The headline from the Dallas Morning News was apocalyptic: “Texas’s power grid was seconds or minutes from a total blackout that could have lasted months.” It was only because of rolling blackouts that the most energy-rich state in the union was spared total catastrophe. Though the causes were many, partisan media and politicians took sides.
“Instead of just reporting the facts while people are suffering and need information in these situations, the politicization of this is nauseating. … Every time this happens, we get a ‘never let a crisis go to waste’ type of situation where you hear from politicians saying, ‘Well, you know, if we pass the Green New Deal, then all of these problems go away,’” columnist Joe Concha said.
Right on cue, Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez tweeted: “The infrastructure failures in Texas are quite literally what happens when you *don’t* pursue a Green New Deal.”
That, while one-time Texas Democratic presidential hopeful Beto O’Rourke, blamed free markets.
“So much of this was avoidable going back to the deregulation of our electricity grid here in Texas, which has created an incentive to actually not weatherize or protect against these events so that some of your plants can be shut down and you can profit from the spiking prices for energy and electricity,” O’Rourke said.
From the Right, Texas Lt. Gov. Dan Patrick blamed market-distorting government subsidies to wind and solar, saying, “If we were depending on wind and solar for 75% of our energy now, as someone on the Left would like us to do … well, I couldn’t get your lights back on the day if you were in Texas. We’re getting your lights on with fossil fuel.”
There is plenty of blame to go around. Start with the unprecedented cold and what some climatologists attribute to the sinking of the polar vortex caused by climate change.
The same widening polar vortex that, in 1974, Time magazine said would cause global cooling.
Blame it on the wind farms, which on windy summer days provide Texas with up to a quarter of its power. They were not winterized, so a coating of ice froze them. Solar panels were covered with snow, making them useless. That left Texas mostly dependent on natural gas, with a bit of nuclear, but gas’s uninsulated infrastructure coupled with a lack of storage meant it, too, was in short supply just as Texans were turning up their thermostats. Adding to the cascading crises, Texas has its own grid to avoid federal regulations. Therefore, it couldn’t borrow power from other states.
We’ve seen this all before in Europe. Germany learned the hard way that when the wind doesn’t blow and the sun doesn’t shine, its massive investment in wind and solar doesn’t work. It must turn to natural gas and coal for backup. As a result, its carbon output has not declined.
In France, energy is plentiful in any weather and costs half as much as in Germany.
Author Michael Shellenberger said, “France gets most of its electricity from nuclear power, about 75% in total, and nuclear just ends up being a lot more reliable, generating power 24 hours a day, seven days a week for about 90% of the year.”
Nothing creates change like a massive hit to your wallet. The Texas deep freeze and the rolling blackouts caused huge spikes in the cost of energy. If you owned a Tesla, assuming you could even find a place to charge it, a full charge during peak blackout was the equivalent of $900.
