Almost immediately after the winter storms and extreme cold temperatures swept through Texas for the first time last Thursday, leaving millions of residents powerless, leading conservative politicians and media personalities began to blame renewable energy.
And while frozen wind turbines have contributed to the state’s energy crisis, that kind of energy has only slightly underperformed against published expectations for winter production. According to experts and industry data, natural gas, the state’s dominant energy source, produces drastically less energy than expected.
“Wind is working almost as well as expected,” said Sam Newell, head of the electricity group at Brattle Group, an energy consulting firm that advises Texas on its power grid.
“It’s an order of magnitude smaller” than problems with natural gas, coal and nuclear energy, he said.
Efforts to tackle the ongoing crisis on renewable energy have been gaining momentum over the past few days. Fox News host Tucker Carlson on Monday night devoted an entire segment to the claim, which does not cite gas failures but blames Texas’ expansion in wind energy for the deaths in the state.
Texas Gov. Greg Abbott, in an interview with local Dallas station WFAA on Tuesday, described the problems with processing and supplying natural gas in such extreme cold. But when Abbott went on Fox News to talk about the disaster, he withdrew the Green New Deal, a progressive plan that proposes massive investment in renewable energy.
Without mentioning problems with natural gas, he said that ‘our wind and our solar power were sitting and that together they were more than ten percent of our power grid’, and ‘which drove Texas into a situation where it had no power do not have’.
The politicization of the Texas crisis underscores the ongoing battle between Republicans and Democrats over how to address climate change, as well as past battles over the energy industry. When California faced energy issues related to a heat wave in August, many Republicans, including Texas politicians, cited it as an example of democratic mismanagement.
Now Texas is being scrutinized, with experts pointing to the state’s deregulated energy network (and the lack of preparation for cold weather) as culprits.
Data from Texas makes it clear that failures in renewable energy played only a small role in the crisis.
The Texas Electric Reliability Council, which plays the role of traffic warden for Texas’ energy suppliers, which diverts energy from producers to distributors, predicted that winds would deliver about 7,070 megawatts during peak hours in winter. According to the council’s own daily figures, wind power in Texas has produced between 4,415 and 8,087 megawatts since the storm began.
By contrast, the state’s ‘thermal fleet’ – mostly natural gas, but also including coal and nuclear power – has declined significantly, leading to a shortfall of 30,000 megawatts, the council told local news agency WKYC.
About 56 percent of Texas’ energy comes from natural gas, just under 24 percent comes from wind, 19 percent from coal and nearly 9 percent from nuclear energy.
“About a third of our thermal fleet is offline,” said Joshua Rhodes, a research fellow at the University of Texas at Austin who specializes in power grids. “We usually count on about 90 percent of it being available during a peak event.”
“From the freezing of gas wells and gas lines to the pressure weakening of our natural gas infrastructure because so many homes and businesses are consuming gas at the same time, we just do not have enough fuel,” he said.
This has not stopped many Republican politicians from pointing to the crisis as a reason to oppose broader climate efforts.
Several Republics of the House opposing the Green New Deal, including Rep. Dan Crenshaw from Texas, Rep. Andy Barr of Kentucky, and Rep. Lauren Boebert of Colorado, tweeted that the legislation would lead to situations like what Texas is dealing with now.
There are challenges for renewable energy as the country’s primary or only power source, but experts believe that advances in batteries and other technologies make it more feasible.
Rhodes said accepting scientists’ findings on climate change would be key to avoiding similar disasters in Texas in the future.
“Science tells us that we will be more changeable again,” he said. “In Texas, when we think of more volatility in our weather, we usually think of warmer, drier summers, but it’s the other way around.”