Thursday, February 25, 2021

The 2021 TX Big Freeze: A Toxic Mix of Politics and Economics - Part 1

First, yes, I'm back again!!  I now have a 18 month old baby girl, so I'm a single dad so a little limited on time these days.  Nevertheless, having gone through 4 nights of freezing cold weather here in Corpus Christi, Texas, I feel the need to do some thinking about the power grid in Texas. 

Background

It is well documented that Texas has it's own power grid, and this power grid emanated out of a strong desire (similar to banking) to remain independent from Federal regulators.  The Texas grid is called the Texas Interconnection and it covers around 90% of the area of the State of Texas.  As you can see from the figure below (taken from the North American Reliability Corporation), there are only 2 energy grids on the continent that are smaller than the size of a State, notably Texas and Florida.  By being smaller than a State that means that as long as they don't trade energy across State borders they can escape being regulated by the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission, as only energy grids taking part in inter-state commerce are regulated at the Federal level.  The Texas Interconnection has gone to extraordinary lengths to ensure that even energy traded from the Western Interconnection to Mexico does not end up being traded to Texas (otherwise that would trigger Federal oversight).  A previous Governor of Texas, Rick Perry, even went as far as to say that Texas would rather be without power for more days than have Federal oversight of the Texas Interconnection (see here), but there are others who feel that this isolation (see here) may soon come to an end.  Indeed the Federal government does still have the jurisdiction to intervene if the State policies are a threat to the wellbeing of Texans.  

Now there are 2 other issues that in normal circumstances would have been mentioned as footnotes, if at all.  The first is the fact that the Texas Interconnection does have links to other States, but they are just not used. There was an incident in 1976 after a Texas utility, for reasons relating to its own regulatory needs, deliberately flipped a switch and sent power to Oklahoma for a few hours. This event, known as the "Midnight Connection," set off a major legal battle that could have brought Texas under the jurisdiction of federal regulators, but it was ultimately resolved in favor of continued Texan independence.  The fact is that Texas does already have 2 connections with the Eastern Interconnection, but apart from the "Midnight Connection" episode, these are not used (but are supposed to be available in case of an emergency).  The other issue is that there are 3 links to the Mexican energy grid, which are usually used for exporting energy rather than importing energy.  


ERCOT

The agency with responsibility for running the Texas Interconnection grid which is made up of private producers of energy of all different types, has been all over the news lately, and of course it is coming under great scrutiny ever since "The Big Freeze" occurred.  It's name, rather ironically, is the Energy Reliability Council of Texas (or ERCOT) and it is a non-profit based in Austin and in Taylor, Texas.  ERCOT is a non-profit with a Board of Directors of various stripes.  So let's go through their bona fides for this obviously important job:

  • Bill Magness is the CEO and has a law background and lives in Texas;
  • Sally Talberg (who lives in Michigan) is the Chair, who has a background in energy regulatory policy (and not in actually producing energy);
  • Peter Cramton (who lives in Germany/Maryland) is the Vice Chairman, and is a Professor of Economics at the University of Maryland and University of Cologne - he is a specialist in auction markets;
  • Vanessa Anesetti-Parra is a board member based with Just Energy which is based in Canada, but offers services in Texas;
  • Terry Bulger is a banking expert who lives in Illinois;
  • Mark Carpenter is an electric utility engineer based in Texas;
  • Lori Cobos is the head of the Texas Office of Public Utility Counsel and lives in Texas;
  • Raymond Hepper is a retired electric VP for the New England grid system, and it appears as though he lives in MA.  
  • DeAnn T. Walker is the Chair of the Public Utility Commission (PUC) of Texas [in an ex-officio capacity]

and most of the other appointees not listed here are representative of the various market segments on either the consumer or producer side of the market in Texas.  Now I believe several of these Board members have resigned, but what I am trying to address here is not exactly who is on the Board, but the makeup of the Board.  

Now if we look at the description of ERCOT and how it is regulated, their website (see here) quite clearly states that "ERCOT is a membership-based 501(c)(4) nonprofit corporation, governed by a board of directors and subject to oversight by the Public Utility Commission of Texas and the Texas Legislature."  So that means that the PUC is regulating ERCOT but the Chair of the PUC has a seat at the table of the ERCOT Board.  

 But let's just step back a minute and look at the composition of the Board of ERCOT.  It consists of many of the representatives of the customers and suppliers of energy in Texas, as well as the head of the regulatory body.  I would suggest that this is not a good governance structure for ERCOT for the following reasons:

  1. The PUC Chair is on the Board of the entity they are in charge of regulating;
  2. The ERCOT Board consists of individuals who have no direct relationship with Texas, and therefore no "skin in the game" in terms of ensuring that this Body works for the good of all Texans;
  3. The ERCOT Board consists of a large number of supplier and customer representatives, with differing incentives - the suppliers clearly want the highest prices for their output and the customers clearly want to pay the lowest amount for this output; and
  4.  On the ERCOT Board, coalitions of voting members who are also market participants can easily vote down regulations they do not like. 
The last point is particularly relevant to "winterizing", expenditure on processes and equipment that will allow energy generation and distribution in severe winter conditions.  If policies are proposed to mandate winterizing for example, the suppliers may not want to do it as they are not sure how much of it they can pass on to their customers, and also the cost of winterizing may be different for different energy generation methods, which will lead to uncertainty as to competitive advantage vs other forms of energy generation.  Similariy, the ERCOT customers (commercial and retail energy companies) may not want to do it either, as it will lead to higher prices, which will lead to less energy purchased, and may increase the attractiveness of natural gas and solar power as alternatives for residential customers.

The PUC

But the rules of the game and the regulation of the Texas Interconnection really falls to the regulators.  As the ERCOT website makes clear, it is the PUC and the Texas legislature that is responsible for oversight of ERCOT, and therefore those are the responsible bodies for dictating the rules under which ERCOT generates and supplies energy to Texas businesses and residents.  

So let's do a deep dive on the PUC now to see what is going on there.  There are 3 PUC commissioners, all of whom are appointed by the Governor and "serve at the pleasure of the Governor".  At present, as the PUC webiste shows (see here), these are:

  • DeAnn T. Walker who is the Chair, and has a background in accounting and law;
  • Arthur DeAndrea was General Counsel to Governor Abbott and has a background in law; and
  • Shelly Botkin who has an undergraduate degree in anthropology and used to work as the Director of Corporate Communications and Government Relations for ERCOT.
I do not know whether these 3 Commissioners are card-carrying Republicans, but I would suspect that if Governor Abbott appointed them (and at least one of them has worked in Governor Abbott's office) then there is a high probability that they are.  Moreover, one of the Commissioners was appointed from ERCOT which could give rise to "regulatory forebearance" ( - the notion that the regulator would go easy on the entities being regulated), and none of them have any direct expertise in the science and technology of power generation.  It also means that 2 out of the 3 Commissioners have a direct person to person relationship directly with ERCOT, and so it likely therefore means that ERCOT's views will be over-represented on the PUC.    

When you do a simple Google search on the Chair too, some worrying evidence comes to light - such as the article from July of 2020 in the Dallas Morning News (see here) regarding the disbanding of the PUC Enforcement Division.    

Now in terms of the grid standards that ERCOT has to comply with, these come from 3 bodies:
  • FERC - the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission
  • NERC - the North American Electric Reliability Commission
  • Texas RE - the Texas Reliability Entity (see here)
The first 2 bodies determine standards and protocols in the US and North America respectively, but as Texas doesn't wants to be independent of the Federal government in terms of everyday activities and supervision, it has created it's own regulatory standards body, the Texas Reliability Entity or Texas RE.

Texas RE

Texas RE is once again a non-profit with a board of directors consisting of 8 individuals.  There is a mix of lawyers and energy executives or past executives, and from the Texas RE website.  This body was likely ultimately responsible for the regulation of ERCOT to certain specified standards that would have to be maintained by ERCOT, but in fact this body had already been fired by the PUC in September 2020, with no replacement made by the PUC.  This is documented here in a Houston Chronicle article.  Of course it is even worse than this, as the Texas RE may have been completely inadequate as supervisor and enforcer of standards for the grid, but I have not managed to find any documentation on this issue, and in any case, the Texas RE no longer has any function in relation to the Texas grid.

Toxic Politics and Economics
 
What is clear from my digging into the regulatory framework for the Texas Interconnection, is that Governor Abbott had failed to act when the PUC fired the Texas RE as monitor enforcers and supervisors of the power grid - they still exist, but their role as I understand it is now just as a supplier of information and a central despository for self-reported violations.  

The economic part of this is that any winterizing that needed to be done was likely not done by the grid participants as they knew that there would be no inspections or enforcement (with fines).  Worse than that, Governor Abbott must have known what was going on at the PUC, and yet he did not act, given that all the PUC commissioners serve "at the pleasure of the Governor".  

Summing Up So Far

In terms of the regulatory structure of the Texas Interconnection, there are 4 potential problems that I have identified:
  1. The potential for "coalition building" on the Board of ERCOT to resist doing things that raise costs and therefore prices;
  2. The Regulator having a seat on the Board of the representative body of the Regulated entities;
  3. The Governor's appointment of Commissioners of the regulator (the PUC), which has led to less than ideally-qualified individuals regulating ERCOT; and 
  4. The fact that 2 of the 3 PUC Commissioners have direct current or past dealings with ERCOT, likely leading to "regulatory forebearance.
  5. The actual enforcements of standards was up until last year the responsibility of Texas RE, but they were fired by PUC, with no replacement being made - leaving the field completely open to forgo winterization this year.
  


  


Sunday, March 22, 2020

The OPECoronacession is here

In an attempt to respond to the requests for my views on what is going on with the US  macroeconomy in particular right now, but also in general for the world economy, I have decided to come out of enforced hibernation and put fingertip to keyboard. We certainly live in interesting times, and although we were definitely due a recession, as usual the source of the recession was somewhat of a surprise.

To preview what the basic message is in this blog posting, if anyone is in any doubt that a global recession is occurring, I think you have to study the rather disconcerting facts about the economic impact of both OPEC and this virus, and then even without any statistics it becomes quite obvious that for both the US and UK, and many other parts of the world, a deep recession is now underway.  Quite why the US Treasury Secretary, Steven Mnuchin (see here), thought that the US would avoid a recession, is beyond me.  Some think his forecast was made to keep up morale, but I think that in fact it undermines the credibility of the position of the Treasury Secretary.  I would also note here that soon afterwards, the Treasury Secretary appears to have reversed his views, noting that the US economy could very soon experience an unemployment rate of 20%.

The Corona virus along side human cells
In this blog post, therefore, I want to review what I think could be the economic impacts, and then give my take on what should be done from an economic perspective.

Before we start though, let's get some definitional things sorted out.  First, this is a real "shock" in the proper sense of the word.  Economists use this word "shock" to mean any development or change in conditions that impacts the economy, but it is usually from some kind of change in human behavior or asset bubble.  To be honest I don't think of these changes as "shocks" per se, as they are not really sudden changes that are impacting the economic system, but are rather what I would call a "development" or change in the economic environment.  The OPEC change in policy with regards to oil quotas is a good example of this - there is a change in one sector which ricochets through the economy.  The corona virus, however, is not like just a change in the behavior of certain market participants or an industry with knock on effects; this is a real "shock" in the sense of a wholesale change in economic circumstances with everyone having to adapt to a sudden new environment, with some sectors of the economy closing down entirely, and others seeing booming conditions.

Secondly, the question as to whether this is a supply shock or a demand shock - our macroeconomics is really inadequate in describing what is going on right now, as clearly we have both supply and demand side effects happening, so although I see economists arguing that this is a supply shock rather than a demand shock, this distinction is irrelevant as what we have is a contractionary economic event, both on the supply and demand sides of the economy.  And this also means that the usual textbook monetary policy channel responses are unlikely to help much in stimulating the economy, as both investment and consumer spending is really not dependent on interest rates, and spending opportunities are now quite limited.

Next we need to think about the steps with which this recession is being brought on, and in my own opinion how it might play out.  So first the corona virus rears it's ugly head in China and causes supply problems for US firms due to the fallout in the Chinese economy - oh and incidentally the Chinese economic numbers released last night ( - see here) showed factory output falling by 13.5% during January and February compared with the previous year.  And in addition to statistics on factory output the retail sales figures were down 20% and investment figures were down 25% compared with a year ago.  Now remember here too, that China, as it is a communist country, had a centralized response to the virus, and only locked down one Chinese province (Hubei Province), and so contained the spread.  So just imagine if the virus had caused a complete lockdown of the entire country - and yes, that means that these figures would have been even worse.  Indeed although the Chinese claim to be over the virus and almost fully recovered, this seems quite suspicious to me, and I understand from my contacts in that country that there are still cases arising, but everyone now takes appropriate precautions.

The virus has spread to Europe next, with whole countries on lockdown, with whole swathes of their economies' ground to a halt.  That will surely mean even steeper falls in output in countries like Italy and now France and Germany.  The virus is now definitely spreading in North America too, and that has caused some draconian measures which (as it is now doing in Europe) will cause a collapse in output in certain industries ( - think cruises, tourism and the travel industry, consumer discretionary spending, entertainment and the housing industry). 

The second catalyst for recession in the case of the US is the collapse of the OPEC meeting on March 8th (see here), which caused Saudi Arabia to increase output massively, prompting oil prices to collapse to roughly half of where they were before the OPEC meeting.  This collapse in oil prices, while being good for consumers ( - the US President referred to it as having the same effect as a tax cut), is a real blow to the US fracking industry if these low oil prices persist for any period of time.  Why is this?  Well most fracking wells are not profitable at prices below roughly $40 a barrel, so with prices now down at $22.63, nearly all of the US fracking oil companies will be losing money.  What's more, many of them had bought substantial tracts of land in the heady days when oil was over $100 a barrel, and had borrowed heavily to do so.  So many of these companies are heavily indebted and are unlikely to be able to survive long at these current oil prices - in fact recent reports show that they are already laying off thousands of workers (see here).

The Corona Virus exiting a human cell
So what is happening now with the spread of the virus in North America is that the workers in the oil, transportation, entertainment, tourism and consumer discretionary are being laid off, and hence unemployment is undoubtedly rising, and probably much faster than we realize.  In most locations in the US all bars, clubs, cinemas and restaurants are closed, and in other cities measures are even more draconian.

To gauge the percentage of US GDP that we are talking about here, let us look at US output by sector for 2018 ( - this still hasn't been completed for 2019). For all industries we saw an increase of 6.1% in 2018 over 2017, but of course this is in nominal amounts, so adjusting for inflation, we have to subtract inflation which in 2018 was about 2.3%, which gives us a real output increase of roughly 3.8%, which is obviously a little higher than the 3% real GDP estimate from the BEA due to the fact that GDP subtracts out the items that are intermediate goods ( - goods which are used in the production of something else).
So running down this table we can see that the industries that are at risk are on lines 4, 11, 12, 16 and 24. Now let's make some back of the envelope assumptions and say that we have a similar situation as in 2018 in terms of output amounts.  Let's also assume that we are looking at the first quarter of 2020, so we are only talking about one month out of the whole quarter being subject to this shock.  So let's do some very rough and approximate calculations for the last month (March).

First, mining (which is mostly oil and gas) gets cut in half (-$250m in 2018), retail trade slows by about 25% (-$465.73), transportation and warehousing falls by 25% (-$316.50m), real estate also takes a hit of around 25% (-$1000m) and lastly arts and entertainment and accommodation get cut in half (-$750m).  Note that this does not include any multiplier effects or "knock-on" effects (to other industries) and nor does it include the likely increase in the output of the healthcare sector due to hospital stays.

https://www.bea.gov/system/files/2020-01/gdpind319.pdf Table 8

So when looking at the change in output from 2017 to 2018 this went up by 6.01% in nominal terms. Now if we take off the conservative estimates of the fall in output that would have occurred if the Corona virus had hit the US during that year, we get $2,781m which when subtracted from the 2018 total would give us $33,812.3.  But recall in the first quarter that only the month of March would likely see this fall, so then that gives us about a fall of around $930m.  When you do the calculations as to the nominal growth rate you get about 3.4% which when adjusted for inflation comes out to be roughly 1%, but then taking out the intermediate goods this will bring us down to roughly a stagnant economy with real growth of around 0% in the first quarter.  So my forecast for GDP growth in Q1 is 0% or somewhere close to this.

The 2nd quarter will likely be much worse than the 1st quarter though, and while I don't wish to speculate how bad it will be ( - Goldman Sachs already is forecasting a 24% fall in real GDP), it will definitely put us in recession territory given that it goes on beyond 2 weeks.  But once again let's do a "back of the envelope" extremely rough calculation.  One of the reasons I did not include the multiplier effects for Q1 is that they take time to filter through.  If we assume that this corona virus and OPEC situation persists for the whole of Q2 and that we have a 1.4 multiplier effect on the fall in output then we get approximately $4,000m which then make our change in nominal output -5.5%, but then taking off the inflation rate to get a real rate of growth we end up with -8%, which then taking off roughly another 1% to adjust for intermediate goods gets us to roughly a -10% year over year growth rate.  I would also add that this is also a conservative estimate as it assumes no "knock on" effects so only a limited impact on the sectors of the economy not accounted for above.

Exactly what might be the impact on unemployment of this fall in real GDP growth?  Just to illustrate, according to Okun's law (which is the relationship between unemployment and economic growth, if we see economic growth fall by a total of 13% (the difference between 3% (for last year) and an estimate of Q2 growth of say -10%, that means that (if Okun's law prevails) the unemployment rate would increase by 6.5% from its current level of around 3.5% to 10%, which is the level it reached during the great recession.

Obviously you can do further math which could show things deteriorating much further, but I think you get the picture - at the minimum we are looking at a really sharp recession that, macroeconomically speaking, is at least as bad as the "great recession" of 2008 to 2009, with the likelihood that it could be much worse if this worsens throughout Q2.  Of course if things improve and the viral spread is brought under control quickly as it appears to have been the case in China, then these scenarios brighten considerably. 

Now let's look at the policy responses.

On the monetary side, the Fed has been busy pumping money into the economy by resurrecting some of the tools that it used during the "great recession".  These are summed up here, and they should have the desired effect of safeguarding solvent financial institutions from the negative impact of the corona virus and the fallout from the latest OPEC meeting.  This is important as it provides for lines of credit by financial institutions (such as banks) to their clients, and makes sure that the banks have virtually unlimited funding (from the Fed) to supply this assistance.  Obviously this applies to solvent companies, as even with unlimited backing, few banks are going to want to provide credit to technically insolvent companies. 

Given that both the OPEC and corona virus impacts are not really financial in nature though, but rather are a matter of providing funds to provide a social safety net and to assist industries that are heavily impacted, the burden of response must fall on fiscal policy.  So, on the fiscal side, it is clear that both individuals that are impacted need assistance, and also industries that are impacted might also need and request some kind of government support.  As of writing, the proposals coming out of Congress are essentially "helicopter money", with checks for households, and loans and grants to various industries.  But what is apparent to me is that the government has not seemed to grasp the impact of the quarantining and closing up of businesses that necessitate social interaction, not only on the workers, but also on the firms within the industries.  At the same time, it does seem to me to be incumbent upon the government to learn lessons both from previous recessions and from, for example, the Japanese experience with deflation.  I understand that it is extremely difficult to design a fiscal stimulus package that will address an evolving situation, and obviously anything that Congress passes and which the President signs may have to be tweaked later.  Nevertheless it seems to me that fiscal policy should:

a) provide immediate relief to those suffering hardship from being laid off or from lack of business if self-employed; and
b) provide support for industries that are incapacitated or have severe falloff in customers due to social distancing.

Although the current thinking for a) is that unemployment insurance and 2 checks, proposed by the current Treasury Secretary should be the first step, this is perhaps not the best way to provide assistance, as certainly the checks will not be targeted and will just be presumably to all taxpayers, regardless of income or job security.  Plus one of the problems in just writing a check to citizens is that presumably a secondary important reason for doing so is to stimulate the macroeconomy.  I would suggest that probably a better way of doing this is to provide a debit card to all citizens which would also have an expiration date - that way there would be more certainty that the money is injected into the economy through new spending.  This money could be paid back through paying higher taxes for up to 5 years. Of course some individuals might still claim a debit card only to substitute that debit card spending for their own spending, but I would suggest that this is a better way than just giving individuals a check.

As for support for industries, I would not favor grants, which are one of the current preferred methods of support by the administration.  I would favor small companies receiving loans with low interest rates, and larger companies that are in financial trouble having the ability to issue shares which the government would then purchase (as a secondary issuance).  The cash that companies raise from selling partial ownership to the government would not be permitted to be spent on either share purchases from private citizens or on dividends or increased remuneration of  management.  The idea here is to give support where needed, but at the same time for the taxpayers money to be used in ways such that there is a return on the investment that the government makes in these struggling companies.  And these facilities should not carry a fixed sum, but rather, should be a facility that any company in trouble can tap if required. Of course some of these companies will fail, but at least the government would not be supporting one industry at the expense of another, and would also have a broad portfolio of loans and shares which if properly diversified should yield a decent return for the taxpayer and not end up costing the government a dime.

As Winston Churchill once said: "Never let a good crisis go to waste" and what I fear right now is that our policymakers just do not seem to have the imagination to come up with some new ways of thinking about how to support the macroeconomy without increasing the national debt by an extremely large amount in the long run. 

 
       



 

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