AUSTIN, Texas — A political backlash over Texas’ electricity blackouts erupted on Tuesday, with the leader of the Texas House calling for hearings to review how and why the state’s electric grid lost so much power and left millions shivering amid record cold temperatures.
Speaker Dade Phelan said he’s asked the House State Affairs Committee and House Energy Resources Committee to hold a joint hearing on Feb. 25.
The panels will “review the factors” that led to megawatts dropping off the grid, forcing grid manager Electric Reliability Council of Texas to make “the lights go off” in millions of homes, said Phelan, a Beaumont Republican.
The hearing will be conducted “for the express purpose” of learning what happened and how to prevent a recurrence, Phelan said in a written statement.
“We must cut through the finger-pointing and hear directly from stakeholders about the factors that contributed to generation staying down at a time when families needed it most, what our state can do to correct these issues and what steps regulators and grid operators are taking to safeguard our electric grid,” he said.
Fort Worth GOP Rep. Craig Goldman, who heads the Energy Resources panel, said he wants to hear from industry officials and regulators to make sure such widespread outages never occur again.
“More than 2 million Texans have been left without power — some for many hours, some even days — and this is unacceptable,” Goldman said.
Anger over the blackouts began to build on social media, with both Republicans and Democrats critical of the situation.
Some Democrats seized on how Gov. Greg Abbott, U.S. Sen. Ted Cruz, U.S. Reps. Beth Van Duyne of Irving, state Attorney General Ken Paxton and other leading Texas Republicans have criticized California for rolling brownouts in recent months. They delighted in asking the free market-oriented Texas GOP leaders how to explain the mess in their own state.
