No, The Blackouts In Texas Weren't Caused By Renewables. Here's What Really Happened
This week, Texas Gov. Greg Abbott appeared on local TV in Dallas and blamed the state's power crisis on the devastating storm that disrupted power generation and froze natural gas pipelines.
He didn't single out one power source to blame. Then he went on Fox News and gave a different story.
"Wind and solar got shut down," he said. "They were collectively more than 10% of our power grid, and that thrust Texas into a situation where it was lacking power on a statewide basis."
He wasn't alone. Former Energy Secretary Rick Perry also pointed to frozen windmills and warned that this crisis showed the perils of promoting renewable energy.
The Texas Public Policy Foundation, a conservative think tank with ties to the fossil fuel industry, alleged that the storm "never would have been an issue had our grid not been so deeply penetrated by renewable energy sources."
But this focus on windmills ignores the evident fact that — as Abbott acknowledged on local TV — every kind of power generation fell short in this storm.
In fact, significantly more natural gas and coal went offline than renewables. But that doesn't suggest fossil fuels were uniquely to blame either — they were responsible for more production, so it's no surprise they were the source of more failures.
Grid operators say it simply doesn't make sense to pinpoint any one generation source for criticism.
"It was across the board,"
