I hope you have been able to stay warm this winter.
But wherever we live, we need to learn from Texas. It is quite likely that your state or locality is making firm plans to hop on the “renewables” train, following the lead of Texas and California. Tucson, Arizona, recently distributed an opinion survey about how, not whether, to phase out “fossil fuel.”
Texas has prided itself on leadership in the wind industry. But as the graph below shows, if you had power in Texas in early February, it was coming from natural gas, coal, or nuclear—mostly gas.
If you were able to leave your frozen home, to drive a few hundred miles to a place where you could heat formula for your baby, you drove in a vehicle with an internal combustion engine. If you slept in your car to keep warn—not in a closed garage!—you were burning fuel. If you did not have gas in your tank, too bad. Service stations can’t pump gas without electricity.
Many Texans were without water, and half the state was advised to boil water because treatment plants were shut down. How? Some Texans were burning their furniture to keep from freezing.
All “renewable” (intermittent, fluctuating, unreliable) generating plants need to have 100 percent backup available. The backups often must run very uneconomically if not at full capacity. They are likely unable to compete with heavily subsidized wind and solar, so there is no incentive to invest in them.
For various political reasons, natural gas is favored. It too had problems in Texas, especially from inadequate weatherization. Plants require just-in-time fuel delivery. Pipelines can freeze—or may not exist. The Keystone Pipeline was stopped with the stroke of Joe Biden’s pen. Deliveries then must be by rail or diesel-powered tanker trucks—assuming roads are open.
Coal-fired plants, in contrast, can store a few months’ worth of fuel on site, and nuclear plants need to be refueled only once in 12 to 18 months.
Freezing is not unprecedented in Texas. Unpredictable bad weather will continue to happen. Without electricity, our economy and lives come to a stop, and people die.
Blackouts are probably coming to your area also.
Questions to ask your politicians as they contemplate radical changes in your energy supply:
- Who is responsible for assuring adequate capacity (deliverable, not nameplate), under normal and emergency circumstances? In Texas, no one was.
- What will happen to electricity prices as “green” plans are implemented?
For more information, see
- The Week That Was, Feb 20 and Feb 27, 2021
- Climate Change IQ Question #6 (Why can’t all states emulate California’s ‘clean energy’ standards?)
- More Green Blackouts Ahead, WSJ, Feb 24, 2021
- When the ice storm cometh, Financial Post, Feb 19, 2021
