Millions of Texans remain without power while the state experiences a massive outage caused by a historic freeze and an electrical grid that – unlike the other 47 contiguous states – is separated from the rest of the country and is not under federal regulatory supervision. This prevents Texas from borrowing energy from other states.
The crisis has become a hot spot in Texas on issues that are essential to its economy, with some of the world’s largest energy companies headquartered there, and the environment, with Republican leaders in Texas insisting they don’t want to follow the example of A California led by Democrats and other states that have more widely adopted renewable energy sources.
At the start of the crisis, the Texas Electric Reliability Council (ERCOT), which runs the state’s power grid, said frozen wind turbines and limited supplies of natural gas caused disruptions in power generation above normal; since then, additional failures have dramatically worsened outages. Subsequently, ERCOT employees clarified that problems with the natural gas system were primarily responsible for the distribution challenges.
But that clarification came too late for Abbott, who took advantage of the phrase “frozen wind turbines” in ERCOT’s original statement when it appeared on Fox News Tuesday night and said the failures indicate problems with the adoption of renewable energy sources .
“It shows how the New Deal Green would be a deadly deal for the United States of America,” said Abbott of the right-wing opinion host Sean Hannity’s program, condemning a proposal by New York City deputy Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez and other progressives who it did not become law and did not advance much in Congress. “It just shows that fossil fuel is necessary for the state of Texas, as well as other states, to be sure that we will be able to heat our homes in the winter and cool our homes in the summer.”
But solar and wind power represent only a fraction of Texas’ energy supply, especially in the winter.
“We have a network dominated by fossil fuels,” said Michael Webber, professor of energy resources at the University of Texas at Austin. He said it was “hypocritical to blame the grid’s difficulties” on renewable energy, which represents a relatively small portion of the state’s energy supply.
“It’s really a major flaw in the natural gas system,” said Webber. “This is the part that really struggled to keep up.”
He said the lack of preparation for the winter affected the entire energy supply in Texas: the bombs froze at a nuclear power plant. Coal piles and equipment froze. The equipment of some natural gas plants froze and the supply dropped a lot. Wind turbines were blocked by ice on their blades. The solar panels were covered with snow.
“The wind works very well in many cooler climates, where they prepare for it,” said Webber.
Republicans like Abbott are “aiming for a single tree in a forest and missing the forest,” said Daniel Cohan, professor of environmental engineering at Rice University. “It’s been a long list of what went wrong in this crisis, and failures really cascaded over each other.”
“Planners don’t expect wind and solar energy to charge the lion’s share in the hottest hours of summer or the coldest hours of winter,” said Cohan, pointing to the planning documents of Texas grid managers, which show that the state expects depend much more on natural gas in winter. Focusing on wind losses rather than natural gas outages, he said, is “deeply misleading.”
Abbott’s comments have drawn strong criticism from Texas Democrats, who have accused him of trying to evade blame for the state’s failures.
“He neglected the state’s old-fashioned and unregulated power grid. Now 4.4 million Texans have no power in freezing conditions,” said Castro.
Many Republicans, however, were delivering a message similar to Abbott’s, blaming renewable energy, despite its minimal role in the colossal crisis facing the country’s second most populous state.
“The Green New Deal just proved unsustainable, as renewable energies are clearly unreliable,” tweeted Colorado Rep. Lauren Boebert.
Other Republicans resisted calls for regulatory intervention to prevent a similar disaster from happening again, as global warming helps to escalate in extreme weather conditions.
Rick Perry, the former Texas governor and former president Donald Trump’s energy secretary, said the state’s residents would be willing to undergo blackouts to prevent federal regulators from controlling the Texas power grid.
“Texans would be without electricity for more than three days to keep the federal government out of business,” said Perry, “in part rhetorical,” in a blog post on the website of minority leader in the House, Kevin McCarthy. “Try not to let any crisis of the day take your eyes off having a resilient grid that keeps America safe personally, economically and strategically.”
In turn, Abbott called for reforms to the Texas Electric Reliability Council, the nonprofit organization that manages most of the state’s electrical grid, making it an emergency issue for Texas’ 2021 state legislative session. He said on Tuesday that “it has been anything but reliable in the past 48 hours”, and in local interviews asked the ERCOT leadership to step down.
Meanwhile, Texas Republicans faced criticism for their comments mocking California, which faced a similar energy crisis last summer.
“This is what happens when Democrats are in charge. Why California’s liberal climate policies are causing electricity blackouts,” Texas Lieutenant Governor Dan Patrick tweeted in August 2020.
“California politicians did it, not the heat,” Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton tweeted in September.
“Biden / Harris / AOC want to make CA’s failed energy policy the norm across the country,” Texas Sen. Ted Cruz tweeted in August. “I hope you don’t like air conditioning!”
Cruz, for his part, did not try to defend his old tweets.
Some Democrats pointed to these tweets and said that Texas Republicans should support other states when they face crises.
“I hope this will teach Texas politicians to stop meddling in other states when they are going through disasters,” tweeted Representative Ruben Gallego of Arizona, a Democrat. “All Americans deserve help and empathy from other Americans, whether it is a blue or a red state.”