movielover said:
Newsom shut down 4 or 5 oil refineries?
You need more truth in your posts. Why harp on California about energy policies when it is a leader in seeking alternative energy?
The real failure is one of your red states Skippy. Why anyone moves to that disaster is beyond me. Let's cover Texas and how it has failed and has not rectified a disaster from 5 years ago (note, it's getting worse, not better):
Texas (ERCOT) The Biggest Red State Energy Policy FailureTexas operates its own isolated power grid by political choice, to avoid federal regulation and that decision has had severe consequences.
In February 2021, Texas suffered the worst energy infrastructure failure in state history during Winter Storm Uri. More than 4.5 million homes and businesses lost power for days. At least 246 people were killed. The ERCOT grid came within four minutes and 37 seconds of complete collapse. Damages totaled at least $26.5 billion. Critically, state officials initially blamed frozen wind turbines, but data showed that failure to winterize traditional natural gas infrastructure was the primary cause and that federal regulators had warned Texas to winterize after a nearly identical event in 2011, which the state ignored due to cost.
WikipediaWikipediaFive years later, the problem is getting worse, not better:Despite widespread perception that the grid has become more resilient, the data tells a different story the actual risk of winter outages is rising. Peak winter demand has increased 20%, but dispatchable generation from gas, coal, and nuclear remains roughly the same as before Uri. Nearly $50 billion has been invested primarily in solar and storage since 2021, but only 3.1 GW of new natural gas capacity was added.
Texas Public Policy Foundation -The winter reserve margin dropped from 17.5% in 2021 to a projected 10.1% in 2026 well below the 15% standard utilities strive to maintain to account for plant failures during extreme weather.
Texas ScorecardIn January 2026, the federal government had to issue an emergency order during Winter Storm Fern to deploy backup generation resources to prevent Texas blackouts and the federal government's own reliability assessor found ERCOT was at "elevated risk."
Department of EnergyAnd prices are rising sharply:A study by the Texas Energy Poverty Research Institute projects residential electricity rates in ERCOT could rise roughly 29% by 2030, driven by an estimated $96 billion in transmission and distribution investments.
The Texas Tribune Southeast Red States Rate Increases Driven by Poor PlanningAbout half of $31 billion in utility rate increase requests filed in 2025 are concentrated among Southeast utilities in red states, where grid hardening, hurricane recovery costs, and an expensive new nuclear power plant in Georgia are driving up costs for ratepayers.
CNNThe Common ThreadTexas's core problem is a market design a purely deregulated, isolated grid with no capacity payments that was a deliberate Republican policy choice going back decades, prioritizing freedom from federal oversight over reliability. The 2011 warnings were ignored. The 2021 disaster happened. And according to independent analysts, the underlying vulnerability has still not been fixed.
That's a straightforward policy failure clearly traceable to political decisions not weather, and not a transition to renewables.
