The Texas Grid Failure

Energy Gang

Wood Mackenzie

Tech News, Environment, Sustainability, Innovation, Renewable Energy, Technology, Alternative Energy, Energy, News, Cleantech, Wind Energy, Business, Climate Change, Solar Energy

4.6 • 1.3K Ratings

🗓️ 24 February 2021

⏱️ 63 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

Even for energy veterans, the depth of failures in Texas last week were breathtaking.

As arctic air froze power plants, gas lines, and mechanical instruments, the grid was shut down -- leaving 4 million people without electricity, unknown millions without heat, and three times that many without water.

Texas has been through freezes like this before in 2011, 2014 and 2018. Regulators were warned. So who is to blame for this historic catastrophe?

This week, we’ll talk about what happened in Texas -- reflecting on the responses and projecting the consequences for how we engineer the grid.

Then: did the shale boom fail to create all those promised jobs?

New research shows that the natural gas boom did not bring a massive employment wave to counties in the Marcellus and Utica shales. Wealth yes, but not so many jobs.

Wall Street Journal: In Frigid Texas, Desperate Families Take Risks to Stay Warm
Associated Press: Texas governor’s biggest donors: Energy industry that failed
NBC: The GOP is rapidly becoming the blue-collar party. Here's what that means.
Inside Climate News: A Decade Into the Fracking Boom, Pennsylvania, Ohio and West Virginia Haven’t Gained Much, a Study Says

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Transcript

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0:00.0	The Energy Gang is brought to you by Vertzilla Energy.
0:03.6	Vertzilla is leading the energy transition with the atlas of 100% renewable energy and
0:08.0	open access tool to help you understand what the future will bring in energy markets.
0:13.0	Stick with us at the end of the show to hear how this tool is helping us understand the
0:18.2	pathway forward in the post-COVID world.
0:21.7	The Energy Gang is also brought to you by Sungrove.
0:23.8	Sungrove is a leading provider of PV inverter solutions around the world for solar and storage.
0:28.4	It's meeting the growing calls for deep decarbonization with constant innovation and decarbonizing
0:33.5	its own business.
0:35.4	Learn more about Sungrove's cutting edge R&D and decarbonization efforts at sungroepower.com.
0:42.0	And we are brought to you by CPOWER.
0:43.6	CPOWER has a new book out it's called Demand Side Energy Management in the time of COVID.
0:48.2	It's authored by 19 CPOWER experts with a combined 300 years in energy experience.
0:53.8	It reveals key energy management strategies used by successful organizations during the
0:58.4	wild this year of this young century, 2020.
1:01.7	If you want to optimize your energy use and energy spend in 2021, you got to download
1:06.0	this book.
1:07.0	It's at the CPOWERWAY.com slash 2021.
1:10.4	You can also find it in the show notes.
1:13.2	Green Tech Media Podcasts.
1:22.5	This is the Energy Gang, weekly debates and discussions about the fast-changing world
1:26.1	of energy.
	...

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