Republican politicians are widely using Texas outages to falsely blame renewable energy sources, but clean energy is not what powers most failed power plants.
Millions in the state were left without power after a massive winter storm that brought snow and freezing temperatures to the region as a second storm approached.
Soon, Republicans began throwing away renewable energy as reliable.
On Tuesday, Montana Republican Sen. Steve Daines redistributed a photo of a wind turbine defrost, saying it was a reason to oppose Democratic Rep. Deb Haaland, who has backed wind power in the past as interior secretary.
Former Secretary of Energy Dan Brouillette, who served under the Trump administration, appeared Tuesday in a Fox News segment that contained the chiron, “Storm Shutters Green Energy,” where he said the current situation in Texas is why fossil fuels should to continue to be the main source of energy.
Brouillette described renewable energy sources as “intermittent to sometimes uncertain”, adding “technology is not ready for primetime”.
The Republican government of Texas, Greg Abbott, attributed the crisis to his state 10% of power plants that are powered by renewable energy sources and even went so far as to describe Green New Deal, a House Democrats climate proposal, as “deadly” in a interview with Sean Hannity of Fox News on Tuesday.
“Our wind and solar power stopped and they were collectively more than 10% of our electricity grid, which pushed Texas into a state where there was no statewide power,” he said.
Abbott later admitted at a news conference on Wednesday that coal and natural gas played a role in disruptions.
“These coal and natural gas production facilities have either frozen or had mechanical failures and we are unable to add energy to the electricity grid,” the governor said. He also mentioned that one of the power outages was at the South Texas Project, a nuclear power plant.
Politicians are “misleading the public,” Daniel Cohan, an associate professor of environmental engineering at Rice University in Houston, told ABC News.
“The small thing that’s true is that wind turbines, like any other major part of the Texas power supply, have produced less energy than we expected in these arctic conditions,” he said. “What is not true is that this is almost in the top five of the problems that have caused the loss of power to millions of homes this week and caused life-threatening conditions across the state.”
During the winter months, the “vast majority” of Texas’ energy, more than two-thirds, is supplied by fuel, coal and nuclear sources, Cohan said. The crisis is not so great that power plants are failing, but that they do not have enough supply, especially fuel, he added.
“The crisis has shown us the mutual vulnerabilities of our power and natural gas systems to each other when we are so dependent on natural gas for our electricity and heating needs at the same time,” Cohan said.
Neil Chatterjee, a former chairman of the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission, also told CNBC on Wednesday that power outages appear to be a combination of the extreme weather event coupled with an increase in electricity demand, saying he believes that “people are so quick to look at things through partisan lenses. “
“I am confident that if we take politics out of this and let engineers, economists and experts examine what has happened here, we will find ways to continue the energy transition that is taking place in Texas and across the country, while maintaining the network of trust. affordable prices that really differentiate Texas and the United States from the rest of the world, ”Chatterjee said.
The Texas Council on Electrical Reliability (ERCOT), which oversees the state’s electricity grid, began shutting down earlier this week to save energy.
CEO Bill Magness told ABC News that the power systems are not designed to withstand extreme cold. While the storm was the “central cause” of power outages, he said there were outages caused by the generation of coal and natural gas, as well as wind and solar, he said.
“So, you know, I think what this storm is doing is exposing the vulnerabilities, probably, of all the different types of power generation on the system,” Magness said.
ERCOT said in its winter planning document in November that it has more than 10,000 megawatts of surplus energy, but that only 8% will come from wind and solar energy. The power company ended up losing more than 30,000 megawatts in supply, Cohan said.
“I think what politicians are missing and what is misleading the public is that the average conditions are different from the peak conditions, and the way we have to plan for extreme events is to realize that the needs of the coldest days are different. of the needs of the hottest day, which are different from the needs of the lightest days throughout the year, ”Cohan said.
The Federal Energy Regulatory Commission and the North American Electric Reliability Corporation will open a joint federal investigation into grid operations during the storm.
Tom Dunlavey and Stephanie Ebbs of ABC News contributed to this report.