Above, per the Houston electric utility announces that up to a half million customers may not have power until next week.
Just in time for hurricane season to really get rolling.
When Hurricane Beryl barreled towards Texas last week, the state’s largest electric utility company said it was prepared for the worst. It wasn’t.
More than 2.7 million people lost power on July 8 as Beryl slammed into the state, leaving 80 percent of Centerpoint’s Houston customers in the dark. It was the largest area blackout in the utility’s 20-year history. And residents remained without power for over a week, even as temperatures dangerously rose above 90 degrees Fahrenheit.
CenterPoint is now under investigation by the state Public Utility Commission, and Governor Greg Abbott has demanded a detailed future hurricane plan by the end of this month.
In its defense, CenterPoint has claimed that its infrastructure simply wasn’t built for this kind of extreme weather. The utility said it needs an additional $2 billion from customers to climate-proof its infrastructure. That’s not surprising; the climate crisis is fueling stronger hurricanes, heat waves, and surprise winter storms, which are wreaking havoc on the Texas grid.
What is surprising is that CenterPoint is asking for this money to prepare for climate change while funneling millions of customer dollars into making climate change worse.
CenterPoint is one of the worst utilities in the U.S. when it comes to pushing against action to slow climate change, according to an analysis by U.K. think tank InfluenceMap. And the utility doesn’t just advocate against climate action in Texas, where it is headquartered; it tries to delay climate policies all over the country—and succeeds.
According to InfluenceMap’s report, CenterPoint has successfully fought policies to ban methane gas in Oklahoma, Louisiana, Texas, and Indiana. In Minnesota, CenterPoint also successfully lobbied politicians to oppose building electrification, and support methane-powered heat instead.
To fight these policy battles, CenterPoint needs money—and they get most of it from customers, including those who suffered blackouts last week. We know this because Texas has fairly stringent disclosure rules that require utilities like CenterPoint to report how much they spend on memberships, advertising, business gifts, and more.
According to those records, CenterPoint has spent at least $3.3 million on “legislative advocacy” over the past two years—advocacy which includes the company’s support for anti-climate policies.
But these aren’t the only anti-climate actions CenterPoint spends customer money on. According to its public disclosures, CenterPoint has given more than $2 million to trade associations that lobby for climate delay since 2022.