The wind lobby in a desperate hour ... created from unique government favors ... calls its critics unfair and backward looking.
Never mind that wind is not a modern grid energy because of its ancient problem of intermittency.
... Texas is a warm-weather state experiencing once-in-a-generation cold-weather.
Most of the power that went offline was gas, coal, or oil.
It is an extreme weather problem, not a clean power problem.
... Industrial wind power survives because of government favors and private-sector cronyism.
... wind members and trade association assured us decades ago of coming, inevitable competitiveness.
Just a few more years of the Production Tax Credit ...
But after 13 extensions, you are as hooked on tax preferences and other government lucre as ever.
Intermittent renewables are no way to meet the winter or summer peak.
The future is dense mineral energies, not dilute here-and-there energy flows.
... The answer is certainly not MORE wind capacity, massive batteries, and far-flung transmission lines to get wind power from the wilds to population. The answer is green dense mineral energies, a story for another day.
... Cold snaps happen—the U.S. also experienced a Polar Vortex in 2019—as do heat waves.
Yet the power grid is becoming less reliable due to growing reliance on wind and solar, which can’t provide power 24 hours a day, seven days a week.
... competition from heavily subsidized wind power and inexpensive natural gas, combined with stricter emissions regulation, has caused coal’s share of Texas’s electricity to plunge by more than half in a decade to 18%.
Wind’s share has tripled to about 25% since 2010 and accounted for 42% of power last week before the freeze set in.
About half of Texans rely on electric pumps for heating, which liberals want to mandate everywhere.
But the pumps use a lot of power in frigid weather.
So while wind turbines were freezing, demand for power was surging.
Gas-fired power plants ramped up, but the Arctic freeze increased demand for gas across the country.
Producers couldn’t easily increase supply since a third of rigs across the country were taken out of production during the pandemic amid lower energy demand.
Some gas wells and pipelines in Texas and Oklahoma also shut down in frosty conditions.
Enormous new demand coupled with constrained supply caused natural gas spot prices to spike to nearly $600 per million British thermal units in the central U.S. from about $3 a couple weeks ago.
Future wholesale power prices in Texas for early this week soared to $9,000 per megawatt hour from a seasonal average of $25.
Prices jumped in the Midwest too, though less dramatically because there are more coal and nuclear plants.
... California progressives long ago banished coal.
But a heat wave last summer strained the state’s power grid as wind flagged and solar ebbed in the evenings.
After imposing rolling blackouts, grid regulators resorted to importing coal power from Utah and running diesel emergency generators.
Liberals claim that prices of renewables and fossil fuels are now comparable, which may be true due to subsidies, but they are no free lunch, as this week’s energy emergency shows.
The Biden Administration’s plan to banish fossil fuels is a greater existential threat to Americans than climate change."