The Texas Blackout

In the winter of 2021, a crushing storm took down Texas’s power grid.

Millions of people were plunged into darkness, left without heat or water. More than 150 Texans died, most from hypothermia.

Texas is the only state in the United States where the power grid is not under federal oversight. Scores of companies sell electricity in a lightly regulated open market – a system that collapsed under the weight of the storm.

Did years of deregulation and prioritising profits for industry lead to Texas’s power disaster?