Or like California is it that deferring costs (winterizing in TX and fire prevention and forest clearing in CA) makes executives look good while kicking problems down the road, maybe even decades down the road.
Here in New Zealand the line network operator in the city of Dunedin has underinvested in the city line network, so instead of replacing power poles, they have simply changed the rules so that 2,500+ unserviceable old decaying power poles are suddenly within spec [1]... Meanwhile they are raising prices [2]
I have little doubt that when a major storm hits knocking out 100s or 1000s of power poles, they will simply blame climate change. Yes, the climate is changing, but the reason they will have failed is terrible, terrible management.
I hate this story - the case of Dunedin's lines company (Aurora) is not a matter of simple underinvestment - a decade or so ago the city built an indoor stadium, it cost hundreds of millions more than they originally claimed, and the local rugby community welched on the 'private fundraising' they promised to bring to the table - the city got stuck having to pay for it all, plus rather than making the promised small annual profit it needs to be subsidised to the tune of millions every year.
The stadium is owned by the same city owned holding company that owns Aurora(as well as a couple of other companies) - they effectively balance off the money made from Aurora with losses from the stadium - this allows them to avoid taxes on the profits from Aurora (a perfectly legal process).
However - and here's the real problem - Aurora (and the other companies) were not making enough money to cover the loan servicing - the holding company put immense pressure on the various companies to produce more income (profit) Aurora seems to have done it by reducing the amount of money it spent on maintenance .... now they're dealing with the results from years of missed maintenance and are trying to get the people living around Dunedin (and in it) to pay more to effectively cover that money taken out for the stadium.
Really they need to raise ticket prices at the stadium to cover these losses and make the stadium self funding - at the moment we subsidise every rugby ticket from our power bills and from our rates (property taxes)
Yeah, when the last government was trumpeting a new stadium in Christchurch post-quake as a massive economic boom, I was somewhat dubious. If the rugby franchises want it, maybe they should put their money where their mouth is.
They did put their money where their mouth is, they just had the sense to spend it on a lobbying campaign because it's cheaper to build a stadium with your money than theirs.
> makes executives look good while kicking problems down the road
Nobody wants to pay for things like preventative maintenance. So unless you have a regulator that is going to force you to do so, paying for things like winterizing equipment in TX isn’t going to happen. This is especially true when you can just change providers to whomever is going to give you the absolute lowest rate. So instead of being prepared for a once in a decade storm, a provider is more likely to not be ready and just fold of things get bad. You never see the results of what happens when you are successfully prepared for that rare event, only what happens when things go horribly wrong. So people (consumers included) don’t want to pay for things like maintenance. And regulators (who often answer to the public in some way) don’t want to be seen as being the cause of raising peoples’ bills.
Here in New Zealand the line network operator in the city of Dunedin has underinvested in the city line network, so instead of replacing power poles, they have simply changed the rules so that 2,500+ unserviceable old decaying power poles are suddenly within spec [1]... Meanwhile they are raising prices [2]
I have little doubt that when a major storm hits knocking out 100s or 1000s of power poles, they will simply blame climate change. Yes, the climate is changing, but the reason they will have failed is terrible, terrible management.
[1] https://www.rnz.co.nz/news/national/366398/thousands-of-powe...
[2] https://www.stuff.co.nz/business/industries/124391663/aurora...