Hurricane Season’s Coming Storms Are a Lesson in Energy Realism
Hurricane season is here, and if recent years have taught us anything, it’s that the real threat to American families isn’t just what the storm brings — it’s what happens when the lights go out and stay out.
Let’s look at 2024, even after great investment by utilities to enhance resiliency, U.S. consumers endured nearly double their average annual power outages and the highest level of them in a decade. The culprits were Hurricanes Beryl, Helene, and Milton, which alone accounted for 80% of the hours without electricity in 2024. Among the deaths during Hurricane Beryl in Texas, a third were caused by heat, when widespread outages put air conditioning out of commission during one of the hottest summers on record.
NOAA predicts a below-normal Atlantic hurricane season this year. Good news — but it’s not a reason to exhale. A quieter season doesn’t fix a fragile grid – created, in large part, by decades of bad state and national policy decisions and aggressive efforts by dark money organizations to prevent construction of pipelines and transmission. As a result, the grid we have today is more fragile than it needs to be, not because of what nature has done to it, but because of what policy has failed to do for it.
While that may sound like a weather story, it is really an energy policy story.
The Grid We Built, and the One We’re Leaving Behind
America’s electric companies are investing nearly $1.5 trillion through 2030 to bolster grid resilience and reliability. Published data from the National Laboratory of the Rockies shows that investment in grid hardening returns $1.60 to $1.80 in future system cost savings for every dollar spent. That’s real money flowing back to the families and businesses who pay the bills – a strong return on investment that promotes affordability.
But investment alone isn’t enough when policy actively blocks the infrastructure that makes that investment worthwhile. The current election season has put affordability at the forefront. It is fascinating to watch the gyrations by those elected leaders who supported policies that increased costs by requiring utilities to jump through countless regulatory hoops to meet emission reduction goals that, for the most part, failed to achieve their stated purpose. Those policy mandates and/or restrictions naturally diverted resources and attention from the 24-7 challenge of keeping low-cost power flowing, which means grid investments and resiliency took a backseat to misguided political choices.
The contradictions abound. Nuclear energy provides reliable, around-the-clock power that doesn’t depend on the vagaries of the weather. Natural gas delivers significant generation capacity that adjusts to demand in real time. Pipeline expansion is the safest, most efficient way to move that energy where it’s needed most.
Yet in state after state, the same policymakers who say they want grid resilience are blocking the infrastructure that delivers it. They fight pipelines, restrict natural gas, and celebrate the retirement of dispatchable generation assets — then express shock when the lights go out and stay out.
Annual power outages have nearly doubled — from 166 per year from 2014-18 to 321 from 2019-23 — which is the predictable consequence of policy choices that prioritize political fashion over physical realities.
That’s not to say that intermittent power sources, like wind and solar, don’t have a role to play. They do. But markets, costs and an inability to be available 24-7, especially when the day is the hottest, or the night is coldest, must be at the forefront of logical, sensible policy decisions. Too often in the past, logic has been lost in favor of mistaken belief systems.
What’s at Stake When the Power Goes Out
Families who have been through hurricanes know this better than anyone. When power fails, food and medicine can’t be safely stored. Clean water may be unavailable. Hospitals and first responders are stretched to the limit. Schools and childcare facilities close. People lose wages. And in the summer heat, people die.
The communities that suffer most are the ones with the least margin for error — low-income families and elderly residents. Energy policy that leaves the grid vulnerable doesn’t fail abstractly. It fails those people specifically.
This is why grid resilience is a consumer issue. And treating it as anything less is a failure of the people elected to protect the public. And, it should be non-partisan!
What Resilience Actually Requires
Burying power lines, replacing aging infrastructure, advancing higher voltage transmission, staging equipment before storms — these are the operational steps utilities take seriously. Recent research confirms those investments pay dividends for consumers. The bigger picture requires more than operational diligence. It requires the kind of diverse, dependable energy supply that can absorb the shock of a major storm without cascading into catastrophe.
That means defending nuclear energy at precisely the moment some states are moving to shut it down. It means building and maintaining natural gas infrastructure rather than treating it as an obstacle to a cleaner future. It means fast-tracking the pipeline projects that move reliable energy to the places that need it — not killing them after a decade of litigation over a few miles of expansion. Pipelines are among the safest and most environmentally responsible ways to move energy, a fact that gets buried under the political noise every time a new project is proposed. The safety record supports it.
We cannot control the weather. We can control the choices we make about the critical energy infrastructure we rely on daily, and invest to limit the potential harm weather can bring. And, come November, we each have a voice in making sure our political leaders start making better, more informed and logical decisions about future energy policy.
The storms will come and policymakers ought to put first critical investments in the massive machine that is our nation’s energy grid. It has shown to be incredibly resilient, but without supportive policies and future investment communities and customers will pay the price.