Bill Gates said Saturday that some of the deaths caused by the severe winter weather that hit Texas could have been prevented by weathering power plants.
In the a Saturday night interview along with CNN’s Anderson Cooper, the billionaire philanthropist claimed that Texas’ natural gas plants were not built to withstand extreme weather, leading to the loss of power of millions of people across the country and the fight against freezing temperatures.
As of Saturday, about 70 people have died in Texas and other states hit by the winter frost, including victims of car accidents, carbon monoxide poisoning, drownings, house fires and hypothermia, according to The Associated Press.
Abbott was criticized for saying that the outages occurred with renewable energy sources, even though officials from the Texas Electric Reliability Council said that problems with various sources, especially natural gas, have contributed to the problem.
“Our wind and solar stopped and collectively accounted for more than 10% of our electricity grid, which pushed Texas into a state-of-the-art state of power,” Abbott said. he said earlier in the week during an interview with Fox News Sean Hannity
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Gates is a supporter of green energy, pushed back against the claim.
“This is not due to renewable dependence,” Gates told Cooper on Saturday. “It’s mostly natural gas installations that weren’t weathered. It could have been.”
“It costs money, and the exchange was made and 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 an increased dependence on renewable energy could prevent future disasters similar to the winter storm.
“It’s ironic to blame renewable energy sources and not realize that we’re going to have to deal with this if we don’t manage to reduce emissions around the world,” Gates said.
Critics have condemned Abbott and Texas’ general preparedness for the winter storm, with five Democrats on the House Energy and Commerce Committee writing in a letter Friday to the GOP governor.
„TThis week’s events show that there are significant deficiencies in preparations and more needs to be done to protect communities disproportionately affected by winter power outages, “they wrote.
The letter was written in response to a report by the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission and the North American Electric Reliability Corporation that electricity companies “failed to adequately prepare for winter,” citing especially inadequate insulation and failure to train operators and maintenance staff in winter preparations.