Posted on 02/21/2021 7:45:11 AM PST by DIRTYSECRET
The feds didn’t directly order the coal plants shuttered. They get closed because of distorted market economics and a grossly uneven playing field: huge federal subsidies for “green” energy, the failure to require green energy companies to spend the money needed for backup power needed to make “green” energy reliable, the ever-increasing environmental requirements on fossil fuels but not on green energy.
Even if the coal plants were kept open, you need to properly winterize them so they can continue to operate in frigid conditions. El Paso Electric experienced a severe cold snap like this one in 2011. That motivated them to invest in winterization of their coal plants so they would not suffer outages in the next deep-freeze. Their preparatory work paid off big time in February 2021.
Of course, all this has to be laid at the feet of the extreme environmentalists who have been pushing the “global climate catastrophe” narrative for almost 50 years and a poorly educated, dim witted populace susceptible to such scare tactics who begin clamoring “Do something! The earth is dying!” The little minds think that “doing something” will cost nothing, will have no effect on power prices or reliability, and that electricity will just continue to magically flow out of the wall socket.
“The disaster can be traced to mistakes by Texas’ leadership and faults created by decades of opposition to more regulations and preparation.”
This part I AGREE WITH. To the power producers, they will have lost 1% of production (this year) by being forced to shut down last week. Not bad, considering that winterizing would have cost them nearly 3% higher production cost, year after year.
So they did the right thing, FOR THEIR SHAREHOLDERS - took the 1% down time, but saved the 3% cost for something that only occurs every 20 years or so.
However, how many frozen-out Texans are thanking their power providers for saving them the 3% this weekend?
That’s why the pointy-headed libertarian concept of a free market, without regulation DOES NOT WORK in a free country. Hopefully the Republicans are going to GET THE POINT, because if they’re not seen to be ‘getting it’, then they will be replaced by others who will at least promise to ‘get it’ (even though they’ll also fail).
The Left will NEVER get my vote (other when the Republicans in Texas tried to change our freeways into toll roads, but that’s another discussion) - but millions of Republican voters WILL SWITCH, if their Republican representatives continue to side with the lobbyists demanding no regulations for power producers.
No but there failure is what caused all the problems. This is a leftist created problem. Get rid of wind and solar and there will be no more problems.
“The state’s Republican leadership was blamed for ignoring warnings that winter could wreak the havoc that it did...”
You may not agree with it, but I remember the CLOSE CALLS, when we nearly had what happened last week.
Like it or not, the Lobbyists won and we were NOT PREPARED nearly as well as we should have been...and even this cold snap didn’t match those of earlier. If the Republicans cannot stand up to the Lobbyists, then Texans will elect others who promise to do so, whether or not they’re being serious or even credible.
What political leaders in Texas have made the choice to move Texas to be more dependent on wind energy?
People were the major failure.
The Austin, TX news had stories on big babies stomping their feet and holding their breath. One was a woman who made the news just because Amazon wasn’t making deliveries. Excuse me, roads were closed and many couldn’t get out of their driveways.
Another mid-20s-30 looking woman ran out of food and had to have strangers risking themselves to bring her stuff. Everyone and their dog were warned days ahead of time about the storm. She had plenty of time to get food and water but she failed.
Another family in the headlines were in San Antonio. They went to the wife’s parents house where the parents had running water and a fireplace. The woman was all upset the food in her fridge had rotted and her infant was bored. Oh my, the horrors of a bored infant!!! If she were that worried about her fridge, all she had to do was put the food outside or in the garage and it would have been kept colder than inside an operating fridge. Better yet, take the food to her parents’ or give it to the neighbors. As for her infant, he/she had the parents and grandparents to keep it occupied between naps. She didn’t even know how to warm it’s formula and nor did the grandparents so she had to trudge to the neighbors to bother them to get the bottle warm. Apparently, no one in the house could put a pot of water in front of the fireplace or put the bottle under their arm to warm it.
Wind and solar are fine when used to supplement the energy resources however this fiasco in Texas is a lesson to not rely on these sources of energy. Gas/coal/nuclear way more reliable in crunch time and Texas is going to have to winterize these sectors as well to prevent a future deep freeze outages.
I agree.... Some people who are responsible for this disaster need to answer to this....
I also understand that Texas has a closed grid system, it isn’t tied to any other grids outside the state.
If they had been able to import electricity from other parts of the country, this would have been just a cold day instead of a disaster.
I also understand that Texas does not incentivize utilities to have a certain amount of idle capacity and ready to go online when times like this hit. In other words they live paycheck to paycheck, with nothing set aside for a rainy (or in this case freezing) day. Very shortsighted for a state that fancies itself as conservative.
And very few people will hear of this. The media will bury it deeper than Cuomo sending the elderly to their deaths...
One thing we need to repeat over and over is that PEOPLE DIED because of the leftists pushing the lie of wind and solar. Commie democrat lies killed people and they will kill many more if we do not stop them.
Strange how this only affected Texas and not the states north of it. Magic I guess.
I've been curious about that also. What, the cold snap stopped just above the Texas state line?
It’s far bigger than the lobbyists. The entire “Green” movement is against affordable, reliable power. The Renewable Portfolio Standards were a REGULATORY mandate to increase production of energy from renewable sources such as wind, solar, biomass and other alternatives to fossil and nuclear electric generation. It’s also known as a renewable electricity standard.
It’s a boondoggle of unprecedented proportions that is wrecking what was once the best power system in the entire world.
Both parties caved in to the green lunacy. The people were hornswoggled into believing the fantasy of climate change and that “green” energy would be cheap, abundant, and reliable.
Nobody has pushed back on this for 40 to 50 years.
“Nobody has pushed back on this for 40 to 50 years.”
Agree, I saw it up close and personal when Rick Perry tried to impose tolls on our freeways and also build a parallel highway system that everyone agreed was insane.
Likewise, I don’t even remember any debate about it, the Republicans in Austin were told to support it, so they did...until the state started SCREAMING when they started taking huge swaths of land.
Our Republicans may not waste as much money as the Democrats and make a joke of the state, but they are FAR from conservatives. There are half a dozen states that I’d trade our legislature for.
What a pantload full of BS...
What reason, other than arrogance, would TX have to want to be the only state to isolate themselves from all the other contiguous states? Electric grids are a low-tech, inexpensive system that more-or-less guarantees continuous power, with other benefits, and is common in most developed countries.
This is how the propgandists do it. They will denigrate Texas and demand that they fork over the rights to the Texas Power Grid. If there are still some good strong Texans around, I hope they tell them to go to hell..
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