Anyone in South Carolina who watched last week as the polar vortex triggered the massive Texas power grid failure, with millions struggling for heat and water, has to ask how we would do here.
Governor Henry McMaster, the SC Regulatory Officials Office and utilities are correctly checking that our power plants and the gas lines that supply them are prepared for winter. Most of the problem in Texas resulted from power plants and gas supply lines that were not ready for the winter.
But with climate change, the strange weather – like the winter storm in Texas, the heat waves and forest fires in California last year and the floods along the Waccamaw River in Horry County this week – will continue to happen.
Eddy Moore, Coastal Conservation League
At the most basic level, our infrastructure was designed to operate in “normal” weather, but the weather is no longer normal. We are outside the limits of what engineers planned decades ago when building our infrastructure.
What should we do? Most reports on the situation in Texas focus on the energy supply side of the equation, ignoring a higher peak than ever in demand for electricity.
South Carolina shares this same vulnerability with Texas: in both states, domestic electricity consumption – the biggest factor driving energy surges that cause stress on electrical and gas infrastructure – is about 25% above average national. In a recent state-by-state energy efficiency policy study, Texas scored 1 out of 20 for its utilities’ commitment to helping customers save energy. South Carolina received 2 points out of 20. We are leaving savings on the table.
While Texans faced blackouts and power outages in cold conditions, officials encouraged them to cover gaps under doors and along window sills, close curtains and avoid using large appliances in an effort to save energy. These types of actions are too little, too late. What is really needed are energy efficiency efforts on the front end that make homes more livable and reduce electricity bills in winter and summer every year.
Just as state officials will now methodically check power plants and natural gas supplies to ensure they are winter proof, we need a great deal of effort to professionally make homes in South Carolina so that they never cause a peak in winter. energy in the first place. The best crisis management is one that completely avoids the crisis, and energy-efficient homes will remain warm in the winter for many more hours if the unpredictable weather dominates even new disaster planning efforts.
Encouraging South Carolina utilities to expand their energy saving programs also means lower electricity bills and less pollution from coal and gas plants for air and water.
We applaud the governor’s leadership in asking the Office of Regulatory Officials to review South Carolina’s preparedness for this type of disaster and urge the office to consider the big picture – the demand side and the electricity supply side – when assessing the our preparation for increasingly variable weather.
Giving SC electricity customers more options to reduce the amount of electricity they need from the grid should be part of the solution to building a more resilient South Carolina, and climate change means that we need to evaluate all of our energy infrastructure plans for resilience in the face of extreme weather events.
Eddy Moore is senior director of the Coastal Conservation League energy and climate program.