In episode 3 of the Energy Markets Podcast host Bryan Lee talks with Nora Mead Brownell, who as a state regulator in Pennsylvania helped oversee the state's late 1990s transition from monopoly regulation to a competitive market electricity. She then was appointed by President George W. Bush to the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission, where she teamed with Pat Wood III to promote regional wholesale power markets in the wake of California's historic 2000-2001 electricity market meltdown. The conversation identifies various misunderstandings in the wake of the February 2021 Texas grid failure and compares it to similar misinformation that arose in the wake of the California crisis two decades ago, and which today is often accepted as "common knowledge." Brownell arrived at FERC when the figurative embers of the 2000-2001 crisis in California were still hot, and most recently chaired the board at PG&E, a California utility literally singed by hot embers as its equipment has been tied to historic wildfires in the state. She urges Texas officials to learn from the mistakes of California in order to help limit the economic harm of the recent weather crisis on Texas electricity consumers. Brownell suggests both recent crises, the wildfires in California and the Texas deep freeze, are the result of climate change, and calls for massive federal investment in transmission infrastructure to support renewable energy development nationally.
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