22 United States The Economist February 20th 2021
fuel and then compete for consumers. Be-
cause such cold weather is rare, energy
companies do not invest in “winterising”
their equipment, as this would raise their
prices for consumers. Perhaps most im-
portant, the state does not have a “capacity
market” to ensure that there was extra
power available for surging demand. Such
systems elsewhere act as a sort of insur-
ance policy so the lights will not go out, but
it also means customers pay higher bills.
For years the benefits of Texas’s deregu-
lated market structure were clear. At 8.6
cents per kilowatt hour, the state’s average
retail price for electricity is around one-
fifth lower than the national average and
about half the cost of California’s. In 1999
the state set targets for renewables, and to-
day it accounts for around 30% of Ameri-
ca’s wind energy.
This disaster is prompting people to
question whether Texas’s system is as re-
silient and well-designed as people previ-
ously believed. Greg Abbott, the governor,
has called for an investigation into ercot.
This storm “has exposed some serious
weaknesses in our free-market approach
in Texas”, says Luke Metzger of Environ-
ment Texas, a non-profit, who had been
without power for three full days when The
Economist went to press.
Wholly redesigning the power grid in
Texas seems unlikely. After the snow
melts, the state will need to tackle two
more straightforward questions. The first
is whether it needs to increase reserve ca-
pacity. “If we impose a capacity market
here and a bunch of new cap-ex is required
to winterise equipment, who bears that
cost? Ultimately it’s the customer,” says
Bobby Tudor, chairman of tph. The second
is how Texas can ensure the reliability of
equipment in extreme weather conditions.
After a polar vortex in 2014 hit the east
coast, pjm, a regional transmission organi-
sation, started making higher payments
based on reliability of service, says Michael
Weinstein of Credit Suisse, a bank. In Texas
there is no penalty for systems going
down, except for public complaints and
politicians’ finger-pointing.
Texas is hardly the only state to struggle
with blackouts. Parts of California, which
has a more tightly regulated power market,
are regularly plunged into darkness during
periods of high heat, winds and wildfires.
Unlike Texas, much of northern California
is dependent on a single utility, pg&e. The
company has been repeatedly sued for dis-
mal, dangerous management. But, as in
Texas, critics have blamed intermittent re-
newable power for blackouts. In truth, Cal-
ifornia’s blackouts share many of the same
causes as those in Texas: extreme weather,
power generators that fail unexpectedly,
poor planning by state regulators and an
inability (in California, temporary) to im-
port power from elsewhere. In California’sblackouts last year, solar output naturally
declined in the evening. But gas plants also
went offline and weak rainfall lowered the
output of hydroelectric dams.
In California, as in Texas, it would help
to have additional power generation, ener-
gy storage to meet peak demand and more
resilient infrastructure, such as buried
power lines and more long-distance, high-
voltage transmission. Weather events that
once might have been dismissed as unusu-
al are becoming more common. Without
more investment in electricity grids,
blackouts will be, too. ImpeachmentMarred but at
largio
M
itch mcconnell’s denunciation of
Donald Trump on February 13th was
as withering as it was unexpected. Despite
having just voted with 42 of his Republican
colleagues to acquit Mr Trump of inciting
an insurrection on January 6th, the Repub-
lican Senate leader suggested he was guilty
as charged. “President Trump is practically
and morally responsible for provoking the
events of that day.” Headline writers
promptly fell over themselves to label this
the start of a “Republican civil war”. But if
Mr McConnell and the conservative main-
stream are really in that fight, they are very
much at a pre-Valley-Forge stage, shivering
over their wounds, as winter closes in.
Mr Trump’s acquittal was a more accu-
rate measure of his command of the Re-
publican field. The case brought against
him by House Democrats—impressively
led by Representative Jamie Raskin of Ma-ryland—was devastating. The video foot-
age they played, depicting the president’s
demagoguery and the violence it pro-
voked, was so horrifying it reduced some
Republicans to tears. The fact that only
seven then mustered the courage to join
the entire Democratic caucus in voting
against Mr Trump suggests that the im-
peachment power is now in effect defunct.
Those honourable seven, it must be
added, were all to some degree shielded
from Mr Trump’s wrath. Bill Cassidy and
Ben Sasse were newly re-elected; Richard
Burr and Pat Toomey are retiring; Susan
Collins, Lisa Murkowski and Mitt Romney
(of Maine, Alaska and Utah) have home-
state appeal that makes them unusually re-
sistant to Mr Trump’s bullying.
The 43 Republicans who voted to give
Mr Trump the insurrection “mulligan” that
Mike Lee of Utah had claimed he deserved
mostly did so on a technicality. They
claimed a former president could not be
impeached, a view contradicted by most
legal advice, as well as the precedent estab-
lished by an earlier Senate vote.
Notably, this quavering Republican ma-
jority included almost every conservative
with presidential ambitions, including
Marco Rubio and Tim Scott, as well as dedi-
cated Trump stooges such as Ted Cruz and
Josh Hawley. It would seem none is plan-
ning to run against Trumpism: they are
banking on being post-Trump, not anti-
Trump. Polling of Republican voters sup-
ports their calculation. Over 80% still back
Mr Trump; more than half say he did every-
thing he could to stop the insurrection.
Meanwhile, the backlash against the seven
Republicans who voted against Mr Trump
has been vicious.
Messrs Burr, Cassidy and Sasse have all
been censured by their state parties. “I’m
getting a lot of feedback from people say-
ing the only reason they supported Senator
Cassidy is because President Trump sup-
ported him,” said Blake Miguez, a Republi-WASHINGTON, DC
Donald Trump lives to fight and incite
another dayMaybe third time lucky?