By Jason Isaac
As Texans reel from ongoing blackouts at the worst possible time, during a nationwide cold snap that has sent temperatures plummeting to single digits, the news has left people in other states wondering: How could this happen in Texas, the nation’s energy powerhouse?
But policy experts have seen this moment coming for years. The only surprise is that the house of cards collapsed in the dead of winter, not the toasty Texas summers that usually shatter peak electricity demand records.
The blackouts, which have left as many as 4 million Texans trapped in the cold, show the numerous chilling consequences of putting too many eggs in the renewable basket.
Fossil Fuels Aren’t to Blame
There are misleading reports asserting the blackouts were caused by large numbers of natural gas and coal plants failing or freezing. Here’s what really happened: the vast majority of our fossil fuel power plants continued running smoothly, just as they do in far colder climates across the world. Power plant infrastructure is designed for cold weather and rarely freezes, unlike wind turbines that must be specially outfitted to handle extreme cold.
It appears that ERCOT, Texas’s grid operator, was caught off guard by how soon demand began to exceed supply. Failure to institute a managed rolling blackout before the grid frequency fell to dangerously low levels meant some plants had to shut off to protect their equipment. This is likely why so many power plants went offline, not because they had failed to maintain operations in the cold weather.
Yet these operational errors overshadow the decades of policy blunders that made these blackouts inevitable. Thanks to market-distorting policies that favor and subsidize wind and solar energy, Texas has added more than 20,000 megawatts (MW) of those intermittent resources since 2015 while barely adding any natural gas and retiring significant coal generation.
Increased Reliance on Unreliable Renewables
On the whole, Texas is losing reliable generation and counting solely on wind and solar to keep up with its growing electricity demand. I wrote last summer about how ERCOT was failing to account for the increasing likelihood that an event combining record demand with low wind and solar generation would lead to blackouts. The only surprise was that such a situation occurred during a rare winter freeze and not during the predictable Texas summer heat waves.
Yet ERCOT still should not have been surprised by this event, as its own long-term forecasts indicated it was possible, even in the winter. Although many wind turbines did freeze and total wind generation was at 2 percent of installed capacity Monday night, overall wind production at the time the blackouts began was roughly in line with ERCOT forecasts from the previous week.
We knew solar would not produce anything during the night, when demand was peaking. Intermittency is not a technical problem but a fundamental reality when trying to generate electricity from wind and solar. This is a known and predictable problem, but Texas regulators fooled themselves into thinking that the risk of such low wind and solar production at the time it was needed most was not significant.
Special Breaks Helped Cause the Blackouts
The primary policy blunder that made this crisis possible is the lavish suite of government incentives for wind and solar. They guarantee profits to big, often foreign corporations and lead to market distortions that prevent reliable generators from building the capacity we need to keep the lights on when wind and solar don’t show up.
Research by the Texas Public Policy Foundation’s Life:Powered project found that more than $80 billion of our tax dollars have been spent on wind and solar subsidies in the last decade, in federal subsidies alone. Texans are also charged an average of $1.5 billion a year in state subsidies for renewable energy.
All that cash hasn’t materially changed our energy landscape. Wind and solar still provide just 4 percent of our energy nationwide. The promise that subsidies would kickstart renewable energy technology remains unmet after more than 40 years.
Renewable advocates will be quick to point out that fossil fuels also receive subsidies from the federal government. That’s partially true, but solar companies receive 75 times more money and wind 17 times more per unit of electricity generated. Nevertheless, the best solution for Texans, and all Americans, would be to eliminate all energy subsidies and allow the free market to drive our energy choices.
As politically popular as wind and solar energy are, no amount of greenwashing can cover up their fundamental unreliability and impracticality for anything other than a supplemental energy source. Yet our government — even in the oil country of Texas, home of Spindletop and the Permian Basin — is designed to incentivize renewable energy projects.
Keep This from Happening Again
This week’s blackouts should be a wakeup call to politicians. Overconfidence in renewables led us uncomfortably close to total grid failure — and when the going gets tough, few things really matter to voters as much as access to electricity. Without it, scrambling for the barest necessities like food, water, and warmth becomes expensive, stressful, and all-consuming.
The consequences are potentially deadly. For all the talk of climate change, cold is far deadlier than heat, responsible for 20 times more deaths. Although the cold itself may not kill you — you might not literally freeze to death — it has devastating potential to exacerbate preexisting conditions and make otherwise minor illnesses life-threatening.
It’s a reality far too many know firsthand, as a recent study found increasing natural gas utility prices led to an increase in wintertime deaths as they force families to choose between putting food on the table and paying the heat bill. In this health-conscious era of the COVID-19 crisis, this should be enough to pause any policy discussion that might inhibit electricity access.
@kitt: Don’t worry about us. The idiot Biden is sending us thousands of illegal immigrants, possibly infected with assorted variants of the CCP virus, to warm our homes. And consume the food we are short on right now.
@Greg
The federal ‘warning’ linked to was from 2011. Since you are so keen on federal recommendations, shall we take a look at what the feds provided more recently as projections of what to prepare for? Specifically for this winter?
Well, well, timely and accurate, complete with detailed computer forecast modeling! Not only that, but the information necessary to keep communities safe!
And, mind you, these aren’t the evil fossil fuel minions that you think are brainwashing everyone, this is the bastion of James Hansen, one of the truest of the true believers! They will provide the truth, the whole truth and nothing but the truth! True enough that Facebook would publish it!
Their graphics indicate 50 to 80% warmer than normal for this winter and developing or worsening drought conditions for Texas.
They finish with:
The (self-proclaimed) smartest people in the world, true believers in the climate narrative of the ‘Party of Science!’ (TM applied for) PREDICTED that this winter in Texas would be substantially warmer than normal…
Greg #45
Those would be the nations constantly being praised by the media for signing the Paris agreement, while the US pulled out? Yet they are building NON-renewable resources? I thought we had been assured by all the best energy wonks that renewables are cheaper. Why would signatories of the Paris agreements go with more expensive non-renewable resources?
And, in case you missed it, fracking had made the US energy independent. If anything that competition would have been a net positive for the US trade balance.
But, our new President has banned fracking, so we can go back to being a net importer of energy again…
@Jay, #53:
Biden DID NOT ban fracking. There has been no such executive order. The false claim that he has done so went viral after Antoine Tucker, a QAnon supporter, claimed on Twitter that Kamala Harris’s assurance that fracking was not being banned was a lie.
QAnon people are all pretty much crazy.
@Greg: I’m pretty sure when you ban new leases on federal land, which is extensive, you are banning fracking. Perhaps you can clarify.
No, it went viral when Biden SAID HE WAS GOING TO DO IT, then nominated the slut Kamala who SAID SHE WOULD DO IT. See, that’s how nasty rumors get started, the people involved actually CONFIRM them.
You don’t have any response to the NOAA projection? Nothing?
@Greg:
Just to make sure I understand what you’re saying, someone NOT on the left made the outrageous claim that Biden had actually KEPT a campaign promise.
The left’s lapdog media allies immediately jumped into action to create weasel-worded fact checks assuring his supporters that no, we can twist his words enough to give at least a little plausible deniability to the claim that he kept one of his campaign promises.
If this had happened to Trump, you’d be claiming it as ‘yet another lie!’
@Deplorable Me:
You’ve heard what they teach new lawyers, haven’t you?
If the law is on your side, hammer on the law!
If the facts are on your side, hammer on the facts!
If neither the law, or the facts are on your side, hammer on the table!
Greg’s hammering on the table. Again…
@Jay:
Interesting that somewhere during the early 1980’s we went from radically advancing pending doom from another ice age to radically advancing pending doom from global warming. And it happened as quickly as you can switch your weight from one foot to the other.
You also have to understand that Comrade Greggie is a true believer in the Religion of Gaia and more devote than any other religious believer. Now, he can also be considered a Cafeteria Gaian as he doesn’t use solar panels on his own home and utilizes the internet (mainly powered by fossil fuels) profusely.
https://www.zerohedge.com/political/lets-review-50-years-dire-climate-forecasts-and-what-actually-happened?utm_campaign=&utm_content=Zerohedge%3A+The+Durden+Dispatch&utm_medium=email&utm_source=zh_newsletter
You also have to understand that he is one of the most gullible humans to ever have walked the earth. Fossil fuel exploration is bad as only the oil companies are getting rich while “green” energy is good although it has made Al Gore quite wealthy. The world is doomed in 9 years according to John Kerry who owns a $12,000,000.00 sea site mansion, never mind Obama’s and Al Gore’s tony beach digs.
It gives me no small amount of pleasure at how you can completely destroy Comrade Greggie’s destructive religion. Keep up the GREAT work.
@Deplorable Me, #55:
Biden ordered a temporary moratorium on issuing new oil and gas leases on public land and offshore locations. That does not affect fracking operations already taking place on public land under existing leases, and it has no effect at all on private land.
I know you like that word “ban” because it riles people up, but there isn’t any.
I don’t know why the hell you’re all so damn enthusiastic about giving private interests free rein to extract the nation’s non-renewable resources from public land at the fastest rate possible and then export the resultant surplus at bargain-basement prices to make quick bucks. It’s your children’s pockets that they’re picking. This is every bit as short sighted as was giving tax breaks to the private interests that moved so much of our manufacturing base overseas. They tell you the negative results were all the fault of environmental regulation and union wages, and you believe them. We can fix that by letting them pollute and pay lower wages. Anybody who disagrees is a communist.
@Greg:
He BANNED FRACKING, though, didn’t he? On land that fracking was going to be done, he BANNED it. Now, since he earnestly pledged that he would AND wouldn’t do this, in certain situations he can claim he didn’t lie. But he did. He’s a liar, he’s an idiot and he is profoundly corrupt.
Why not? If we don’t extract and utilize the energy resources, what is going to be done with it? And who says it belongs to the federal government? Oh… the FEDERAL GOVERNMENT simply said so, and took it. But all that means is that it belongs to THE PEOPLE and, last I looked, those conducting energy exploration, extraction and production are PEOPLE.
You aren’t worried about any future generations. All you care about is your failing ideology surviving and you don’t even know why, except that you have a religious dedication to that vile ideology. How about the families that raise and educate their future generations with good-paying energy sector jobs that this idiot Biden is destroying? Leaving this stuff in the ground does NO ONE any good.
“Bargain basement prices”? How about some proof of that. When energy can be bought cheaper elsewhere, extraction is stopped. It has to be able to be profitable or else it isn’t done, and that means selling it for more than it cost to extract. So, explain what the “bargain basement price” is.
OK. Again, provide the examples of businesses being given tax breaks to move overseas. Tax BURDEN forced them out of the country and destroyed the jobs. That’s YOUR boys. Trump offered breaks to come back, and they did, in record numbers. Now that stupidity and ignorance has returned, they will be leaving again and others will not return.
To prove your point, give me an example of a business paying higher taxes and wages here in the US successfully competing against cheaper foreign competition.
@Greg #55
First off, as Deplorable Me said, still no comment on the NOAA forecast, Mr. ‘Somebody-should-have-predicted-this’?
Not that any of us are surprised.
Second…
Only temporary; not a ban… Right. We know YOU like to deny that word “ban”, because it would mean Trump was right, but we already know a Democrat politician can’t ever say what they really mean…
So, he can be ‘fact-checked’ as not doing what the EEEEEvil Orange Man Bad said he was going to do.
Except that he fully plans to do it, just in stages, or by allowing agencies to enact rules which accomplish it by stealth, or by some other means that makes it happen, but hopefully without the ‘useful idiots’ like yourself figuring it out until after the fact.
It appears that can cut both ways. You do realize that the leasee’s have to make payments for the land they lease don’t you?
So, if we follow the Dem playbook, slow Joe wants to take money away from schools!
Ummm, not quite so fast, bucko…and mind you, this is CNN
So, the gas from the leases wasn’t being ‘exported at bargain basement prices’, it was reducing US energy imports from overseas, which most people generally regard as a good thing.
So, now you’re saying tax breaks are a BAD thing? Does that include the $18/MWHr Production Tax Credit for output from renewable resources? The 26% Federal Investment Tax Credit on solar panels? The subsidies given to Solyndra, et al for ‘renewables’ that produced nothing but gifts to Democrat doners?
Ohhh, calling someone who supports communist policies and practices a communist. It doesn’t get much worse than that!
That’s actually pretty freaking hilarious coming from someone in the party that want’s to label all conservatives as domestic terrorists, forbid us from having the ability to say anything contrary to the Party line on (supposedly) public platforms, create a new ‘secret police force’ to infiltrate conservative organizations and take away guns – something else we keep being promised that Democrats aren’t really going to do, just another conspiracy theory, except that an awful lot of laws being proposed by Democrats look a hell of a lot like they intend to take away guns…
Hundreds of thousands in Texas freeze in the dark again, due to republican regulatory incompetence.
No, due to freezing rain causing tree limbs to break off and fall on power lines, dummy.