The former chief of the Electric Reliability Council of Texas (ERCOT) testified late last month that Gov. Greg Abbott was responsible for the high energy prices that occurred during the winter freeze last year, while the governor has maintained that his office was not involved in the decision.
Former ERCOT chief Bill Magness testified on Feb. 24 that he was told by former Public Utility Commission (PUC) Chairperson DeAnn Walker that the governor wanted them to take every step necessary to ensure that rolling blackouts would end and the power was on, even as facilities were only beginning to come back online, according to a Houston Chronicle report.
"She told me the governor had conveyed to her if we emerged from rotating outages, it was imperative they not resume," Magness testified, according to the newspaper. "We needed to do what we needed to do to make it happen.”
Moreover, the Chronicle reported that Magness testified he simply followed orders from Abbott when he made the decision to keep energy prices inflated for several days during the winter storm that left the state in a deep freeze in February 2021. It was a move the publication reported resulted in billions of dollars worth of bills for power companies, with prices reaching up to $9,000 per megawatt hour. Despite Magness’s allegations, Mark Miner, a spokesman for Abbott, told the Chronicle last year that the governor was not involved in the decision.
"As Texans would expect, Gov. Abbott instructed everyone involved that they must do what was needed to keep the power on and to prevent the loss of life,” Miner said in an email to the Chronicle. “This is the same instruction Gov. Abbott gave to the PUC and ERCOT (during a cold snap) earlier this year: Do what needs to be done to keep the power on.”
Despite the back-and-forth between Magness and Abbott’s office, the Chronicle report noted that the decision had negative ramifications for businesses across the state, including Brazos Electric, which the publication noted was forced to declare bankruptcy after the price spike.
“It did nothing at all to cause more generation to come online,” Lino Mendiola, an attorney representing Brazos, a co-op forced into bankruptcy by the high prices, told the Chronicle. “It was an attempted remedy that didn’t solve any of the problems caused by the winter storm.”
The Chronicle also noted that the price spike was intended to get generators online and also motivate larger consumers to conserve energy by staying offline when practical.
According to the news outlet, Carrie Bivens, director of ERCOT’s Independent Market Monitor, wrote that the move went far beyond the commission’s mandate and resulted in as much as $16 billion in added costs to ERCOT’s market.
Others are not buying Abbott’s explanation, including Beto O’Rourke, who is seeking the Democratic nomination for governor, who told the Chronicle that the governor continues to place the profits of donors over the residents of the state, something the candidate said he would continue to do until he is voted out of office.