Bill Peacock, policy director of the Energy Alliance, is criticizing the recent restructuring of the Electric Reliability Council of Texas (ERCOT).
“In response to the Texas’ blackouts, Texas politicians and regulators have undertaken a restructuring of the Texas electricity market,” Peacock said in a press release. “The restructuring ignores the role that previous political interventions in the market played in the blackouts and Texas’ more recent grid reliability problems.”
Peacock recently published research that links political interventions in the energy market with the decline of Texas energy reliability. The research, titled “The Decline and Fall of Reliability, Affordability and Competition in ERCOT” goes through the history of Texas’ deregulated grid that has since been strangled by regulation and too many subsidies to unreliable forms of energy.
“The direction Texas is taking now will line generators’ pockets with billions of dollars each year with consumers paying the cost through higher electricity prices,” Peacock said. “The greatest danger that the Texas grid faces now is the political establishment’s unwillingness to challenge the push for subsidies by generators and the renewable energy industry. If this continues, Texas will lose what is left of its competitive energy-only market. Yet the possibility of restoring reliability, affordability and competition to ERCOT remains. All Texas has to do is let the market work.”
The Energy Alliance is a project of the Texas Business Coalition, according to its website.
