The Senate confirmed Gov. Jennifer Granholm to lead the Energy Department, 64 to 35.

“Texas’s deregulated electricity market, which was supposed to provide reliable power at a lower price, left millions in the dark last week. For two decades, its customers have paid more for electricity than state residents who are served by traditional utilities,” the Wall Street Journal reports.

Four board members of the Electric Reliability Council of Texas, the entity that manages and operates the electricity grid that covers much of Texas, will resign on Wednesday, the Texas Tribune reports.

Here’s the kicker: “All four of the members who are resigning live out of state.”

Texas’ power grid was “seconds and minutes” away from a catastrophic failure that could have left Texans in the dark for months, the Texas Tribune reports.

Former Texas Gov. Rick Perry (R) suggested that going days without power is a sacrifice Texans should be willing to make if it means keeping federal regulators out of the state’s power grid, the Houston Chronicle reports.

Said Perry: “Those watching on the left may see the situation in Texas as an opportunity to expand their top-down, radical proposals.”

He added: “Texans would be without electricity for longer than three days to keep the federal government out of their business.”

Texas Gov. Greg Abbott (R) blamed solar and wind power for the blackouts in his state in a Fox News appearance and said “this shows how the Green New Deal would be a deadly deal for the United States of America.”

Washington Post: The governor’s arguments were contradicted by his own energy department, which outlined how most of Texas’s energy losses came from failures to winterize the power-generating systems, including fossil fuel pipelines.”

“Although renewable energy sources did partially fail, they only contributed to 13 percent of the power outages, while providing about a quarter of the state’s energy in winter. Thermal sources, including coal, gas and nuclear, lost almost twice as many gigawatts of power because of the cold… Critics have also noted that wind turbines can operate in climates as cold as Greenland if they’re properly prepared for the weather.”

Kansas City Star: Why did electric grids buckle under intense cold? Here’s what’s to blame — and not.

Former Rep. Beto O’Rourke (D-TX) “blamed Republican leaders in Texas for what he says was a government failure to prepare for widespread power outages resulting from a massive winter storm that swept across the state this week,” The Hill reports.

Said O’Rourke: “So much of this was avoidable. Going back to the deregulation of our electric grid here in Texas, which has actually created an incentive to not weatherize or protect against these events.”

He added: “The energy capital of North America cannot provide enough energy to warm and power people’s homes. We are nearing a failed state in Texas. And it has nothing to do with God or natural disasters. It has everything to do with those in positions of public trust who have failed us.”

“President Biden is planning on Wednesday to halt new oil and gas leasing on federal territory, people familiar with the matter said, setting up a confrontation with the oil industry over the future of U.S. energy,” the Wall Street Journal reports.

“The Biden administration has drafted an order to impose the moratorium while it conducts a review of the federal oil and gas leasing program, the people said, in what is potentially a first step toward his campaign pledge to end future leases. The order is expected to be included in a package of measures across government aimed at reducing greenhouse gas emissions and boosting land conservation.”

President-elect Joe Biden has indicated plans to cancel the Keystone XL pipeline permit via executive action on his first day in office, sources confirmed to CBC News on Sunday.

“The Trump administration is rushing to approve a final wave of large-scale mining and energy projects on federal lands, encouraged by investors who want to try to ensure the projects move ahead even after President-elect Joe Biden takes office,” the New York Times reports.

U.S. environmental activists are heaping pressure on Democratic president-elect Joe Biden to avoid Cabinet appointees with fossil fuel ties, Reuters reports.