Originally published in Liberation News.

On Oct. 25, a new federal report concluded — again — that the
Texas power grid is still not ready for extreme weather this
winter. This means that Texas could see a repeat of last year’s
winter storm, which caused hundreds of unnecessary deaths as
the carelessness and inhumanity of the capitalist system was put
on display.

The report, conducted by the Federal Energy Regulatory
Commission, concluded that despite Governor Greg Abbott’s
claim that “everything that needed to be done was done to fix the
power grid,” the grid has only marginally improved from its
standing last year. Marginal improvement, however, is not
enough for the workers who are forced to bear the brunt of this
negligence.

During the winter storm of Feb. 21, 2021, the Energy Reliability
Council of Texas ordered energy providers to cut off up to 20,000
megawatts of energy to consumers in order to avoid a total
shutdown of the grid. This loss of power turned the lights off for
millions of Texans who went without power, heat and water.
Pipes burst from freezing temperatures and poorly insulated
homes struggled to hold any heat.

On top of this, the capitalists at the helm of this disaster profited
immensely from death and scarcity. Despite not having any
power, electricity bills for Texans skyrocketed due to price
gouging, forcing them to pay for the failures of the private energy
sector. An energy company executive described the perfect storm
of terrible conditions as “like hitting the jackpot.”

Because many residents pay with variable-rate electricity bills,
when the demand for electricity goes up, so does the bill. This
system allows for such absurd cases as spiking electricity bills
even when there was no electricity available to be used. Many
cities such as San Antonio, Houston and Austin have also seen
rate hikes from various electrical companies who have decided
once again to push the burden of rising energy prices onto the
people least able to pay.

But the massive rate hikes and disaster profiteering have not
amounted to any major infrastructure improvement. The grid is
largely in the same shape as before. Abbott has focused on
increasing the generating capacity of the Texas power grid under
ideal conditions by offering obscene tax incentives to speculative
cryptocurrency miners, hoping that they will voluntarily shut off
their operations in times of crisis.

Courting crypto miners has not worked to save the grid during
shortages this summer, and there is no reason to believe it will
work in the future. This summer, Texas paid one Bitcoin miner
more in tax incentives to turn its machines off — $9.5 million in
July alone — than that company would have made mining Bitcoin.

The FERC report estimates that under conditions like the freeze
experienced last year, the demand for electricity could exceed the
power grid’s capacity by 18,000 to 20,000 megawatts. One
megawatt is enough electricity to power 200 homes during
periods of high demand, meaning the Texas power grid will not
have the capacity to power 3 to 4 million homes during these
extreme weather conditions. The actual number may be far
worse. In the 2021 storm, much of the available power was
diverted to empty stadiums and brightly lit downtown office
buildings while entire working-class residential neighborhoods
were shut off.

This lack of power not only makes things miserable for Texans
sitting in cold, dark, powerless homes, but will also prove deadly
in another winter freeze. The official death toll of last year’s
winter storm given by the state is 246. An investigative report by
Buzzfeed News using excess deaths analysis determined that the
real number could be over 700.

Rather than focusing on improving the power grid and preparing
for this upcoming winter based on the findings of the FERC
report, the Public Utility Commission of Texas has spent its time
pointing out trivial inaccuracies within the original report. FERC
then published an updated report which reached the exact same
conclusion as the previous — that Texas is not prepared for
another winter storm.

The entire Texas energy grid could be winterized for just $85 to
$200 million, the equivalent of one or two days’ revenue for the
oil and gas industry. Exxon Mobil receives $5 billion in public
funding, and is currently working with the state of Texas on a
$100 billion carbon capture “innovation zone.”

This money could be used to convert the power grid to wind and
solar energy, which greatly outperformed their fossil fuel
counterparts during the last storm, and to winterize all existing
power infrastructure. Instead, that money cycles between state
government officials in charge of “regulating” this system and
energy corporations, a corrupt kickback system that is legalized
in the United States as “lobbying.”

Abbott, who directly appoints the board of the PUC which
regulates the energy grid, has received millions of dollars in
donations from the energy industry. Meanwhile, the Texas energy
industry is largely allowed to self-regulate, postpone or cancel
infrastructure improvements, and continue making billions from
price gouging. Until this disastrous capitalist system of energy
profiteering is uprooted, the next deadly catastrophe in Texas
isn’t a matter of if, but when.