AUSTIN (KXAN) — With power still out for Texans across the state, many people – including Fox News host Tucker Carlson – are placing the blame on renewable energy and frozen wind turbines, but is the criticism warranted?
Earlier this week, many turbines had to be shut down as a result of the winter weather.
“So it was all working great until the day it got cold outside,” Carlson said on his Monday show. “The windmills failed like the silly fashion accessories they are, and people in Texas died.”
Why were they turned off? Ice accumulating on a turbine can slow its ability to produce energy. Also, sheets of ice on the turbines can fall to the ground once it starts spinning. This can be dangerous for crews working nearby.
But the vast majority of energy the state generates is through natural gas, not wind power.
On Monday, frozen instruments and a limited gas supply forced 30,000 MW/h of power offline. This was half of what ERCOT believed they would need. According to the agency, wind turbines account for less than 13% of the total generation that was lost. The majority of which was coal and gas.
In October 2020, the U.S. Energy Information Administration reported that renewables generated 22% of the state’s energy, while gas generated 51.8%.
In ERCOT’s plan for this winter, it expected that thermal and hydro resources, i.e. gas, coal and water, would need to generate 67,000 megawatts per hour during a high demand event to support the state. This didn’t take into account a historic snow storm where demand would increase and supply would be threatened.
So yes, there are some issues with renewable energies during extreme weather events, but those issues are only a sliver of a larger problem that left hundreds of thousands of Texans in the dark.