From stronger storms to Arctic warming to California fires, rising atmospheric carbon levels mean there's no escaping the fallout from global warming. Now, we're plunged into a new world of managing the consequences.

Why it matters: Some regions will require power grids more prepared for extreme heat and cold. But the needs go far beyond power systems to building codes, workplace regulations and design and placement of infrastructure.

Rutgers University climate scientist Robert Kopp tells Axios that the pandemic and the Texas disaster have shown us that the competence of public institutions is a predictor of the "severity" of transcendent disasters.

• He's among the many authors of a 2018 federal report that laid out the climate-related health and economic risks facing different parts of the country. 
• "[R]ising temperatures, sea level rise, and changes in extreme events are expected to increasingly disrupt and damage critical infrastructure and property," along with labor productivity, the report says.

Scientists are still analyzing the nexus between polar vortex events and climate change. But Princeton energy expert Jesse Jenkins wrote in a New York Times op-ed: "[W]e do know that climate change increases the frequency of extreme heat waves, droughts, wildfires, rain and coastal flooding."

• "Those extreme events test our systems to the breaking point, as they have in Texas this week," he writes.

Michael Wehner, an extreme weather expert with Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory, said in an email exchange with Axios that vast swaths of the country will need to adapt:

• "For hurricanes, this may mean managed retreat in some low-lying areas and building code changes in other areas," Wehner said.
• Low-income people and people who work outdoors are most at risk, requiring stiffer workplace safety guidelines — and enforcement.

What's next: Texas Gov. Greg Abbott announced Thursday he'll ask the legislature to require Texas' power system to be winterized — a basic step that it didn't take before this week's disaster.

The bottom line: As important as adaptation strategies are, climate experts say they're not a replacement for the need to cut emissions.

The deadly winter storm in Texas has bombarded hospitals throughout the state.

Why it matters: Doctors have been working to conserve resources, pause non-emergency surgeries, evacuate patients and push back coronavirus vaccine shots.

The state of play: Before the storm, Texas was on track to administer 1 million vaccine doses per week, according to Department of State Health Services.

• 85 large vaccination hubs and several hundred smaller providers across the state closed this week, the Texas Tribune reports.
• 407,000 first doses and 333,000 second doses to Texas were delayed in anticipation of the bad weather, the Texas Department of State Health Services said.
• Hospitals without power were directed to closely monitor vaccine supplies, to transfer vaccine to another facility or administer doses to "any willing person to ensure that it is not wasted," according to an update sent to hospitals from the Texas Hospital Association, per the Tribune.

As for the facilities, pipes have burst at multiple Houston Methodist hospitals, and at least two facilities are operating without water, according to the Houston Chronicle.

• Ambulances lined up at St. David's South Austin Medical Center on Tuesday to transport vulnerable patients after the facility experienced a complete loss of water pressure and heat, the Austin American Statesman reports.
• Patients and families at Dell Children’s Medical Center were asked not to take showers or wash their hands, and instead use hand sanitizer. Toilets were unable to flush for most of the evening, according to KUT Austin.

Nearly 2 million homes across Texas had their power restored on Thursday, Gov. Greg Abbott (R) announced.

Why it matters: Approximately 325,000 Texans remain without electricity after a winter storm brought single-digit temperatures and sub-zero wind chill to most of Texas this week.

What they're saying: "As of this afternoon there are no residential power outages due to lack of power generation," Abbott said in a tweet.

• "If any residence doesn’t have power it is due to downed power lines or the need for the power company to manually reconnect. If you don’t have power contact your local power provider."

The big picture: The Electric Reliability Council of Texas, which operates the power grid that covers most of the state, said Thursday that the grid almost suffered a catastrophic failure that could have caused uncontrolled blackouts that may have left residents without power for months, the Texas Tribune reports.

• At least 16 deaths have been linked to the harsh weather, and roughly 13.5 million people are facing water disruptions, including millions under boil-water notices, according to CNN.
• U.S. Department of Health and Human Services Norris Cochran has declared a public health emergency for the state of Texas due to the winter storms, with actions and flexibilities retroactive to Feb. 11.

What's next: Temperatures are expected to rise on Friday, though ice on bridges and overpasses may remain a threat through late Sunday into Monday.

The chart above is a wide-angle look at the main sources of electricity generation in Texas, showing how natural gas is by far the biggest and how renewables (largely wind) have overtaken coal.

Yes, but: There's plenty of variation, and blaming wind for the state's crisis misses the mark, The Wall Street Journal reports.

• "Texas counts on wind to meet only 10% of its winter capacity, according to the state’s grid manager," The Journal writes.
• "Natural gas and coal make up the lion’s share, comprising 82%. Sure, some wind turbines glitched under cold weather conditions, but so did natural gas- and coal-fired power."

Go deeper: Texas crisis highlights the changing climate for U.S. power

A Feb. 16 satellite image above of Houston-area power outages (shown in red and explained here) gets to the immense scale of the Texas-wide crisis.

Why it matters: It's a human tragedy that's also quickly reaching Beltway energy discussions and responses and jostling oil markets.

What we're watching

Congress: Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer said via Twitter that "Democrats are working to pass our plan to provide robust investments to make our energy infrastructure more resilient, cleaner, and safeguard the country from devastating impacts of the climate crisis."

• In a similar vein, Bloomberg notes that grid vulnerabilities the crisis exposed could give "at least a rhetorical boost" to President Biden's push for big new spending in this area.
• That includes "better transmission systems and battery storage that would make the system more resilient amid extreme weather spurred by climate change," they report.

Agencies: The Federal Energy Regulatory Commission holds its monthly open meeting later this morning, where the crisis is certain to come up.

• The federal government's sway over Texas' independent grid is quite limited.
• But this week FERC said it's working with the nonprofit North American Electric Reliability Corporation to probe power operations in extreme winter weather in midwest and south-central states.

Restoration and new problems: Grid operators are making some progress restoring power.

• But via The New York Times, "Early Thursday at least one million customers nationwide were without power, the overwhelming majority of them in Texas, according to Bluefire Studios, a company that tracks outages."
• It's not just power either, with the crisis affecting water systems. And the region face continued difficult weather.

Energy justice: Experts say that communities of color were hit with blackouts in Texas first and are likely to face more hurdles getting help or being able to recover financially, Axios' Oriana Gonzalez reports.

Oil markets: Crude oil prices are at their highest levels in over a year as the storms disrupted lots of production in Texas, and some output is affected elsewhere, too.

• WTI is trading around $61.46 this morning. The exact picture is unclear but some estimates place the oil production loss as high as the 3-4 million barrel per day range.
• "Remember how the market reacted when Saudi Arabia offered voluntary cuts of 1 million bpd? Well double that number and see what happens. It’s exactly the same market reaction now with the U.S., although the cuts are not voluntary," Rystad Energy analyst Artem Abramov said in a note.

Facebook is expanding the geographic reach of its recently launched online portal to counter misinformation about climate change, and will take new steps to steer users of the platform toward those resources.

Why it matters: Social media platforms have immense reach, and they've come under fire from activists and some lawmakers globally for doing too little to thwart the spread of inaccurate content.

Driving the news: Facebook Thursday morning unveiled several changes to the Climate Science Information Center it first launched in September. The platform steers users to the site when they search for climate-related terms. Changes and additions include...

• Making it available to Facebook users in Belgium, Brazil, Canada, India, Indonesia, Ireland, Mexico, the Netherlands, Nigeria, Spain, South Africa, and Taiwan. It initially launched in the U.S., U.K., Germany and France.
• Where it's not available, Facebook is directing users to the UN Environment Programme.
• The site has added a section aimed at debunking specific myths about climate change crafted in consultation with experts from Yale, George Mason and the University of Cambridge.
• Facebook is beginning a program in the U.K., which it plans to expand, that starts adding labels to some user posts on climate that steer them to the Center.

What they're saying: “We want to expose people to information that helps them interpret and react to common myths around climate change they may encounter,” Edward Palmieri, Facebook’s sustainability director, tells Axios.

• John Cook, a George Mason University expert in climate communication working with Facebook, said research shows that simply saying information is wrong is not enough.
• “You also have to explain why or how it is wrong. That is important from a psychological point of view,” Cook said of the new “myth-busting” section of the climate portal.

But, but, but: It's unclear how the new efforts will sit with climate activists who say the social media behemoth should go further by outright thwarting posts from organizations that deny human-driven climate change.

• Facebook officials, for their part, note that they have a fact-checking initiative that runs in parallel to the online portal, and take steps to label and limit distribution of posts with misinformation without nixing them outright.

Our thought bubble: It's comparatively easy to put up an information center on a highly charged topic, notes Axios' chief technology correspondent Ina Fried. But the harder and more important work is preventing misinformation, something that Facebook has struggled to do on many issues.

The power outages in Texas are the latest in a series of disasters that will be harder to fix — or prevent from happening again — because Americans are retreating to partisan and cultural corners instead of trying to solve problems.

The big picture: From COVID to the election fallout to the utter collapse of Texas' electric grid, America is no longer showing the rest of the world how to conquer its biggest challenges. Instead, there's always another uncivil war to be fought — even when democracy, global health and now climate change are on the line.

• Between extreme weather events, a pandemic and an attack on democracy itself, America has been pummeled with the kinds of existential disasters that usually come along once every 100 years — and are testing whether we still have the ability to overcome them.

Texas has never been prepared for extreme winter — or, really, any winter — but now the consequences of its decisions, especially its independent power grid, have become inescapable.

So what were the first instincts of the partisan warriors as millions of Texans, freezing in dark houses and single-degree temperatures, waited for someone to give them their power and heat back?

• Gov. Greg Abbott singled out the loss of wind and solar power and turned it into a lesson about how "the Green New Deal would be a deadly deal for the United States of America" — even though breakdowns in thermal sources of energy, especially natural gas, were a far bigger factor, per the Texas Tribune.
• Democrats like Julián Castro and Beto O'Rourke piled on Abbott and blamed him for the mess, while others used the crisis as an opportunity to declare victory for the blue states.
• Meanwhile, Rick Perry — the former energy secretary under Donald Trump and Abbott's predecessor as Texas governor — said Texans are willing to sacrifice and endure blackouts to keep the feds from taking over the energy grid.
• And the mayor of Colorado City, Texas resigned after declaring on Facebook that "No one owes you [or] your family anything,” and “I’m sick and tired of people looking for a damn handout!”

None of this pattern should be new to anyone who watched how America responded to our other crises.

• We let COVID spread far more quickly than it needed to — not because all Americans ignored the danger, but because masks somehow became a cultural dividing line, with millions of Americans refusing to wear them despite all of the evidence that they save lives.
• A presidential election that should have been over in a few days dragged on for weeks. That was not just because Donald Trump fought the result every way he could find, as he'd signaled he would, but because so many Republicans, egged on by right-wing news organizations and social media, refused to acknowledge the clear outcome.
• The avalanche of lies about a stolen election set us on the road to the Capitol attack — led by gullible insurrectionists who overpowered a Capitol police force that should have had plenty of backup, given all the signs that a violent attack was on the way.

Flashback: The last time Americans felt their country was this far off the rails was in the 1970s, when the defeat in Vietnam, the crimes of Watergate, runaway inflation and energy shortages created what Jimmy Carter famously and accurately called a national "crisis of confidence."(His straight talk sabotaged his political fortunes.)

For all of our current failures, there are some reasons for optimism:

• People are finally getting vaccinated, and there are lots more doses on the way.
• Coronavirus cases, hospitalizations and deaths are all going down in the U.S.
• The Capitol attack is going to be investigated by a 9/11-style commission, people who participated in it are being arrested, and for now, at least, the "stolen election" rhetoric is dying down.
• One element of politics has been removed from disaster response: President Biden declared an emergency in Texas quickly, in contrast to Trump's refusal to declare an emergency during California's wildfires last year.
• And the Electric Reliability Council of Texas, which manages the state's independent power grid, will be shamed in public hearings in the legislature. But it will be a while before we know whether there will be any fundamental changes, even if it's just to provide basic winter-proofing to power plants.

Millions of Americans are still without power during the winter weather emergency that's sweeping the U.S. — including nearly 1.8 million Texans, per utility tracker poweroutage.us. Some have also lost water services.

The big picture: Texas has been particularly badly hit by the deadly storm, with infrastructure damaged and pipes frozen. Officials told some 7 million Texans Wednesday to boil tap water before drinking it.

City-wide boil water notice issued due to power loss at Ullrich Water Treatment Plant and drop in water pressure below minimum standards. We are working with #Austin Energy to assess the system. Boil water for consumption. Follow guidelines at https://t.co/cReBGhnJAp pic.twitter.com/dzD0YjFuYu

— Austin Water (@AustinWater) February 18, 2021

Go deeper:

• The frozen fallout in Texas
• Texas outages highlight the changing climate for U.S. power
• Texas power outage highlights inequalities for minority neighborhoods

Economists are urging the U.S. government to adopt a higher number for the social cost of carbon emissions.

Why it matters: The social cost of carbon might be the single most important number on climate change, one that helps decide how much we're willing to invest to slow global warming — and how much we actually value the future.

Driving the news: On Monday, prominent economists Nicholas Stern and Joseph Stiglitz published a paper making the case that the U.S. needs to reassess how it calculates the social cost of carbon.

• The social cost of carbon reflects the ultimate estimated dollar price to society for every new metric ton of carbon dioxide emitted.
• Under President Obama's administration, the figure was estimated at $50 per metric ton by 2030, in 2007 dollars.
• In one of his first actions in office, President Trump essentially threw out Obama's calculations, eventually resulting in a cost of between $2–$7 — so low that carbon restrictions of almost any kind would be economically infeasible.
• Stern and Stiglitz, reevaluating the economic models used to estimate future climate damages and putting more value on the wellbeing of future generations, suggest a social cost at the upper end of a $50–$100 per metric ton range.

What they're saying: "It is vital to get the number right — and by right, we mean higher than it has been in the past," Stern and Stiglitz wrote in a separate commentary.

Be smart: The social cost of carbon represents the economic benefit that will come from reducing carbon emissions, which means that setting a higher cost justifies regulations that make emitting carbon more expensive.

• The number is also one of the best representations of what the present feels it owes future generations that will suffer the most from climate change — or benefit, if we can curb its worst effects.

By the numbers: As part of its calculations for the social cost of carbon, the Obama administration used a discount rate of 3%, meaning that a dollar of climate damages a year from now would be valued 3% less than a dollar today.

• The discount rate reflects assumptions — partially wrapped up in interest rate levels — about how rich we expect future generations to be, and therefore how much we should be willing to spend in the present to save our descendants from damages.
• A 3% discount rate implies that to save $1 a century from now, it's only worth spending less than 5 cents today. Set the discount rate at 7% — as the Trump administration did — and we're essentially telling future generations they're on their own.
• Stern and Stiglitz — both citing ethical reasons and because today's ultra-low interest rates make them more pessimistic about the prosperity of future generations — urge adopting a lower discount rate, which in turn feeds into a higher social cost of carbon.

Of note: That's exactly what New York did late last year, which led the state to estimate a social cost of carbon of $125 per metric ton.

What to watch: On his first day in office, President Biden re-created an interagency working group on the social cost of greenhouse gases — carbon dioxide, as well as other warming gases like methane — that Trump had disbanded, and he ordered it to update the figure within 30 days.

• Many experts believe the interim estimate could run as high as $125 per metric ton and could rise even higher by next January, when the final number is due.
• A high social cost of carbon would be essential to Biden's climate action goals, which include making the U.S. carbon neutral by 2050.
• Some economists argue the social cost of carbon should be even higher than what Stern and Stiglitz recommend, given the need to drive down carbon emissions immediately to avert dangerous climate change.

I don't know what SCC will come out of that process. No one does.

My best guess is that it'll be well over $100/t CO₂. That's also well over what Stern & Stiglitz recommend here.

Key is for the SCC to be updated as science & economics advance. Process matters!

— Gernot Wagner (@GernotWagner) February 15, 2021

The other side: On Tuesday, 11 business groups from the manufacturing and fossil fuel industries — which would bear much of the economic burden of a higher carbon cost — sent a letter to the White House urging "stakeholder input" on the new estimate.

• A high cost of carbon could be vulnerable in Republican-leaning courts, just as the Trump administration's estimate of the cost of methane — another greenhouse gas — was struck down by a federal judge last year because it only included domestic harms.

The bottom line: Where we set the social cost of carbon tells us how we gauge a future-focused threat — and how much we value the generations to come.

Nearly 3 million Texans are without power and more than 20 are dead, due to a perfect storm of extreme weather, poor planning and an antipathy toward regulation.

Axios Re:Cap digs into what this experience should teach Texas and other states about the future, with Andrew Freedman, deputy weather editor of The Washington Post.

Experts say that communities of color were hit with blackouts in Texas first and are likely to face more hurdles getting help or being able to recover financially.

Why it matters: "These are communities that have already been hit hardest with COVID," Robert Bullard, a professor and expert on wealth and racial disparities related to the environment, told The New York Times. "They’re the households working two minimum wage jobs, the essential workers who don’t get paid if they don’t go to work."

The big picture: The Electric Reliability Council of Texas (ERCOT), which manages the flow of electric power in the state, started conducting power outages to balance the demand and supply of the electric grid.

• But, but, but: Urban and downtown areas, which have the most affluent residents, have been almost completely exempt from blackouts, with surrounding, underprivileged neighborhoods having to endure long blackouts, some of which last days, per The Washington Post.
• "A vivid metaphor for the state’s entrenched inequities emerged Monday night: The illuminated Texas skylines of downtown buildings and newly filled luxury hotels cast against the darkened silhouettes of freezing neighborhoods," The Post writes.

This is not the first time marginalized neighborhoods are left as the ones to bear the brunt.

• The coronavirus pandemic has disproportionately affected Black and Hispanic people, and this winter storm shows how they continue to be the most vulnerable.
• "It’s not just today. It’s not just this emergency. It’s every emergency," Natasha Harper-Madison, mayor pro-tem of Austin, told The Guardian. “These are the kinds of disparities that we see on a normal basis all the time. They just happen to be amplified because of the emergency.”

The bottom line: “These communities are gonna have to go back to work in a few days, when the snow melts,” Cecilia Corral, co-founder of CareMessage, a nonprofit focused on medical undeserved areas, told The Guardian. “Who’s gonna advocate for them, so that this doesn’t happen again?”

These are busy days for the California-based electric vehicle tech company Proterra, which is soon to go public as part of the SPAC-wave sweeping the sector.

Driving the news: This morning the European company Volta Trucks announced that Proterra will supply batteries for its "Volta Zero" urban freight delivery vehicle.

Why it matters: European carbon rules are making the continent an attractive market for electrified transport of various stripes.

• The announcement also marks Proterra's entry into European truck markets, the companies said.

How it works: The Volta Zero, the companies said, is "purpose-built, full-electric 16-tonne commercial vehicle designed specifically for inner city freight distribution."

• Proterra's battery system will give it roughly 125 miles of range per charge, the announcement states.

What's next: Volta claims it's capable of a pretty quick production ramp up.

• They said the vehicle will begin customer testing late this year, with "tens of thousands of trucks expected on the roads soon after series production starts around 12 months later."

Catch up fast: Proterra, founded in the mid-2000s, made its name as an electric bus maker but has moved into battery systems, charging infrastructure and more — even working in the heavy construction equipment space.

The clean energy think tank Ember finds India's coal demand may have peaked in 2018 and might never fully return from further declines during the pandemic.

Driving the news: That would break with projections that India's coal thirst will keep rising for a long time as the growing nation's overall energy demand surges.

• For instance, the International Energy Agency's "stated policies" scenario — which models current and announced policies — sees coal generation rising over this decade.

But, but, but: A lot more renewables are needed to keep coal-fired power from rising. "Peaking of coal-fired generation is contingent on India meeting its wind and solar generation targets," Ember's report states, adding India's not on pace.

Why it matters: India is the world's 3rd-largest carbon emitter. IEA projects that it will see the biggest increase in energy demand of any country over the next 20 years.

• Fuels used to meet that demand will influence the world's success — or failure — at stemming emissions.

The bottom line: "As India recovers from the COVID-19 pandemic shock, the choices it makes for its power sector can make or break its coal-to-clean electricity transition in the next decade," the report concludes.

Go deeper: India's energy surge makes it pivotal for the climate

The crisis gripping Texas' power grid is very different from California's fiery emergencies in recent years, but there's connective tissue there: Electricity grids and infrastructure need to be better equipped for a changing climate or they can have deadly consequences.

Driving the news: Texas is reeling after a bitter blast of Arctic air and a related demand surge led to widespread outages, causing millions of customers to lose power that as of this morning is only partially restored.

What they're saying: "This crisis is illustrating the need for our energy systems to be more resilient to extreme weather," Rice University energy expert Daniel Cohan tells Axios.

The big picture: Climate change is creating new challenges in the form of both extreme heat and polar vortex events that push Arctic air southward. Severe weather puts new strains on infrastructure while increasing demand for heating and cooling — making grid planning and resource allocation harder.

• In California, hotter temperatures push up consumption and are a threat multiplier for wildfires.
• Extreme heat and stronger storms are a big problem in Texas, even though the current woes occurring during the cold snap are front and center.

But, but, but: This New York Times piece on the climate-grid nexus — and the planning problems it poses — captures why some nuance is needed on what's happening in Texas.

• It notes that cold extremes in Texas are becoming less common.
• "But some climate scientists have also suggested that global warming could, paradoxically, bring more unusually fierce winter storms," they report.
• However, the piece also notes that some experts aren't certain that polar vortex disruptions are happening more, "making it even trickier for electricity planners to anticipate the dangers ahead."

What we're watching: One question going forward is whether this disaster will lead to major changes in the way the Texas power grid is regulated or operated — and how the crisis is spilling into national energy debates.

• Texas Gov. Greg Abbott yesterday called for an investigation into the Electric Reliability Council of Texas, the state's grid operator.
• Meanwhile, Politico explores the political dimensions of the crisis and also asks whether it "could be a boon to Biden’s proposal to spend huge sums of money to harden the nation’s electric grid as it connects giant wind and solar power plants to cities and states thousands of miles away."

The intrigue: The state, unlike large swaths of the country, does not have a "capacity market" that compensates power generators for commitments of future supplies — even if it remains idle.

• Texas has an "energy-only" market that aims to have reserve capacity but relies heavily on market forces, which let prices soar during high demand periods.

Zoom in: There are many reasons why the situation in Texas is exceptionally bad.

• The Wall Street Journal notes that the extreme cold affected "nearly every major category of electricity producer, from wind to natural gas to even nuclear power," and coal too.
• "But a shortage of natural gas also appears to have played a role. Texas gas wells froze up, limiting supply of the fuel and driving market prices sky-high."
• Bloomberg reports that regulators have let Texas power plant operators "leave their pipes, valves and pressure gauges exposed," which is a big problem in extreme cold.

Texas Gov. Greg Abbott (R) called for an investigation into the Electric Reliability Council of Texas (ERCOT) on Tuesday, in the wake of a statewide power outage that has affected millions during a historic winter storm.

Why it matters: Over 3 million customers in Texas are still without power, as more freezing rain, sleet, and snow is forecast for western Texas until 9 p.m. CST, per the National Weather Service.

• Cities like Austin, Dallas, Houston, and Oklahoma City are expected to be affected through Wednesday morning, per the Washington Post Capital Weather Gang.

Driving the news: Republican and Democratic lawmakers in Texas were outraged after the Texas power grid, which is separate from the federal power grid, collapsed from the severe weather, San Antonio Express-News reports. Equipment and generators froze in the single-digit temperatures.

• At least 10 people have died in Texas in incidents related to severe winter weather and record freezing conditions, the Texas Tribune reports.

What they're saying: “The Electric Reliability Council of Texas has been anything but reliable over the past 48 hours,” Abbott said in a press release.

• “Far too many Texans are without power and heat for their homes as our state faces freezing temperatures and severe winter weather. This is unacceptable."
• ERCOT tweeted on Tuesday afternoon (EST) that "generating units across fuel types continue to struggle with frigid temperatures."

More than 4.3 million Texas homes and businesses are without power as of Tuesday morning, per the tracking service poweroutage.us.

Why it matters: Bitter cold temperatures and winter storms are wreaking havoc on the power system in Texas and its refineries, and affecting other states too.

The big picture: Via The Houston Chronicle...

• "The Texas power grid, powered largely by wind and natural gas, is relatively well equipped to handle the state’s hot and humid summers when demand for power soars."
• "But unlike blistering summers, the severe winter weather delivered a crippling blow to power production, cutting supplies as the falling temperatures increased demand."

What we're watching: Federal Energy Regulatory Commission chairman Richard Glick said in a statement that they would be "examining the root causes of these reliability events," but the current focus is on power restoration and safety.

The intrigue: We'll also be looking to see how the outages in Texas affect the politics of clean energy debates.

• While frozen Texas wind turbines are getting lots of attention, Bloomberg notes: "The majority of outages ... were plants fueled by natural gas, coal and nuclear, which together make up more than two-thirds of power generation during winter."
• Still, a separate Bloomberg piece on this crisis and severe weather affecting grids elsewhere notes, "Electrifying sectors like transport and heating to use green power is seen as vital to reaching net-zero [emissions] but the world’s grid infrastructure may not be ready for that shift."

What they're saying: ClearView Energy Partners, in a note, said renewable power critics may point to the crisis as "evidence for the need for Texas to reevaluate grid reliability."

But they're "skeptical" that efforts to slow wind and solar in Texas, the nation's largest wind power-producing state, will take root.

• They point out that multiple forms of generation were knocked offline.
• Plus, "Texas does not have typical state policies driving renewable buildout that they easily be reversed or modified."

Between the lines: U.S. oil prices cracked $60-per-barrel Monday for the first time since January of 2020.

The big picture: While the trajectory has been upward amid vaccine rollouts and planned stimulus, the U.S. power crisis and freezing temperatures added the most recent upward pressure.

Where it stands: WTI crude was trading around $59.69 Tuesday morning.

• "[W]e find that the recent price increase might be an overreaction to the recent reported events," Rystad Energy analyst Paola Rodríguez Masiu said in a note.

A coalition of agribusiness and environmental groups focused on climate policy has formally registered to lobby.

The big picture: The Biden administration is vowing to boost the Agriculture Department's work on climate change.

The latest: The Food and Agriculture Climate Alliance (FACA) has tapped the Russell Group, a newly public filing shows.

• Lobbyists include Karla Thieman. She held senior Agriculture Department roles during President Obama's second term and before that worked in Congress.

Why it matters: FACA, which launched in November, is made up of big names on K Street and the green world.

• Members include the American Farm Bureau Federation, the Environmental Defense Fund (EDF), the Food Industry Association, and the Nature Conservancy.

FACA is promoting recommendations around areas like...

• Carbon sequestration incentives for farmers, ranchers and forest owners.
• Creation and oversight of private-sector emissions credits markets.
• Incentives for farmers to conserve energy and use more renewables.
• More R&D around emissions-cutting in the agriculture, forest and food system.

What they're saying: "We’ve had interest from Congress and the administration in implementing our recommendations, so we’re taking this step to advance conversations," says Chandler Green, an EDF spokesperson, in response to a query about the lobbying.

The VC arms of Chevron and BP are funding Eavor, a startup looking to commercialize a form of geothermal energy that it says can provide large-scale power in many regions worldwide.

Why it matters: It's the latest sign of momentum and investor interest behind technology that could significantly scale up geothermal.

• It's a very old power and heat source that remains very niche compared to the immense theoretical potential of tapping high subsurface temperatures.

The big picture: The participation of Chevron and BP shows how oil giants are diversifying into clean energy — and in this case, a form of geothermal that borrows the industry's drilling and geological know-how.

Driving the news: Calgary-based Eavor this morning announced a $40 million funding round.

• Other backers are investment firms Temasek, BDC Capital, and Vickers Venture Partners, and Eversource.
• "These investments, and the partnerships formed around them, are critical to the commercialization of the technology and to help Eavor scale its already extensive project pipeline," the announcement states.
• The company's development pipeline includes planned or potential potential projects in Europe, Canada and elsewhere.
• The amounts coming from the different funders was not disclosed and Eavor declined to offer a breakdown.

How it works: Geothermal energy can come from multiple ways of accessing high-temperature underground aquifers and rock formations.

Eavor's effort aims to commercialize a "closed loop" system in which deep wells are connected underground with lateral connections.

• In the "closed" system, fluids are circulated through the system and heated by high underground temperatures, forming what they call a "massive subsurface radiator."
• The process is meant to operate without energy-consuming pumps — instead relying on the natural effect of hot fluid rising and cool fluid falling.
• The thermal energy brought to the surface can be used for direct heating or converted to power.
• The method could provide both baseload power and act as a dispatchable battery to complement wind and solar, the company said.

Yes, but: "To grow as a national solution, geothermal must overcome significant technical and non-technical barriers in order to reduce cost and risk," noted a major 2019 Energy Department analysis (h/t Yale Environment 360).

• That DOE report, however, sees tech, cost and regulatory improvements providing the potential for geothermal to grow 26-fold to provide 60 gigawatts of power capacity in the U.S. by 2050.

The intrigue: The emerging forms of geothermal involve tricky and deep subsurface technologies.

• They rely in part on the same kind of drilling advances used in the oil-and-gas sector — including use of lateral-well tech.
• That's not lost on the oilfield services industry, with companies including Baker Hughes and Schlumberger seeing growth potential.

Go deeper: Geothermal energy is poised for a big breakout (Vox)

IBM is pledging to eliminate its greenhouse gas emissions by 2030, becoming the latest tech giant to unveil a target that will require tangible near-term steps to succeed.

Why it matters: The tech industry has a big energy footprint thanks to power-hungry data centers and other operations.

Driving the news: IBM's announcement included an interim pledge to cut emissions by 65% by 2025 (compared to 2010 levels). They said...

• IBM will procure 75% of its power worldwide from renewables by 2025, reaching 90% in 2030.
• This would apply to their direct energy consumption, rather than relying on purchase of renewable energy certificates.
• Improving efficiency will help IBM meet the target.

The intrigue: The company acknowledged that "residual" emissions will remain after those steps to green their operations.

• So part of IBM's pledge is to use tech like CO2 capture to "remove emissions in an amount which equals or exceeds the level of IBM's residual emissions."

The big picture: The move comes roughly a year after Microsoft vowed to be "carbon negative" by 2030, while Amazon — whose carbon footprint includes its massive delivery system — had pledged to be net-zero by 2040.