A panel of judges has said that big power companies cannot be held liable for failure to provide electricity during the 2021 blackout. The reason is Texas’ deregulated energy market.
Almost three years since the deadly Texas blackout of 2021, a panel of judges from the First Court of Appeals in Houston has ruled that big power companies cannot be held liable for failure to provide electricity during the crisis. The reason is Texas’ deregulated energy market.
The decision seems likely to protect the companies from lawsuits filed against them after the blackout. It leaves the families of those who died unsure where next to seek justice.
In February of 2021, a massive cold front descended on Texas, bringing days of ice and snow. The weather increased energy demand and reduced supply by freezing up power generators and the state’s natural gas supply chain. This led to a blackout that left millions of Texans without energy for nearly a week.
The state has said almost 250 people died because of the winter storm and blackout, but some analysts call that a serious undercount.
In the opinion, Justice Adams noted that, when designing the Texas energy market, state lawmakers “could have codified the retail customers’ asserted duty of continuous electricity on the part of wholesale power generators into law.”
Wow, so helpful to say that 20 years after the fact
I agree with the problem, but I also kind of agree with the judge. The point of separation of powers is that the judicial system interprets the will of the legislative. We have had similar cases in Finland , where the law clearly should say one thing and the courts conclude that the law in fact says another thing. Fortunately, this situation occasionally leads the parliament into saying 'well fuck' and changing the law.
I will admit I don't really understand the role of courts making law in the US and other common law countries, so it might be different there.
The one time I remember something like that happening in the US was the 2003 Do Not Call telemarketing act. There was a court case that concluded that Congress had not properly authorized regulators to enforce the Do Not Call registry. Congress then took a day or two to pass a new law authorizing the thing they forgot to the first time.
This comes down to two things:
Americans really, really hate taking telemarketing calls, regardless of party affiliation
The telemarketing industry didn't have significant lobbying at the time to tell anyone in Congress to argue against it
So bizarre, you'd think there would be some implicit realities of what is constituted by contracting for grid load power generation & even peaker plants. The grid has to be maintained to function and can't lose frequency even if that does mean shedding there should be key named emergency services that should be maintained that would warrant liability on power generators. This is all upside with little cost or risk & also why there was no effort to coordinate because nobody is responsible.
As I understood it, critical circuits like hospitals were being prioritized and being kept (mostly?) online.
But house heating is generally not on a different circuit. They would normally rotate the houses which are blacked out so they would at least have power some of the time but this one was so bad all the power went into the priority circuits (like hospitals).