The past week has been harrowing for Texas residents. A blast of arctic air sent the state into a deep freeze, with snow blanketing not only northern counties but also beaches along the coast. Historic cold saw temperatures in the single digits, resulting in shivering residents, frozen pipes, and the power grid near total collapse. By all accounts, Texas is the largest energy producer in the United States. The Electric Reliability Council of Texas (ERCOT) controls the state’s energy sector and is a bureaucracy, a hierarchical authority structure that uses task specialization, operates on rational principles, and behaves with impersonality. However, during the polar blast, 40 percent of the state’s electrical resources were offline, resulting in 4 million customers not having heat in their homes when they needed it the most. Sadly, lives were lost during the deep freeze, including that of an 11-year-old boy who froze to death in his bed. As residents pick up the pieces of their lives, let’s take a moment to apply sociology to our understanding of the misery experienced by Texas residents.
Typically, there is mythology with being a Texan, akin to having the sense of belonging and “we” of an in-group. This is in contrast to non-Texans, who are seen as members of the out-group, individuals who do not belong to or are excluded from one’s own group. “Everything is bigger in Texas,” “Don’t mess with Texas,” and “Texas Friendship” are mottos that can be seen on t-shirts, road signs, and bumper stickers across the state. Yet, when the temperatures dipped, Texas (or, more specifically, the Texas power grid) could not handle it. Using the experience of people in other locals as our reference group, a collection of people used for comparison and identification, we find, for example, that the wind turbines that froze up in Texas work fine in Antarctica. So why didn’t they work in Texas?
Part of the answer has to do with how Texans get their power. The state is separate from the national power grid and can’t borrow electricity from other states.
Looking at this historically, we find that when the federal government decided to regulate power across the country, Texas decided to opt out and form its own independent grid. While this plan seemed to be working for a time, after the last major weather event in 2011, Texas was warned that the power grid needed improvements. These improvements included the winterization of key equipment like wind turbines, a common step in other parts of the country and world. Unfortunately, these recommendations were ignored because the energy sector leaders, individuals or groups who help facilitate, guide, and be the representative voice of its members, didn’t want to deal with the red tape, adherence to excessive regulation and conformity that prevents decision-making and change, to come up to code with the rest of the country.
