Bill Gates said on Saturday that some of the deaths caused by the harsh winter that hit Texas could have been prevented by the weathering of power plants.
At the a Saturday night interview with CNN’s Anderson Cooper, the billionaire philanthropist argued that natural gas plants in Texas were not built to withstand extreme weather conditions, causing millions of people across the state to lose energy and fight freezing temperatures.
On Saturday, about 70 people died in Texas and other states that were hit by the winter cold, including victims of car accidents, carbon monoxide poisoning, drowning, domestic fires and hypothermia, according to The Associated Press.
Abbott has faced criticism for claiming that the outages occurred with renewable energy sources, although Texas Electric Reliability Council officials said that problems with various sources, particularly natural gas, have contributed to the problem.
“Our wind and solar power systems were shut down and, together, they were more than 10 percent of our power grid, which pushed Texas into a statewide power outage,” said earlier in the week during an interview with Fox News’ Sean Hannity
Sean Patrick HannityTucker Carlson will produce video podcasts for Fox Nation Trump to appear on conservative networks after Limbaugh’s death. Fox News goes with wall-to-wall coverage of Limbaugh’s death MORE.
Gates, an advocate of green energy, rejected the claim.
“This is not because of renewable dependency,” Gates told Cooper on Saturday. “They are natural gas plants, for the most part, that were not bad weather. They could have been.”
“It costs money and the exchange was made and it did not work, and it is tragic that it led to the death of people,” he added.
Gates went on to say that climate change could be considered the main cause of extreme weather events, adding that a greater reliance on renewable energy could prevent future disasters similar to the winter storm.
“It is ironic to blame renewable energy and not realize that we are going to have to deal with it, unless we can get the whole world to cut emissions,” said Gates.
Critics condemned Abbott and Texas’s general readiness for the winter storm, with five Democrats on the House Energy and Commerce Committee writing in a letter to the GOP governor on Friday.
“TThis week’s events demonstrate that there are significant shortcomings in the preparations and more needs to be done to protect communities disproportionately affected by power outages in the winter, ”they wrote.
The letter was written in response to a report by the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission and North American Electric Reliability Corporation that states that electricity generation companies “have not adequately prepared for the winter”, specifically citing inadequate isolation and failure to train operators and maintenance personnel in winter preparations.