Ben Shepperd,
PBPA President
Beginning this January, the 87th Texas Legislature began with tremendous uncertainty for those who were sent to serve and those whom they serve. The ongoing effects of the global Covid-19 pandemic, and the vast impact on all economic sectors, including the Permian Basin oil and gas industry, loomed large as the session began.
One thing that no one expected was Winter Storm Uri. For more than a week Texans experienced record low temperatures and record amounts of snow. At its earliest and coldest, the average temperature statewide was 11.8 degrees on February 15th. This quickly became the most prominent issue and the Legislature worked quickly to ensure that Texans had access to reliable power for their homes during unprecedented winter events, especially in a state like Texas that produces more energy than any other state in the nation.
During Winter Storm Uri, millions of Texans were left in the dark, not because of adequate domestic energy production, but the inability to generate electricity and provide it during a weather event that we hopefully never see again.
The Texas Legislature and Governor Greg Abbott have signed landmark reform bills that seek to ensure this event never happens again. In short, a single week of tragedy in our state was momentous and spurred a groundswell of effort to increase reliability at every facet of energy generation to benefit those living in the Lone Star State.
But what is done for those that never have access to abundant, reliable, or affordable energy around the globe? What do new obligations on energy production mean for those that already live without?
According to the United Nations, nearly 90 percent of humans on planet Earth have access to electricity; however, that leaves nearly a billion people without. When about 9.5 percent of the world’s population remains in extreme poverty, and 85 percent of the world lives on less than $30 a day, efforts to improve the quality of life for people is seeming to take a back seat to largely academic pursuits of climate goals.
More than one-third of the world lacks access to fuels to cook their daily bread and, according to the World Health Organization, “3 billion people cook using polluting open fires or simple stoves [and]… Each year, close to 4 million people die prematurely from illness attributable to household air pollution from inefficient cooking practices.”
Where is the justice in environmentalism if its burdens can be placed on the backs of developing nations, while developed nations pull the economic ladder of opportunity away from them?
Texans learned of the challenges of a world without reliable energy and found it rightfully unacceptable. As the United States continues to be a net exporter of energy, we must continue to support the positive impacts it has on the quality of life for those less fortunate around the globe.