Wall Street Journal + CenterPoint Energy = Hiding the Ball

We've all seen magicians and the "hidden ball trick.

The Wall Street Journal hides the ball in this story about Houston's energy reliability.

The Journal's article about the crisis in Houston pertaining to CenterPoint Energy's latest power outages -- due to Hurricane Beryl -- hides the ball by not mentioning a key factor.

As has become all too typical in the Journal's reporting recently, climate change is

blamed for things that have little or nothing to do with climate as last month's story does. 

This latest story says, 

During the same period, CenterPoint documented 15 extreme weather events around Houston including hurricanes, ice storms and tornadoes. It took CenterPoint at least two days to restore power following six of the events, with outages lasting for more than four days after two major storms in 2021...

“We’re going to be dealing with more of these storms, which means we either need to start burying more lines or hardening the system even more and that’s a huge investment,” said Barbara Clemenhagen, senior consultant at Customized Energy Solutions and a former board member at Texas’ grid operator.

There's little to no scientific evidence that Houston/southeast Texas is "going to [be] dealing with more of these storms." The gold standard IPCC's latest report shows no detectable effect of climate on either hurricanes or wind storms. You will find a more readable copy and more commentary of climate and storms here. 

So, if "the ball" isn't more storms due to climate change, what/where is it?

How about spending billions on unreliable, expensive 'green' energy? 

Or, as CenterPoint puts it elsewhere on their sustainability web page:

These huge expenditures on 'green' energy aren't mentioned in the Journal's story. It does say,

A review of regulatory filings shows that CenterPoint for years has struggled to make the investments it says are necessary to maintain the reliability of the system as it works to accommodate population growth and respond to severe weather, including extreme heat, winter storms, flooding and strong winds.

That's the hidden ball! CenterPoint only has so many dollars to invest. The mandate to pour billions into alternative energy may well come at the expense of the money needed to upgrade the grid's infrastructure. 

Wind and solar, when they work properly, are expensive. They are also highly vulnerable to -- you guessed it -- weather! On March 24, thousands of acres of solar panels, near Houston, were destroyed by hail. 

It is insane to keep installing utility-scale solar panels and wind farms, especially on what would highly productive agricultural land. We need to stop treating utilities as political toys and let them get back to producing reliable energy.