Fact check: Beto O'Rourke says Texas was warned for years about power grid

The massive power outage in Texas that left millions with no heat amid frigid temperatures should have come as no surprise, according to former El Paso Congressman Beto O’Rourke.

"Texans are suffering without power because those in power have failed us," said O’Rourke in a Twitter thread, calling out Republican Texas Gov. Greg Abbott.

"State leaders don’t get to say that they didn’t see this coming. Energy experts and State House Dems, among others, were warning of this for years. Abbott chose to ignore the facts, the science and the tough decisions and now Texans will once again pay the price," tweeted O’Rourke, a 2019 Democratic presidential candidate.

We found that O’Rourke spoke accurately — there had been years of warnings by energy experts about the state’s power system following cold weather in February 2011, when around 200 generating units faltered, causing power outages for 3.2 million customers, according to a post-mortem of that crisis. 

Federal report warned about lack of winterization

In August 2011, the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission and the North American Electric Reliability Corp., wrote a 357-page report about the February 2011 outage. 

The report stated that in 1989, after cold weather caused many generators to fail, the Public Utility Commission of Texas issued a number of recommendations aimed at improving winterization of the generators. However, "these recommendations were not mandatory, and over the course of time implementation lapsed. Many of the generators that experienced outages in 1989 failed again in 2011," the report stated.

The report found that in 2011 "the generators did not adequately anticipate the full impact of the extended cold weather and high winds." More thorough preparation for cold weather could have prevented many of the weather-related outages, the report found.

There are a lot of similarities between the deficiencies in the grid cited in the 2011 report and those now, said Dave Tuttle, an Energy Institute research associate at the University of Texas at Austin, in an interview with the Austin American-Statesman.

Some legislators filed bills intended to improve the state’s energy infrastructure

Following the 2011 blackout, state legislators held a hearing where senators expressed surprise that Texas had outages when other areas of the country are able to keep power on during cold weather. 

O’Rourke told us in a text message that one of the people who warned about the problems was Sylvester Turner, who was a state representative in 2011 and is now Houston’s mayor. Turner, a Democrat, authored HB 1986, which called for the Public Utility Commission to ensure the Electric Reliability Council of Texas had adequate reserve power to prevent blackout conditions. ERCOT manages about 90% of the state’s electric load.

"Ironically that bill that I filed was not heard in committee," Turner said this week on CNN.

In 2011, the Legislature did pass a bill to require power companies to submit reports to the Public Utility Commission about weatherization efforts. The author of that bill, Republican Glenn Hegar, who is now the state comptroller, questions whether the bill went far enough, according to a recent report in the Houston Chronicle. 

"I am extremely frustrated that 10 years later our electric grid remains so ill-equipped for these weather events," Hegar said.

The Texas House Democratic caucus cited some other bills that were intended at least in part to improve the state’s energy infrastructure that failed to pass or remain pending. Some bills pertain directly to the Public Utility Commission, which has oversight of ERCOT. One bill included a proposal to elect a member of the commission while another would have required state agencies to create strategic plans to account for expected changes in weather. A separate bill called for creating an agreement between ERCOT and an adjacent Mexican power grid for cross-border dispatch. This session, a legislator filed a bill to study the impacts of climate change.

One of the key experts who has raised concerns for years about ERCOT is Ed Hirs, a lecturer of energy economics at the University of Houston.

Following the 2011 mass outage, "there were lots of reports and recommendations and lots of people waving their hands," but no substantial changes, Hirs told us. 

Hirs sent us articles in which he raised alarms about Texas’ power setup dating back to 2013,   when he wrote that the state had a Soviet-style model that allowed ERCOT to essentially set prices across the state. 

"ERCOT's problem with the model has been made evident in the rolling blackouts across Texas over the past several years," Hirs wrote in a 2013 Houston Chronicle op-ed with co-author Paul MacAvoy, an energy expert and Yale University professor emeritus.

"A recent letter from the North American Electric Reliability Corporation to ERCOT warns that projected near-future generating capacity is insufficient to meet growth in demand and points to the likelihood of significant shortfalls in electricity generation and delivery," they wrote. (Here is the letter.)

Hirs raised similar alarms about ERCOT and blackouts in 2014 in a Texas Monthly article and in a 2019 op-ed in the Houston Chronicle.

"The Texas electricity market is rife with market manipulation and major disincentives for generators to maintain a reliable supply of power," he wrote in 2019. "The latest examples of this have become public in recent days, a state of affairs that costs Texas consumers real money each year."

We asked spokespersons for Abbott if they had any evidence to refute O’Rourke’s statement about the warnings about the power problems for years. Renae Eze replied that O’Rourke was "choosing to play politics" but did not respond directly to our question. Abbott has declared reforming ERCOT a priority for the current legislative session.

Our ruling 

O’Rourke said regarding the Texas power blackout "energy experts and State House Dems, among others, were warning of this for years."

Experts have been warning about the failures of the state’s power grid for years, particularly after a 2011 cold spell. The Federal Energy Regulatory Commission and the North American Electric Reliability Corp. wrote an extensive report showing that recommendations following a 1989 outage weren’t implemented. Other experts have also warned for years about ERCOT and power blackouts, and state legislators tried to propose bills to improve the state’s energy infrastructure.

We rate this claim True.