingly, media created in a region that disdains us does not represent us truthfully or fairly."

This is a typical attempt to create a state of victimhood in order shift focus away from the obvious failure of a Republican controlled state onto meaningless culture wars.

"I grew up in Appalachia so I'm used to this treatment by the media and by people I interact with as a professional software engineer, including on this board, about where I came from and where I chose to make my home."

Irrelevant to the topic at hand. Your personal experiences in this matter have nothing to do with the failures in the Texas energy grid. You are doubling down on perceived victimhood in lieu of an actual argument.

"We know you hate us. It's the main message we receive every time we turn on the TV or any mainstream silicon valley website, including this one, again. That's why I post with a throwaway name. I don't expect people who hate us to represent us fairly."

And this was the goal of the comment, specifically overriding any consideration of criticism by attacking the motives of the critic. This is as simple as it is disingenuous.

[1] https://www.dallasnews.com/business/2021/02/20/griddy-custom...

I mean, who checks their electricity bill every two hours?

This also ignores that power demand is largely inelastic during a winter storm in a state where homes are not built to withstand them. That introduces a cap to how high the prices can go. At a certain point, people are going to consume power to stay alive and then just declare bankruptcy on their $15,000 power bill. Or if your free market doesn't allow bankruptcy, they simply won't be able to pay it back.

It's entirely possible that the prices the market can bear before customers start becoming insolvent isn't enough to pay for the winterizing. They keep publishing those studies about how most people in the US can't afford an unexpected $200 or $500 bill. That's not a lot of room for prices to go up. The market rates put some people's power bill up by several thousand dollars for this month.

I can see how having to maintain winterizing equipment for a decade to get 10x the profits for a week might not be profitable.