On September 23, 2021, the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission (FERC) and the North American Electric Reliability Corporation (NERC) released a joint report on the February 2021 cold weather event, which left millions in Texas and the Midwest without power.[1] According to the report, stronger weatherization standards for the gas and electric sectors are necessary for maintaining reliability and avoiding a repeat of the February outages. FERC and NERC’s report found that a large cause of the grid failure was due to the natural gas system, although other generators were also affected. The report found that 1,045 individual generating units were affected by the cold weather, "of which 604 were natural-gas fired generators." The preliminary report makes 28 recommendations, including nine key recommendations. The key recommendations include revising reliability standards to require generator owners to better prepare for extreme weather and allowing generators to recover the costs of weatherization.

The report found that this was the fourth time in the last decade that cold weather "jeopardized bulk-power system reliability due to unplanned cold weather-related generation outages;” there were similar events in 2011, 2014, and 2018. After the 2011 cold weather event, FERC and NERC released a report that recommended the development of winterization standards, but NERC ultimately decided not to act on that recommendation. During FERC’s open meeting to present the 2021 report, Chairman Richard Glick committed to stricter requirements and said new rules would cast a wide net.

[1] https://ferc.gov/february-2021-cold-weather-grid-operations-preliminary-findings-and-recommendations