TOPICS:
Learning from Texas: Going Green Can Lead to Darkness
Feb 23, 2021 / Written by: Gary Isbell
Fox News commentator Tucker Carlson put this problem rather succinctly saying that “running out of energy in Texas is like starving to death at the grocery store: You can only do it on purpose, and Texas did.”1
The Texas debacle is now practically over. However, liberal narratives now dominate the scene, laying the blame on lack of government oversight and greedy capitalist energy providers. They are doing everything possible to avoid the inconvenient truth that “sustainable green energy” might have something to do with the fiasco. In fact, it has everything to do with it.
The failed wind farms in Texas provide a perfect example of how the blame is misdirected. Texas has all the energy resources imaginable to power anything it desires. The state could have done so unimpeded had it not decided to produce “green” electricity that left it literally in the dark.
Texas has long been a symbol of petroleum energy in America. Thus, it enjoys low- cost transportation, heating and electrical generation. This use of oil has proven to be a stable, efficient and incredibly reliable. However, the Electric Reliability Council of Texas (ERCOT) broke this reliability by installing over 150 ugly wind farms that are generating nearly 21 percent of the state’s electricity.
These windmills came to a grinding halt with the record cold and snowfall. Frigid temperatures froze the wind turbines and snow covered the solar panels paralyzing the power grid leaving nearly 3,400,000 Texans without power or heat. This recent cold spell is nothing new in Texas. Weather records show it happens at least once a decade. ERCOT knows this and surely must know that the Texan wind turbines do not operate at very low temperatures.
Indeed, the turbines that should have been producing power consumed it. The power companies had to take power from the grid to heat the vital working parts to prevent further damage. Thus, the cause of the power outage made it worse.
Common sense and cold hard facts indicate that green energy is not reliable. However, leftists now hurl blame on oil and gas generation instead of their own green products.
Reliance on green energy requires a massive parallel gas and coal industry to kick in when there is no wind or sun. The real blame is on optimistic trust in unreliable power sources.
Green spin-doctors gleefully blamed natural gas plants for not keeping up with demand. What they conveniently omit is the Clean Air Act requires pipeline compressors to now run on electricity rather than gas. When green current stopped flowing, gas could not reach the generators and no one was making power in Texas. Here is an example of a Green utopia at its best.
Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, D-N.Y., tweeted that “The infrastructure failures in Texas are quite literally what happens when you *don’t* pursue a Green New Deal.”2 However, she makes no mention of how her Green New Deal could prevent the freezing of the turbines and snow-covered solar panels.
Rep. Ocasio-Cortez has used the occasion to push her socialist Green agenda that is linked with all the world woes. She spews leftist rhetoric claiming that policy failures and climate change are responsible for poverty in indigenous and minority communities. It is not at all clear what this has to do with the cold snap in Texas.
Both sides point fingers at each other as this energy rich state suffers this humiliation. However, the long hand of government regulations is present in the disaster.
As green policies find their way into American life, expect more disasters to happen. A green solution to the world’s petroleum dependency is untenable with current technology. What happened in Texas recently should make any serious person reconsider the Keystone pipeline and oil independence.
The green power agenda is like any other socialist endeavor. It seems to work until the cold reality of the facts freeze it in its tracks.
References:
