Hurricane Beryl’s Towering Texas Grid Impacts and Price Tag Highlight Massive Injustices

On July 8, 2024, Hurricane Beryl knocked out power for more than 2 million Texas utility customers, most of those being customers of CenterPoint Energy in the Houston area. After the storm was over, some households were left without power in the sweltering heat for more than a week and a half. At least seven people died of heat stroke amid the lack of power and air conditioning-and that number is even higher according to some reports.

(Note: Hurricane Beryl caused significant damage in many countries and states outside of Texas, but this blog post is focused only on the Texas impacts.)

Making a bad situation worse for these Texas communities, CenterPoint recently disclosed that the cost to repair Beryl's damage to its electric infrastructure will likely amount to between $1.2-$1.3 billion. This is on top of the $425-$475 million in costs resulting from a series of storms two months before. Those storms last May brought extremely strong winds and tornadoes that knocked out power to more than 900,000 of the company's customers.

Who will pay for all of this? Well, CenterPoint has already said that it will seek approval from the Public Utility Commission of Texas to increase its rates to recover those storm and hurricane costs. The exact impact on household utility bills isn't clear at this point, but as with virtually any rate increase, low-income customers will feel that impact the most.

Hurricane Beryl brought prolonged and deadly power outages to Houston-area communities. While CenterPoint apologized for its poor performance in restoring power, the company will nevertheless follow that up by demanding even more money from its Texas customers. If that isn't a huge energy injustice, it's hard to say what is.

This latest hurricane demonstrates that it is far past time for policymakers and regulators to require better climate resilience and adaptation from utilities like CenterPoint in the communities they serve. It also highlights the urgent need for accountability from corporate actors beyond CenterPoint.

Climate change caused by the burning of fossil fuels is exacerbating Beryl-like hurricanes, heat waves, and other extreme weather phenomena. CenterPoint spends millions opposing climate action in several states in which it operates. And the large fossil fuel companies primarily responsible for climate-changing emissions lied to the public for decades about the global effects of their products; they need to be held accountable for such devastation and deceit.

Hurricanes and heat: a terrible Danger Season combo

Danger Season 2024 is roughly halfway through, and it has brought about the terrible combination of hurricane-caused prolonged distribution grid outages, followed by intense heat. Distribution grid outages are the most common type of power outage arising from damage to power poles and lines, and are different from the rolling blackouts from supply shortages that Texans suffered in Winter Storm Uri in 2021.

The aftermath of Hurricane Beryl further exposed the inequities of who can afford to stay safe from climate disasters. Many Texans cannot afford backup power options, such as diesel generators, but those who can were able to power at least parts of their homes until grid power was restored. Wealthier households likely won't feel much of a pocketbook hit from replacing the food in their refrigerators that went bad, but lower-income households will, and they don't have a guarantee of getting insurance to pay for it.

Elderly people are also particularly at risk if they are in the heat for too long. Most of the people identified by the Harris County forensics department who died of hyperthermia amid the power outage were over 60 years old (and all seven of them were at least 50 years old).

The lack of power compounded and expanded the inequities that already exist with heat waves. In addition to low-income and elderly people, many throughout the country do not have the luxury of staying safe and comfortable during intense heat, including those experiencing homelessness, people with disabilities, people in prison, and outdoor workers. Black people in the US are incarcerated at roughly five times the rate of white people, and the outdoor workforce is made up disproportionately by Black and Latiné workers.

In addition to the injustices and inequities that have manifested through the lack of grid power and killer heat, others will manifest through utility bills.

Climate change brings routinely high price tags on grid damage

The general type of rate hike request CenterPoint plans to make is par for the course after hurricanes and other extreme weather events cause significant grid damage. As these extreme events become more frequent and severe, costs for ratepayers will continue to mount, absent any true climate accountability or other changes to the status quo. As mentioned above, these costs will be felt most by low-income customers, but they really affect everyone since everyone pays for a functioning grid.

What's distinct (but notunique) about Hurricane Beryl-and what has prompted so much scrutiny from Texas leaders-is the amount of time CenterPoint took to get the power back on. On the morning of July 15, a whole week after the storm made landfall, there were still about 260,000 customers without power, and some outages persisted longer than a week.

Texas legislators and regulators expressed deep anger and frustration to CenterPoint executives in recent hearings. The areas of criticism were numerous, including some $800 million the company previously spent on mobile generators that weren't used after the storm, the company's tree trimming (aimed at preventing distribution outages), and the state's regime of compensating utilities that is mostly untethered to actual performance. (Texas is not at all unique in this; most states do not have "performance-based regulation" of utilities.)

In addition to CenterPoint's inability to restore power within a reasonable timeframe, Beryl's $1.2-$1.3 billion price tag for estimated grid damage is also distinctly (but again, not uniquely) high. For comparison, Hurricane Harvey in 2017 had the largest impact on the service territory of a different utility, AEP Texas, which estimated the grid damage to be up to $375 million. A 2018 article found that AEP Texas, CenterPoint, and Entergy Texas collectively spent just over $500 million on Harvey-related restoration costs.

With Beryl's damages being significantly more costly and spread over mostly just the customers of one company, this storm will be yet another charge added to CenterPoint customers' bills for more than a decade. The company has given initial estimates that the roughly $1.8 billion in combined costs from Beryl and the May 2024 storms will result in a 2% bill increase for the next 15 years.

As more and more hurricanes-and other staggeringly expensive disasters-add more and more charges to customer bills, the impacts to ratepayers, and particularly low-income ratepayers, must be mitigated. It's up to the Public Utility Commission of Texas-the actions of which should be informed by ratepayer advocacy-to decide which costs should be borne by customers as opposed to the company's shareholders.

Increasing climate resilience and reducing climate injustices

There are steps policymakers and other decisionmakers can take to increase communities' resilience to the impacts of climate-fueled extreme weather events. State regulators can require utilities such as CenterPoint to build more climate-resilient grid infrastructure, which will need to withstand different extreme weather and climate threats depending on the state or region the utility is in.

Increasing access to community cooling centers can also mitigate the impact of heat waves. Improved communication with residents before, during, and after an event is also crucial for making sure community members stay informed about their options. For example, CenterPoint recently told regulators that it has direct contact information for only 42% of its customers.

There are also clean energy solutions that can mitigate distribution grid outages, such as enhanced weatherization and energy efficiency, home battery storage (with or without rooftop solar), and clean energy microgrids. These have the added benefit of not contributing to the very same climate change that's making these extreme weather events worse, as is the case with backup diesel generators and other fossil fuel solutions. Distributed energy resources such as rooftop solar will play an important role in the the country's transition to a clean energy economy.

But critically, the ability to be resilient to these disastrous events shouldn't be restricted to wealthy households, and the costs of such disasters shouldn't be borne by our most vulnerable populations who did nothing to cause them. Climate accountability from corporate actors who are responsible for contributing to such devastation is not a panacea, but it's the most just and logical starting point when you look at the science.

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