Utility company CenterPoint has been under scrutiny in Houston for the past week as customers remain without power after Hurricane Beryl hit the Texas coast last Monday.
But new reporting from E&E News by Politico reveals that the Biden administration rejected a request from CenterPoint last year for $100 million to strengthen its electric poles and wires against the type of hurricane winds and flooding that Beryl brought.
Thomas Frank, who oversees E&E News’ climate finance team, said CenterPoint’s application would have had to be extremely detailed.
“To get the kind of money that you’re talking about, $100 million from the Department of Energy, you have to submit a pretty detailed application, and I’m sure that exists somewhere,” he said.
“It’s a competitive grant across the nation. And the applications at the DOE, they go over them very, very closely to make sure that everything is feasible, that it’s something that the DOE wants to promote among utilities around the country.”
Experts in Houston expressed surprise that CenterPoint’s application was rejected, given the number of people and key industries located in the city — and the city’s vulnerability to hurricanes.
“I have asked the Department of Energy here in Washington to explain that very question, and I have gotten no response,” Frank said. “Any federal department or agency gets applications for way more money than they have to spend, so they’ve got to make choices.
“I understand [University of Houston energy economist Ed Hirs’] point that you would think that a project in the Houston area would go to the top of the line if you’re looking at grid resilience, given the exposure to hurricanes and the type of businesses and the concentration of people that live in the area.”
CenterPoint did note, in a document the company submitted to the Public Utility Commission in April, that it had submitted a new application for grant funds after incorporating DOE feedback.
“So you can try to interpret and say that there were some shortcomings in the original application,” Frank said. “The Department of Energy explained what was wrong or what needed to be improved, and CenterPoint took that information, made some improvements in this application, and now is in a much better position to actually get funding in the second round.”
Texas is not a state known for coming down hard on business, but CenterPoint is in the crosshairs right now with a governor, lieutenant governor, utility regulators and down to the public at large for its Beryl response.
Despite the public pressure, Frank clarified that CenterPoint was not the one pushing out this story to try and shift blame to the Biden administration.
“The way I got this story is searching for records online, and I found that CenterPoint had submitted an application — really a plan of infrastructure improvements — to the PUC in April,” Frank said.
“This is a 100-page document that goes into all sorts of detail, and the part about having applied for the Department of Energy grant is just a page or two. So CenterPoint in no way has been pushing this out. Whether it is a defense is a whole other thing.”
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Frank said it is also unclear whether CenterPoint would have had time to make improvements before Beryl, even if the grant funding had been awarded.
“The process of grants moves slowly. So even if CenterPoint had been approved — and this would have been back in December or November — would CenterPoint have actually gotten enough money or gotten any money by two weeks ago to do anything? And even if it had gotten money to do things, would prevention of power outages during a hurricane been their top priority?” Frank said.
“All of those are unknown. I will opine that it’s probably unlikely that if they had even been approved, that CenterPoint would have started doing the things to mitigate some of what happens after Beryl or during Beryl.”
