Hurricane Ida delivered a knockout punch to the power grid in New Orleans on Sunday, plunging the city into darkness and renewing a long-running national debate about the best way to deliver electricity at a time in history when severe storms and weather are becoming more commonplace.
Storms like Ida illustrate the vulnerability of a centralized power grid. The storm knocked down transmission lines serving New Orleans and made it impossible to deliver electricity to the city.
The local utility, Entergy, tweeted on Tuesday that it was “conducting inspections of the system to get a clearer picture of what will be needed to repair the destruction. Full damage assessment could take several days, as many areas are currently inaccessible.”
In the meantime, there is no power for charging phones, turning on the lights, or running a laptop.
These sorts of doomsday scenarios are still rare but becoming less so. In Texas last winter, frigid temperatures pushed the power grid to the brink and caused thousands of homeowners to lose power and heat. California had to order rolling blackouts the year before during an intense heat wave.
New England so far has avoided these types of catastrophic failures, but it came close during the winter of 2013-2014 when an extended stretch of unusually cold weather pushed the power grid to its limits. The gas pipelines serving the region were unable to meet the demand for gas needed to heat homes and run power plants. Some gas-fired power plants were forced to shut down; plants that relied on coal and oil were unable to replenish their supplies. Electricity prices skyrocketed and there were indications that rolling blackouts would have been needed if the cold snap had continued several days longer.
Each time one of these energy crises happens, there are calls to rethink the bigger-is-better mentality that drives most grid operators. It makes economic sense to build a small group of large power plants capable of delivering a large amount of electricity to a large number of people. But there is a growing consensus that more emphasis needs to be placed on localized generation of renewable electricity at the plant, home, and community level.
“Solar energy plus storage is as transformative to the electric sector as wireless services were to the telecommunications sector,” Howard Learner, executive director of the Chicago-based Environmental Law & Policy Center, told the New York Times.
But in some ways climate change, which is causing many of the electric grid disasters, is also prompting a new type of bigger-is-better approach. President Biden, for example, is pushing for a huge expansion of solar and wind power to reduce reliance on fossil fuels. He is also proposing a major investment in transmission infrastructure to carry wind and solar power from where it is produced to where it is needed.
Most likely the grid of the future will have to accommodate big and small approaches to power generation. It won’t be easy and undoubtedly will require a lot of compromise.
“The choices we make today will set us on a path that, if history is a barometer, could last for 50 to 100 years,” Amy Myers Jaffe, managing director of the Climate Policy Lab at Tufts University, told the New York Times. “At stake is literally the health and economic well-being of every American.”
BRUCE MOHL
FROM COMMONWEALTH
Bullying alleged: Last week it was disclosed that the city of Boston had paid $650,000 to settle lawsuits by five sets of parents who alleged the Mission Hill K-8 Pilot School in Jamaica Plain failed to protect their daughters from sexual misbehavior by a kindergartener. This week, a report commissioned by Superintendent Brenda Cassellius is surfacing that suggests bullying of a gender-nonconforming student went on for years at the school.
— Both problems at the school occurred on the watch of former principal Ayla Gavins, who has come under criticism for her handling of the matters and her failure to report them up the chain of command. The current co-leaders of the school also appear to have been caught up in the controversy; they were placed on administrative leave this month. Read more.
Early ed mask mandate: Samantha Aigner-Treworgy, the early education and care commissioner, is seeking approval for a mandate for mask-wearing by staff and children over five in early education settings. For children ages 2 to 4, masks would be strongly encouraged. Read more.
OPINION
Witnessing history: Paul Debole, who teaches at Lasell University in Newton, sat in on the virtual parole hearing of Sirhan Sirhan, who was found guilty of killing US Sen. Robert F. Kennedy. He says the criminal justice system worked as it should at the hearing, albeit years too late. Sirhan has been incarcerated for 53 years. Read more.
Changing the course of history: James Aloisi imagines how the course of history was changed by the bullets that struck down US Sen. Robert F. Kennedy as he was campaigning for president in 1968 with a “message that was transcendent.” Read more.
FROM AROUND THE WEB
HEALTH/HEALTH CARE
Patients and an employee say care at St. Vincent Hospital has been poor since the nurses went on strike, a claim the hospital denies. (Telegram & Gazette)
Dr. David Brown, the longtime chair of the department of emergency medicine at Massachusetts General Hospital, has been named president of the hospital. (Boston Globe)
WASHINGTON/NATIONAL/INTERNATIONAL
The last US troops left Afghanistan just before midnight Monday, ending the country’s longest war and capping a chaotic exit marked by the death last week of 13 service members at the hands of a suicide bomber. (Washington Post)
ELECTIONS
Boston mayoral candidate Andrea Campbell called on the city to impose an eviction moratorium to protect tenants one week after the US Supreme Court overturned a federal eviction ban. (Boston Globe)
Fellow mayoral candidate Annissa Essaibi George — who has the backing of several police unions and former commissioner William Gross — toured the Bowdoin-Geneva neighborhood of Dorchester while touting her plan to add more police officers to the city’s force. (Boston Globe)
BUSINESS/ECONOMY
A group of nuns who bought Smith & Wesson stock in order to have a say in the company’s policies is trying to force shareholders to address their concerns about the use of firearms in human rights violations. (MassLive)
EDUCATION
The US Department of Education warned the states of Iowa, Oklahoma, South Carolina, Tennessee, and Utah that their statewide bans on mask mandates, including in schools, could violate students’ civil rights. (NPR)
ARTS/CULTURE
A sculpture by Fall River native Barney Zeitz honoring the city’s diverse make-up was unveiled at Fall River’s Government Center. (Herald News)
CRIMINAL JUSTICE/COURTS
A Springfield police lieutenant, who is Black, sues the city and the police department for discrimination, saying he was passed over for promotion in favor of a white candidate and is now being forced to retire while recovering from illness. (MassLive)
MEDIA
The top 25 US newspapers have lost a quarter of their print circulation since the coronavirus pandemic began last year. At the three biggest newspapers — the Wall Street Journal, New York Times, and USA Today, 500,000 subscriptions were lost, with USA Today losing 303,000. The Boston Globe print circulation dropped by 7,000, or 8 percent. (PressGazette)