The Electric Reliability Council of Texas (ERCOT) tried to prevent blackouts during the winter storm by paying large industrial users to cut power consumption, but the program to save electricity actually ended up further eroding natural gas supply because some of those large users they shut down were natural gas infrastructure firms, an analysis by The Wall Street Journal has found. During the Texas Freeze in the middle of February, ERCOT activated its program to pay big industrial consumers to reduce the electricity they use in an attempt to alleviate the enormous strain on the state’s grid due to record winter demand while many wind and natural gas facilities were down. However, the Texas grid operator didn’t know which companies exactly were part of the scheme to cut power consumption. It turns out, the Journal’s analysis of grid records shows, that this move further reduced natural gas supply in […]