Utility That Left New Orleans within the Dark Has History Fighting Climate and Resilience Rules

In latest years, a rising refrain of voices has been calling to carry oil and gasoline corporations like Exxon accountable for mendacity about local weather change whereas conserving the world hooked on fossil fuels. But utilities are additionally in want of some scrutiny. And Entergy, the utility that has left New Orleans and surrounding communities in the dead of night following Hurricane Ida, is a type of most deserving.

On Sunday, everything of New Orleans misplaced energy after Entergy suffered what it known as “catastrophic transmission damage” after a serious transmission line crumpled into the Mississippi River and quite a few traces fell all through the area. Now, the utility is scrambling to repair the mess, although it at the moment has no idea when electrical energy entry can be restored and stated it might take weeks. That means the greater than 793,000 Entergy prospects with out energy can be pressured to cope with blistering warmth with out air-con and nowhere to retailer contemporary meals, all whereas making an attempt to place the items of their lives again collectively.

Scientists haven’t but analyzed precisely how local weather change influenced Ida. But an abnormally sizzling ocean fueled the storm, and its heavy rains, roaring storm surge boosted by rising seas, and slower motion are all hallmarks of the local weather disaster. Entergy has been integral in contributing to that disaster and has failed to arrange its personal rickety grid for catastrophe.

“Entergy has known for decades—including longer than almost any of the general public who are suffering through Ida and its aftermath—that burning fossil fuels causes climate change, that climate change causes more extreme weather, and that these effects would create vulnerabilities for the electric grid,” David Pomerantz, the chief director of the Energy and Policy Institute, stated in an e-mail. “Despite that knowledge, Entergy has used deception, bullying and political power only available to monopolies to continue burning fossil fuels and to delay or kill efforts that might have made its customers become more resilient to climate change.”

Entergy has solely had its present identify since 1989, however it’s been round for 100 years. In 1933, it grew to become a founding member of the Edison Electric Institute (EEI), and it’s also a longtime member of the Electric Power Research Institute (EPRI). A report by the Energy and Policy Institute exhibits these teams have identified about local weather change since no less than 1968, when Donald Hornig, a science advisor to then-President Lyndon Johnson, addressed EEI’s annual conference and warned of the “catastrophic effects” (sound acquainted?) rising carbon dioxide ranges might have.

The utility has additionally had ample warnings of these impacts on the grid. In 1988, a paper published by EPRI—once more, of which Entergy was a member—explicitly stated that “system reliability could be affected if climatic changes result in more-frequent and more-severe [sic] storms.” In 2005, Entergy noticed a transparent illustration of that truth when Hurricane Katrina knocked its power infrastructure offline and left greater than 2 million individuals with out energy—and now it’s as soon as once more coping with an identical drawback post-Ida.

Yet within the intervening years, Entergy has persistently opposed efforts to get off oil and gasoline and efforts to make the grid extra resilient. Last 12 months, it announced a plan to succeed in web zero by 2050… by increasing the usage of carbon-polluting pure gasoline. The earlier 12 months, the agency pushed to gut a plan to pay prospects for extra photo voltaic power that they promote again to the grid, and in keeping with emails obtained by Energy and Policy Institute, Entergy’s president of utility operations Rod West baselessly accused the “solar lobby” of stoking a “class war.”

The firm loves gasoline a lot, an independent investigation discovered that it even employed actors to indicate up at a 2018 metropolis council vote in a present of astroturfed help of a brand new gasoline plant in New Orleans regardless of widespread native opposition. (The plant was accepted over these native objections, although Entergy coughed up a $5 million fine.)

The utility has fought tooth and nail in opposition to federal local weather rules, too, together with a 2007 bill to increase renewable power, a landmark 2009 cap and trade bill, and the Environmental Protection Agency’s 2015 Clean Power Plan.

At the identical time, it’s fought in opposition to insurance policies to make the grid able to deal with to excessive climate. In December 2019, it threatened to sue New Orleans for passing a “resilient renewable portfolio standard” requiring metropolis electrical energy to succeed in net-zero carbon by 2050 and strengthen its local weather resilience. All these efforts have each worsened the local weather disaster and made catastrophic harm to the grid all however inevitable.

“Throughout all this, the company’s executives and shareholders have profited handsomely,” stated Pomerantz. “Whether via policy or litigation, Entergy’s shareholders should be forced to pay to help its customers recover from the tragedy that they helped to exacerbate with their actions and inactions.”