HIUSTON - Remember the big Texas freeze and the cold, deadly blackout many of us endured... As our fragile and dangerously unprepared power grid buckled under the polar vortex?
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Well, my good friend and renowned energy writer Robert Bryce has just calculated the cost each and every one of us will be shelling out to clean up the ten and a half billion dollars worth of financial wreckage resulting from our government's unforced error.
Warning - you are not going to like it.
"The punchline here is that ratepayers are going to have to re-pay that sum of course with interest over the next 30 years, and it amounts to about $850 dollars per residential customer in the state, so these are big numbers and far higher than any other state that was affected by winter storm Uri."
Watch the full interview with energy expert Robert Bryce
Clearly, Governor Abbott and our legislature quietly approved this pass-along expense - (without softening the blow with any off-setting money from the rainy day fund)
I'm labeling this extra cost we must all shoulder - "the grid tax" - and sadly, we get nothing new in return for our hard-earned dollars