Expose The Electricity Grid Failures in Texas

Greetings,

My name is Ben Root. I’m an Austin-based filmmaker and founder of 2perf Productions. I'm raising money to cover the costs of finishing a documentary, called Protecting The Greed, that I am co-producing. It is centered around the 2021 winter storm, which crippled the Texas power grid, and left many Texans to freeze to death inside their own homes. The truth is, our grid still isn't fixed and we need to spread the word and help people understand why this happened and why it could happen again. As I write this the grid operator is warning of potential blackouts because it doesn’t have the capacity to handle the heat!

This fundraiser will help Protecting The Greed LLC cover hard costs such as editing, animation, accounting and legal fees associated with getting this film over the finish line. Below you will find a detailed description of the film.

To be clear, all donations from this fundraiser will be used to finish the film. Any profits made over expense will benefit the victims of this tragedy.

Please consider a donation to this timely indie film to help spread the word about this tragedy. This is an important story that needs to be told.

Thank you.

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When a crippling winter storm was bearing down on Texas in 2021, Connie Mae Richey’s family got a few extra oxygen tanks and stocked up on medicine just in case the lights went out. They had no reason to think the family matriarch was in mortal danger. Not in Texas of all places.

As temperatures began plunging, Gov. Greg Abbott assured anxious residents that the energy capital of the United States had “the ability to ensure that we do not run out of power.”

Not two days later millions were shivering at home in the dark after fuel shortages shuttered power plants and triggered outages all over the Lone Star State. Less than a week after that Connie Mae Richey was gone.

She didn’t die the way she had wished — at home surrounded by her family — but instead grimacing in pain at the hospital, mostly alone, after her urinary catheter froze inside a house where temperatures had fallen into the single digits.

The trauma of watching Richey wail day and night was bad enough for her family. Then came the news from Wall Street: the natural gas industry was reporting record profits for the week of the storm, thanks to prices that had gone up 10,000 percent. Anyone who could get natural gas to market made a killing.

“This week is like hitting the jackpot,” bragged natural gas company Comstock Resources, in a Feb. 17, 2021 earnings call. That was the same day paramedics were carting off Connie Mae; she died two days later.

How was this possible? A few companies struck it rich while hundreds died, many of them from hypothermia, in their own beds?

“We learned it was all over money,” said Frank Meza, Connie’s son-in-law. “And greed over life.”

Protecting the Greed tells in unflinching detail how tearing down energy regulations and ignoring years of warnings about the need to prepare the grid for winter sparked a humanitarian crisis and killed over 700 Texans, including Connie Mae Richey.

Protecting the Greed tells in unflinching detail how tearing down energy regulations and ignoring years of warnings about the need to prepare the grid for winter sparked a humanitarian crisis and killed over 700 Texans, including Connie Mae Richey.

About the filmmakers:

Jay Root is an investigative reporter for The New York Times in Albany, NY. A native Texan, Root has been a journalist for over 30 years, and his work has sparked indictments, legislative reforms and mass firings at state agencies. Two documentaries he co-produced, Beyond The Wall and Border Hustle, won national awards.

Ben Root is a Franco-American producer, cinematographer and director based in Austin Texas. He has produced and shot content for Hulu, Magnolia Network, Discovery Plus, Waterloo Sparkling Water and Disney+ to name a few. With a strong vision for the future of production, Ben focuses on telling stories that move audiences.