Should Texas be forced to join nation's power grids? Casar, AOC file bill to do just that.

Every time a winter storm hits Texas, Austin residents are reminded of the weeklong arctic blast in 2021 that kneecapped Texas' electric grid, leaving more than 10 million without power and contributing to at least 240 deaths.

Many deaths were directly related to the outages. In Austin, for example, a woman died after her catheter froze, slowly poisoning her. Another woman froze to death in an assisted living facility.

U.S. Rep. Greg Casar, D-Austin, who was an Austin City Council member at the time of that winter storm, said the devastation he saw inspired him to begin working on a bill that he believes could end preventable deaths from grid failures.

Casar and Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, D-New York, alongside several Texas Democrats and representatives from other states, announced the Connect the Grid Act bill Wednesday that would force the Electric Reliability Council of Texas — which manages 90% of the state's power grid — to connect to major national electricity systems.

The 11-page legislation would allow Texas to draw power from neighboring states in emergencies and sell power when it has a surplus. El Paso, Beaumont and other regions that border neighboring states avoided mass outages during the 2021 winter storm because they were connected to major national grids, allowing them access to power from places experiencing less severe weather.

Texas is the only state that produces and regulates its own power grid. Its status as an "energy island" and its rapidly growing population have strained the grid during statewide severe weather events in recent years.

State officials have resisted giving up Texas' independence from federal consumer protections and laws, spending hundreds of millions of dollars to shore up electrical grid infrastructure since 2021. The grid has borne weather incidents far better in recent years, but requests for emergency conservation during a record-breaking freeze in January have kept some Texans fearful and frustrated over the state's power supply.

Representatives at Wednesday's news conference said the state's resistance, and its lack of regulations compared with other states, serves corporate interests and leaves Texans to suffer.

"This bill is about standing up to corporate greed and giving power back to Texans," Casar said.

The legislation would subject ERCOT to oversight from the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission and require the federal government to "conduct a study on the benefits of interconnection with Mexico," from which Texas sometimes buys power in emergencies, according to the lawmakers' news release announcing the bill.

The change could be lucrative: Casar said the state stands to save as much as $20 billion in weather emergencies and could make up to $4 billion dollars over the next 12 years from power sales. Research backs up claims that expanding the grid is more cost-effective than building more plants to serve Texas alone, as Michael Webber, a University of Texas mechanical engineering professor and energy expert, told the American-Statesman last year.

Connecting the grid with the rest of the country would also help the U.S. meet climate goals, Casar said, by allowing Texas to share wind and solar power that it doesn't use.

"The United States cannot beat back the climate crisis without Texas," he said. "Texas is the largest producer of clean energy in the United States. We are the energy capital of the country and of the world."

The bill is co-sponsored by at least five, but not all, U.S. House Democrats from Texas as well as representatives from other states, such as Louisiana.

“Louisianians know better than anyone that storms are staying for longer, coming on stronger and causing more havoc than ever before," said U.S. Rep. Troy A. Carter Sr., D-La. "I’m proud to co-sponsor the Connect the Grid Act, which will revolutionize our power infrastructure and safeguard our communities, economy and planet."

The bill has been shaped over several months in conjunction with Texas energy experts including Webber, a spokesperson for Casar wrote in the news release.

The measure is likely to face steep opposition in Congress and at home, particularly from Republicans, who have continued to champion Texas' energy independence.

Gov. Greg Abbott blamed grid failures on green energy in 2021, a falsehood that Democrats speared him for during Wednesday's news conference. Abbott's office did not respond to a Statesman request for comment.

Texas state Sen. Charles Schwertner, co-chair of the Grid Reliability Legislative Oversight Committee, discounted the bill in a post on X, formerly Twitter.

"Not going to happen," the Georgetown Republican wrote.

The Public Utility Commission of Texas has "initiated a proceeding" to consider interconnecting the grid with neighboring regions, ERCOT wrote Wednesday in a statement to the Statesman. The agency warned that market expansion could raise or lower prices depending on surrounding states' energy costs. If the expansion drove down Texas energy prices, it could have a "chilling effect" on new power generation.

Casar hinted he was working on the bill as early as August 2023, after ERCOT implored Texans to conserve energy during a series of punishing heat waves. U.S. Rep. Jasmine Crockett, D-Dallas, was confident that Congress will eventually succeed in connecting Texas to the rest of the nation's grid.

"It may not be tomorrow, but we're going to make this happen," she said.

Correction: This story previously stated that "a dayslong outage hit the state in early 2023." Outages in 2023 were localized, not statewide, and caused largely by fallen trees. The story has been updated.

Statesman staff writer Bridget Grumet contributed reporting.

More: 'She was my everything': A chaotic week of preventable deaths in Austin as Texas froze

This article originally appeared on Austin American-Statesman: US Reps. Casar, AOC file bill to force ERCOT to join nation's grids