After two days of hearings and plenty of witnesses, Texas lawmakers have new information about the power problems that sent the state into a winter storm crisis.
“There is horrific communication in our state as far as warning our citizens. In fact, what came out is somewhere along the way someone started talking about rolling blackouts... when in reality there were going to be two to three days of outages, and that wasn't communicated well to the citizens of Texas, and we need to change that,“ Texas Rep. Craig Goldman (R-Fort Worth) said.
Goldman, who chairs the House Energy Resources Committee, said every aspect of providing power to the state failed.
Now the legislature will work on specific plans to fix this, to make sure it does not happen again. He will work with Texas Sen. Kelly Hancock (R-North Richland Hills) who chairs the Senate Business and Commerce Committee.
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“We are going to get together and decide together what common-sense legislation we need to pass in order to make sure that the word reliable in supplying electricity in our state really means what it says,“ Goldman said.
Texas Sen. Nathan Johnson (D-Dallas) sits on the Senate Business and Commerce Committee. He agreed a lot went wrong.
“I want to avoid the narrative being that ERCOT made a mistake, or somebody at the PUC made a mistake, or this person was greedy or that person didn't follow the rules. All sorts of stuff happened and if we content ourselves with blaming a single person, firing somebody and saying 'Phew, now we are ready for the next blizzard.' We are going to be in trouble at the next event, whatever the next event is,” Johnson said.
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He said they take what they learn, talk to the experts and industries, and come up with legislation that sticks.
“It’s a big task Julie, and it is going to occupy a ton of time in the legislature,” said Johnson.
