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A Deep Green Freeze: Power shortages show the folly of eliminating natural gas and coal.
Wall Street Journal ^ | February 15, 2021 | WSJ Editorial Board

Posted on 02/16/2021 5:40:12 AM PST by karpov

Gas and power prices have spiked across the central U.S. while Texas regulators ordered rolling blackouts Monday as an Arctic blast has frozen wind turbines. Herein is the paradox of the left’s climate agenda: The less we use fossil fuels, the more we need them.

A mix of ice and snow swept across the country this weekend as temperatures plunged below zero in the upper Midwest and into the teens in Houston. 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.

While Texas is normally awash in gas and oil, the Electric Reliability Council of Texas, which oversees the state’s wholesale power market, urged residents this weekend to conserve power to avoid power outages. Regulators rationed gas for commercial and industrial uses to ensure fuel for power plants and household heating.

Texas’s energy emergency could last all week as the weather is forecast to remain frigid. “My understanding is, the wind turbines are all frozen,” Public Utility Commission Chairman DeAnn Walker said Friday. “We are working already to try and ensure we have enough power but it’s taken a lot of coordination.”

Blame a perfect storm of bad government policies, timing and weather. Coal and nuclear are the most reliable sources of power. But 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.

(Excerpt) Read more at wsj.com ...


TOPICS: Business/Economy; Editorial; US: Texas
KEYWORDS: energy
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1 posted on 02/16/2021 5:40:12 AM PST by karpov
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To: karpov

2 posted on 02/16/2021 5:44:34 AM PST by Travis McGee (EnemiesForeignAndDomestic.com)
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To: karpov

I hope that headline....”which is quite factually correct” resonates across this nation and unleases the Kracken of revenge on these idiot renewable energy commies!!!!


3 posted on 02/16/2021 5:49:07 AM PST by ontap
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To: karpov

The watermelons need to be smashed.


4 posted on 02/16/2021 5:51:40 AM PST by HighSierra5
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To: karpov

5 posted on 02/16/2021 5:52:04 AM PST by Oldeconomybuyer (The problem with socialism is that you eventually run out of other people's money.)
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To: Travis McGee

Keep your wood stoves ready.


6 posted on 02/16/2021 5:53:18 AM PST by xzins (Retired US Army chaplain. Support our troops by praying for their victory. )
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To: karpov

Not to mention the increasing need for more power, not just by population gains, but new emerging technologies like electric vehicles.....

New Coal plants are incredibly clean and not the giant smoke belchers of yesteryear.......

Natural gas the same, very clean.....


7 posted on 02/16/2021 5:59:20 AM PST by nevergore (I have a terrible rash on my covfefe....)
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To: karpov

The Left will make good use of this crisis to permantly ration and increase the cost of electricity and fuel.


8 posted on 02/16/2021 6:00:41 AM PST by allendale
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To: Travis McGee

Was power turned off to ANY liberal enclave in Texas?? Or just for the Deplorables?


9 posted on 02/16/2021 6:01:39 AM PST by Blueflag
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To: karpov

Go to the Austin subreddit and watch them whine and moan about how this is all the States fault for not providing them power when they were the ones demanding the shut down of coal and gas plants in favor of “sustainable” wind farms.

The NPCs have their new talking points though - “gas turbines are freezing too so using fossil fuels wouldn’t help!” Also. “Electric heaters on the wind turbines would stop the freezing! But our state was too cheap!”


10 posted on 02/16/2021 6:02:06 AM PST by Skywise
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To: karpov

China wants to also get away from coal, but its in the process of building about 15 new nuclear power plants. It will overtake the USA in nuclear energy production in about 12-15 years.


11 posted on 02/16/2021 6:21:58 AM PST by PGR88
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To: karpov

Green energy = No energy.

Supporters of Green Energy will turn a well running, highly developed country into a third world dump. And why, because they might feel better about themselves but won’t, since internal peace only comes through Christ.


12 posted on 02/16/2021 6:32:23 AM PST by rigelkentaurus
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To: karpov
lefturd loons are miserable inside, so to feel better they have to make everybody else miserable too.

NO POWER TO YOU

13 posted on 02/16/2021 6:34:51 AM PST by mjp ((pro-{God, reality, reason, egoism, individualism, natural rights, limited government, capitalism}))
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To: Skywise

I used to live and work in the power industry in Tx.
“Green Power” crappola is nothing but virtue signaling on the part of upper management. There are claims that not having such ......”stuff” would make them vulnerable in the stock market. Yeah, right. The reality is that they structure the bonus system to favor them if “GPc” is implemented. Problems? Uhh, what problems?
Why, the ones your engineers were screaming about when you (YOU, personally) bought into this crappola.
I also used to live in Austin. Let them freeze.


14 posted on 02/16/2021 6:36:32 AM PST by bobbo666 (electricity)
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To: karpov

The problem when you post an op ed is you don’t get the full story. From the same publication. Gas, coal and nuclear plants all tripped off. https://www.google.com/amp/s/www.wsj.com/amp/articles/texas-storm-power-outage-11613425923


15 posted on 02/16/2021 6:53:06 AM PST by joesbucks
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To: karpov

The problem with Democrats is they never think ahead.. They never think of the details.. They never consider the consequences. They are overly excited juvenile delinquents who should never be in charge of anything.


16 posted on 02/16/2021 6:56:04 AM PST by DivineMomentsOfTruth ("There is but one straight course, and that is to seek truth and pursue it steadily." -GW)
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To: karpov

Just think of the new job possibilities. Snow and ice removal from solar panels and wind mills. These will be high paying jobs better than any job ever.


17 posted on 02/16/2021 7:06:11 AM PST by pas
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To: Travis McGee

bookmark


18 posted on 02/16/2021 7:29:53 AM PST by GOP Poet (Super cool you can change your tag line EVERYTIME you post!! :D. (Small things make me happy))
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To: karpov

They call it green energy, because users are green with envy
of those who still have power, when they don’t.

Water
Electricity

Ouch!


19 posted on 02/16/2021 9:24:56 AM PST by DoughtyOne (The Republican Party is dead. Long live the Founders Party.)
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To: karpov

I’m posting this on every thread on this subject.

Last night I watched the WFAA report on this rolling black out and power shortage in Texas. They laid the blame of utilities being to cheap to winterize their power generation facilities. Not one mention of wind mills / turbines and how they shut down in very cold weather, something I don’t really understand unless it is associated with ice on the blades.

Nonetheless Texas, in their isolated power grid, now rely on windmills for 23% of their electricity second only to natural gas. Some 23% of their power supply is just missing owing to the cold weather. That kind of gap can’t be made up.

Texas is getting what they wanted, what the customers were given the right to ask for when they have free choice about where they buy their power and by them making that feel good choice to be Free to Choose (the slogan for Texas’ power choice program) renewable power. We are seeing the outcome of a misinformed public making the choice to Go Green. The really sad part is everyone is being made to suffer because of the choice of some to feel good and Go Green instead of they alone being force to suffer the impact of their foolishness.

If your are freezing in Texas and your pipes burst blame some of your neighbors who made the choice for Wind Power(less).

Instead of sending all of us on the pathway of folly a region of the US should be designated or volunteered as the pilot project region for renewable power. Don’t allow any emergency bail-outs, isolate the region and make it exist on the poison the Greenies want to feed all the rest of us. See how it goes. Texas is not the right place because this cold is not normal. It is just giving us a taste of what would become an every day way of life living with renewable energy. The impact could be mitigated with enough money but I am sure the cost would be staggering to provide reliable Green energy.

This article appeared on Accuweather yesterday.

From this article:

https://www.accuweather.com/en/winter-weather/power-outages-approached-1-million-as-storms-swamp-us/899860

this excerpt:

Around 9:30 a.m., local time, CenterPoint told customers that those in the dark “should be prepared to be without power for at least the rest of the day.” A large reason for the continued lack of power has been due to frozen wind turbines in West Texas, grid operators said.

Typically the state’s wind farms generate a combined 25,100 megawatts of energy, but those turbines were ground to a halt by the moist winter conditions. In 2020, wind power generated 23% of the all the energy in Texas and was the second-largest source after natural gas, according to Statesman.com.

Innocent and helpless people are are going to be made to suffer at the hands of these green fools. That is just one of the many things underlying my anger about this subject in addition to abject stupidity, ignorance of facts and science not caring about either, obscene cost and waste, the fraud, that new generations have a false sense of normal and the suffering that many will experience at the hands of these fools. I’m sorry people in Texas are freezing and doing without power and water. I have family there who are suffering for the folly of fools.

Play stupid games, win stupid prizes.


20 posted on 02/16/2021 11:01:00 AM PST by Sequoyah101 (I have a burning hatred of anyone who would vote for a demented, pedophile, crook and a commie whore)
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