Cold snap in the United States: Texans foot the bill for the deregulated energy market
Many Texans have had to pay an exorbitant electricity bill because of the cold snap that has hit their state in the American South for the past week.
AP - Eric Gay
Text by: RFI Follow
3 min
This Saturday, February 20, a little over 50,000 homes were still without electricity.
They were, according to a last count, 4.5 million last Tuesday.
But for some the hellish week they lived is not over: the bills are arriving.
Publicity
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With our correspondent in Houston,
Thomas Harms
In Texas, the electricity market is completely deregulated.
Some customers, who had chosen market price invoices, now find themselves with the explosion of demand for a very reduced supply.
The bill is in the thousands of dollars.
A Dallas resident must pay up to $ 17,000 for these few days of electricity.
In Houston, Dallas, Austin or San Antonio, water and food distributions were organized by municipalities and elected officials at Congress.
Many locals queue for hours to be able to enjoy it.
Because the consumption of electricity is increased by the problems of running water: more than 14 million Texas households have water problems and very often those who have it must boil it to be able to consume it.
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To read also: Cold wave in the United States: controversy over renewable energies
As expensive as Hurricane Harvey in 2017
For example, in Houston, a food bank received help from Alexandria Ocasio Cortez.
New York's elected member of the House of Representatives came with more than $ 3 million raised from her supporters to help those in need hit by the freezing storm in Texas.
We just hit $ 4 million!
Reps.
Sylvia Garcia, Sheila Jackson Lee & Al Green of Houston are doing incredible work w / local relief organizations to get emergency relief to Texans.
Today we went to food distributions, water delivery sites, and home tours of impacted Texans.
pic.twitter.com/5QzIgYvz8L
- Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (@AOC) February 20, 2021
The cost of the six-day cold snap that hit the "
Lone Star State
" could cost a total of up to $ 50 billion, insurers already estimate.
That is as much or more than
Hurricane Harvey
which devastated Texas in August 2017 and killed 107 people.
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To read also: Covid-19: in the United States, the cold and the snow are slowing down the fight against the pandemic
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