If it was not wasted, and spent directly to infrastructure that would improve grid reliability say double or triple?
Damn right I wouldn't mind paying a rate increase.
My opinion, and only that, government would pass a regulation, say your equipment is required to be permitted, it must operate down to 20°F or some other number.
Gas wells, Gas Plants, Gas pipelines, Gas Power plants, wind turbines, nuke plants, substations, etc are then all required to be built to this standard, no grandfather clause, maybe 5 years to complete the work. Verification by registered professional engineer providing design specs, drawings, etc.
We would get 40~80% compliance I suspect. a quarter of so of that would not work, either from not following the design, bad design, or more often, some little piece that was still required was missed.
There would be a significant number that would fake the verification. I suspect the average public would be shocked by how much.
There was a huge amount of dollars to be made this week if you could deliver gas or electricity to either "spot" market. I'm talking often 100 times greater than normal price, and up. That alone is going to cause a good number of companies at all levels to make some improvements.
But if you read the reports from what happened in 2011, it is the same crap as before, just more widespread and bigger numbers, but all the same problems.
Report on Outages and Curtailments During the Southwest Cold Weather Event of February 1-5, 2011
https://www.ferc.gov/sites/default/files/2020-04/08-16-11-report.pdf