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Global warming is very real but the "Green revolution"is as fake as can be.
Green Energy’s Epic Failure in Texas: Record-breaking Freeze Disables ‘Sustainable’ Grid
17 February, 2021
This week’s winter blast has caught the United States by surprise and the results have been nothing short of devastating.
A powerful winter weather front has knocked out vulnerable energy grids in multiple areas across the US, and has even been blamed for at least two deaths so far in Texas.
Snow and ice knocked out power for more than four million people in the state of Texas, shutting down essential services, water treatment plants, grocery stores, medical services, and even air travel, with more freezing days still to come.
Record-breaking Winter Across America
The winter of 2020-2021 has already been a record-breaking winter in many parts of the world, with this trend being felt no more so than in the Lone Star State.
According to Associated Press…
Several cities in the U.S. saw record lows as Arctic air remained over the central part of the country. In Minnesota, the Hibbing/Chisholm weather station registered minus 38 degrees Fahrenheit (minus 39 degrees Celsius), while Sioux Falls, South Dakota, dropped to minus 26 Fahrenheit (minus 26 degrees Celsius).
In Kansas, where wind chills dropped to as low as minus 30 degrees Fahrenheit (minus 34 degrees Celsius) in some areas, Gov. Laura Kelly declared a state of disaster.
Louisiana State Police reported that it had investigated nearly 75 weather-related crashes caused by a mixture of snow, sleet and freezing rain in the past 24 hours.
Air travel was also affected. By midmorning, 3,000 flights had been canceled across the country, about 1,600 of them at Dallas/Fort Worth International and Bush Intercontinental airports in Texas. At DFW, the temperature was 4 degrees Fahrenheit (-15 degrees Celsius) — 3 degrees (-16 degrees) colder than Moscow.
In Houston, officials said Bush Intercontinental Airport runways would remain closed until at least 1 p.m. Tuesday, a day longer than previously expected.
The storm arrived over a three-day holiday weekend that has seen the most U.S. air travel since the period around New Year’s. More than 1 million people went through airport security checkpoints on Thursday and Friday.
Texas ‘Green’ Power Grid Goes Down
It’s now clear that one of the primary reasons for these power grid failures are vulnerabilities due to wishful thinking about supposedly ‘green’ energy policies pushed by wind and solar lobbyists. Politicians never considered the disaster which would ensue when (not if) these would eventually fail. As a results, many thousands of lives have been put at risk overnight.
As it turned out, the state’s ‘sustainable’ energy grid could not even sustain a winter weather front.
It is believed that nearly half of all wind power generators were knocked offline due to the freeze – one of the primary causes of the state’s power grid to fall out of balance and leading to disruptions of service and instability. Texas Governor Greg Abbott called for the state’s legislature to investigate the Electric Reliability Council of Texas, which is supposed to manage the 75% of the state’s power grid.
Associated Press reports…
A sprawling blast of winter weather across the U.S. is likely to blame for the deaths of two people in Texas, where an unusually snowy emergency Monday knocked out power for more than four million people, shut down grocery stores and air travel and closed schools ahead of frigid days still to come. As nightfall threatened to plummet temperatures again into single digits, officials warned that homes still without power would likely not have heat until at least Tuesday, as frustration mounted and the state’s electric grid came under growing demand and criticism.
“Things will likely get worse before they get better,” said Harris County Judge Lina Hidalgo, the top elected official in the county of nearly 5 million people around Houston.
AP continues, stating how, “Law enforcement reported two men were found dead along Houston-area roadways. Causes of death were pending, but officials said the subfreezing temperatures were likely to blame.”
“The toll of the worsening conditions included the delivery of new COVID-19 vaccine shipments, which were expected to be delayed until at least midweek. Massive power outages across Houston included a facility storing 8,000 doses of Moderna vaccine, leaving health officials scrambling to find takers at the same time authorities were pleading for people to stay home.”
Far from supportive of people struggling in Texas, the view from the White House is nothing short of bizarre – with no definitive statement thus far being made by new President Joe Biden, who instead has continued to stick to what can only be described as the World Economic Forum and Greta Thunberg’s well-worn script, further claiming that ‘climate change’ (aka global warming due to man-made CO2) somehow poses an “urgent existential threat the life on earth” – despite the fact that there is no actual scientific evidence of this often repeated claim.
Instead, the White House is doubling down on its UN-led radical green energy plan, where many states and nations have already been lured into converting their power grids to ‘sustainable’ energy, and in the process creating punishing higher energy prices for consumers, as well as deadly power shortages due to the unreliable ‘green’ grid.
It’s now clear that is really driving the ‘sustainable’ race to the bottom is the illusion of a moral imperative to “save the planet” which is being fueled by an ever-growing gravy train of ‘green’ consultancies and financial instruments which are effectively being subsidized through various federal government grants.
The results – like we are seeing this week in Texas, as well as in Germany – have been nothing short of deadly, led by faux environmental activists, incompetent bureaucrats and increasingly clueless, virtue-signalling politicians.
Host Tucker Carlson explains how elites pushing ‘green energy’ are dangerously out of touch with America, as well as the harsh realities of energy and economics. Watch:
Texas frozen wind power – outages ensue, electricity now at unheard of $9000 per megawatt-hour
There’s a saying in the lone star state “Don’t Mess with Texas” which actually started out as an anti-littering campaign but has become sort of a slogan for the rugged, no-nonsense way of life that people have there. Now with dead wind turbines littering the state, the focus on deploying unreliable renewable energy in the name of “saving the planet” has literally “messed with Texas” in a huge way.
Ice storms knocked out nearly half the wind-power generating capacity of Texas on Sunday as a massive deep freeze across the state locked up wind turbine generators, creating an electricity generation crisis.
Wind generation ranks as the second-largest source of energy in Texas, accounting for 23% of state power supplies last year, behind natural gas, which represented 45%, according to Electric Reliability Council of Texas (ERCOT) figures.
ERCOT reports today the spot price for electricity in Texas is currently a stunning $9000 per MegaWatt-hour. Even in the high demand summer months, $100 per MW-hr would be high.
At the same time the freezing temperatures were driving electricity demand to record levels, ERCOT reported while calling on consumers and businesses to reduce their electricity use as much as possible Sunday, Feb. 14 through Tuesday, Feb. 16.
“We are experiencing record-breaking electric demand due to the extreme cold temperatures that have gripped Texas,” said ERCOT President and CEO Bill Magness. “At the same time, we are dealing with higher-than-normal generation outages due to frozen wind turbines and limited natural gas supplies available to generating units. We are asking Texans to take some simple, safe steps to lower their energy use during this time.”
Source: http://www.ercot.com/news/releases/show/225151
A graphic provided by ERCOT shows the huge gap between electricity supply and demand today:
Capacity is expected to fall short of demand by as much as 20,000 megawatts today, while the National Weather Service in Dallas predicts record low temperatures between -6° F to 3° F for Monday night.
A map from poweroutage.us is showing the scope of power outages in Texas shows that about 75% of the state is experiencing power outages in varying percentages with a significant portion having no power at all:
At the moment, ERCOT is placing rolling power outages in effect to prevent a complete collapse of the power grid saying:
“ERCOT has issued an EEA level 3 because electric demand is very high right now, and supplies can’t keep up. Reserves have dropped below 1,000 MW and are not expected to recover within 30 minutes; as a result, ERCOT has ordered transmission companies to reduce demand on the system.
This is typically done through rotating outages, which are controlled, temporary interruptions of electric service. This type of demand reduction is only used as a last resort to preserve the reliability of the electric system as a whole.”
Source: http://www.ercot.com/eea_info/show/26464
It is sad and ironic that in a state known for its huge petroleum and natural gas resources, the lack of reliability of wind power has brought the state to its knees in a time of crisis, not unlike that which California experienced in 2020 during record heat where wind and solar power could not keep up with demand and was near collapse.
The folly of chasing renewable energy as a means of mitigating “climate change” is making itself abundantly clear today in Texas. When will politicians wake up and realize that renewable energy almost always equates to unreliable energy?
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