Some Thoughts on the Texas Power Outage and Energy Policy

Politicians always take an advantage of a crisis. Some push for more gun control every time there is a school shooting. Others infringe on liberty when there is an attack on one's borders, such as the resulting Patriot Act after the 9-11 terrorist attack. Even natural disasters are not exempt from such politicalization. On February 13, Winter Storm Uri hit the state of Texas, which took out the electricity of millions of Texans. Unsurprisingly, what should have been a time to unite in support of fellow human beings became partisan fodder. 

There were those on the Right attacking renewable energy, which was notably done by Texas Governor Greg Abbott. Abbott blamed the statewide blackouts on renewable energy failures, and then proceeded to say that this is why the Green New Deal would be deadly for the country. It is true that wind turbines in Texas froze. However, by and large, renewable energy was not the culprit. Out of the 34 gigawatts of generation capacity forced offline, 27 of those gigawatts came from coal, nuclear power, and natural gas, according to a research director from energy research director Wood Mackenzie. 

The short version is that Texas failed to weatherize all of its electricity production, which is something that the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission warned Texas about a decade ago. Some want to use this as an opportunity to blame renewable energy. Coal has already been on its way out the door primarily due to market forces. As important as nuclear power is, this country has not built a new plant in about four decades. Solar power is getting cheap enough where it can start to compete with other energy sources, which mitigates one of the main criticisms of solar power. 

Although I have criticized wind power before (particularly for its intermittency), I do think that renewables will account for a greater percentage of energy consumption. I have said that fracking and natural gas are, at best, medium-term solutions. Since fossil fuels won't last forever, we'll need to shift more towards nuclear power and renewables. 

That being said, I can see the Left renewing its efforts to fight climate change as a result of this winter storm. Within his first week in office, President Biden signed an executive order to rejoin the Paris Agreement, a move I did not appreciate because of the ineffectiveness of the Agreement. Earlier this week, Biden also took the opportunity to say how the winter storm shows the country's unpreparedness to fight climate change. I would hazard to guess that Biden will use Congress and the Environmental Protection Agency to aggrandize government in its fight against climate change. Without specific policy proposals, I cannot criticize specifics of the Biden administration's approach. What I can say is that if Biden's plan is anything like the Green New Deal that Congresswoman Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez proposed, be prepared for higher energy costs and harming the economy while doing next to nothing to help the environment.