Michael Webber, Josey Centennial Professor in Energy Resources at UT Austin and Strauss Center Distinguished Scholar, was featured in many publications over the course of the past weeks in response to the winter storm in Texas in February. 

In an interview with Yahoo! Finance, Professor Webber said that the failure of the grid system was not a huge surprise, but the major lack of preparedness on behalf of the state government was a surprise, given that a similar event occurred in 2011. In a separate interview with the Texas Tribune, Webber noted that while all of Texas’s energy sources fell short, it was the natural gas industry that most failed most spectacularly. Professor Webber also authored an article for Mic where he explained how and why the extreme Texas weather caused massive outages, highlighting the problems presented by high energy demand and low capacity, and describing Texas’s unique energy system. In an article published by MSNBC, Webber commented on the class-action lawsuit filed against a Texas electricity provider, noting that he suspects efforts to remedy the situation by way of legislation will be more successful than the lawsuit. In a Bloomberg Law piece, Webber debunked the argument that the crisis was caused by renewable energy, emphasizing that it was the failure to winterize these systems that led to their disfunction. This, he emphasized, is illustrated by the proper functioning of winterized wind farms elsewhere operating under similar weather conditions. Professor Webber was also quoted in the New York Post, when he again emphasized that natural gas was the biggest culprit in the crisis, and that proper winterization would ensure that renewables could be a reliable source of energy. In a Bloomberg piece on the post-storm debt now carried by Texas’s Electric Reliability Council of Texas (ERCOT), Webber commented that bankruptcies of utility providers could warrant a state bailout. 

Professor Webber also wrote an op-ed published in The Hill which warned that the energy crisis that occurred in Texas is only the beginning. In it, he cautioned that Texas’s mistake with regards to its energy infrastructure are common in other states, too. He urged policymakers to “incorporate climate science into their planning,” given that events like the one which preceded the Texas energy failure will only become more common. Thus, he advised, lawmakers ought to move to modernize infrastructure and “avoid interdependencies” so that if one energy source—like gas—fails, we have another resource—like electric—to fall back on. 

Check out Professor Webber’s Twitter for more on the Texas crisis and other energy-related issues.