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  • 2021-02-23 (xsd:date)
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  • Did Biden's Dept. of Energy Block Texas from Increasing Power Before Storm? (en)
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  • In February 2021, as Texas began to recover from a devastating winter storm that brought record-low temperatures, killed dozens of people, and cut the power to millions of homes, a report emerged online that blamed the administration of U.S. President Joe Biden for supposedly denying requests to increase the electricity supply within the state. On Feb. 20, the website Infowars, a notorious producer of conspiracy theories and inflammatory disinformation, published an article with the headline: Smoking Gun! Joe Biden’s Dept. of Energy Blocked Texas from Increasing Power Ahead of Killer Storm. The article reported that: That article was subsequently republished on the website Your News, and both iterations were shared widely on Facebook in the following days. The report was highly inaccurate. The U.S. Department of Energy (DOE) actually granted a request from Texas officials to temporarily allow energy providers to produce energy at levels that would ordinarily exceed limits set out in environmental regulations, thus having the opposite effect of that claimed by Infowars. The DOE's authorization did come with certain limitations, namely that the excess electricity generated must only meet levels that state officials deemed necessary, but in reality that was a restriction in principle only and effectively gave officials wide discretion to allow excess energy generation during the winter storm. Federal environmental laws and regulations impose certain standards and guidelines on power plants in the United States, limiting the emission of various harmful elements and compounds such as carbon monoxide, mercury, nitrogen oxide, and so on. At the same time, federal law — in particular the Federal Power Act — enables the U.S. energy secretary to declare an emergency in a specific location and to require by order such temporary connections of facilities and such generation, delivery, interchange, or transmission of electric energy as in [their] judgment will best meet the emergency and serve the public interest. Where producing and distributing additional electricity comes in conflict with other regulations, such as environmental regulations, the secretary is required to ensure that excess energy generation and distribution takes place only during hours necessary to meet the emergency and serve the public interest. On Feb. 14 the Electric Reliability Council of Texas (ERCOT), the non-governmental organization that runs the electricity grid in the state of Texas, wrote to Acting Energy Secretary David Huizenga, requesting that he issue exactly that kind of emergency order. The letter outlined the dilemma faced by energy providers in Texas as follows: Later that day, Huizenga issued Emergency Order No. 202-21-1, declaring that an emergency exists in Texas due to a shortage of electric energy, a shortage of facilities for the generation of electric energy, and other causes. The order added: So Huizenga's order temporarily authorized ERCOT, from Feb. 14-19, to generate whatever power it deemed necessary to serve the needs of consumers in Texas, even if that additional generation would, in the normal course of events, cause emissions to exceed maximum levels set out in federal environmental laws and regulations. In keeping with the provisions of the Federal Power Act, Huizenga ordered that the excess electricity must not go beyond what is necessary to address the ongoing emergency, but left the details of that determination to ERCOT itself, adding: In its report, Infowars wrote that: In reality, as we have shown, the order did precisely the opposite. (en)
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