Why Texans Froze To Death

 Images: Texans Froze To Death Because Biden Admin Ordered ERCOT To Throttle Energy Output By Forcing It To Comply With Environmental Green Energy Standards

USA Supreme,

20 February, 2021

OPINION

The White House said on Thursday a severe winter storm engulfing Texas and nearby states was the type of extreme weather event that climate change is triggering, rejecting assertions by Texas officials that “green energy” caused widespread power outages.

The crisis in the largest U.S. oil- and gas-producing state has put Democratic President Joe Biden’s White House squarely at odds with Republican Texas Governor Greg Abbott, who initially did not acknowledge Biden’s 2020 election win.

Abbott had ordered state officials in January to fight Biden’s push here to combat climate change by pausing new oil and gas leases, and cutting fossil fuel subsidies.

Biden spoke with Abbott late on Thursday, promising the federal government would continue to work with state and local authorities to meet the critical needs of those affected, the White House said in a statement. Biden also said he would instruct additional federal agencies to look into immediate steps that could be taken to help Texans.

But Biden’s “America last” agenda was again on full display.

After Texas Gov Abbott declared a state of emergency back on Feb 12 Biden administration ordered ERCOT to throttle energy output by forcing it to comply with environmental green energy standards, knowing full well Texans could freeze to death in their homes with zero electricity as temperatures plunged into the single digits.

Going into effect Sunday, Feb. 14, Emergency Order 202-21-1 shows the Energy Dept. was aware of Texas Gov. Greg Abbott’s statewide disaster declaration and that ERCOT was readying gas utilities in preparation for a demand surge.

Here’s Abbott order:

Biden admin ordered ERCOT to throttle energy output by forcing it to comply with environmental green energy standards.

Below is the actual order from the federal Department of Energy which specifies ERCOT’s reasons for asking permission including that “…ERCOT has been alerted that numerous generation units will be unable to operate at full capacity without violating federal air quality or other permit limitations.”

Images below:

Let’s explain this further. This fiasco in Texas happened due to Biden Admin environmental limits on energy production. The emergency order increases it, but:

“To minimize adverse environmental impact this order limits operation”

Image below:

The order shows Acting Energy Secretary David Huizenga did not waive environmental restrictions to allow for maximum energy output, instead of ordering ERCOT to utilize all resources in order to stay within acceptable emissions standards – including purchasing energy from outside the state.

More fuel was added to this when an internet sleuth alleged on Feb 17 that Ercot’s website says they have more than enough supply power after reports of ERCOT stating that there is not enough power.
Image below:

Rick Perry, the state’s former governor who served as Trump’s energy secretary, said Wednesday in a blog post sent out by U.S. House Republicans: “Texans would be without electricity for longer than three days to keep the federal government out of their business.” Perry and allies say it is really Democrats who are using the crisis to promote their favored changes in energy policy.

The continental United States is divided into three grids: an eastern grid, a western grid, and the Texas grid. The Texas grid manages more than 90% of the state’s electric load.

Is it true that fear of federal regulation drove Texas to isolate its grid from the rest of the country?

But not much has been said about the role federal pollution standards have played on Texas failing to get ahead of the problem by ramping up supply.

Yes, Federal pollution standards.

Texas is getting a lot of grief about being a standalone system, and not running on National Standards. The usual green-deal embracing suspects are leading that charge. But national regulations are part of the reason our base-load electrical energy sources, ones that do NOT rely on the ebb and flow of sunlight and wind power, did not ramp up adequate supply.

Then why are so millions of Texans without power right now?

The answer is all-too-familiar: Texas’ relationship with the federal government.

In anticipation of this unprecedented power demand, Texas could have maxed out power generation. However, they couldn’t. Like a lowly beggar, Texas had to first ask for permission from the federal government to generate enough power to keep our people warm. Why? Because cranking up the power plants to full production might violate federal pollution limits.

While Biden and his administration were more interested in environmental restrictions a Texas man reportedly “froze to death” in his recliner amid the freezing temperatures sweeping through the region.

The 60-year-old victim, who was not identified, was found dead in his chair on Wednesday after his home in Abilene lost power for three days, one of three people to die in that city, KTXS 12 reported.

The man’s wife, 72, was taken to the hospital.

More cases were reported An 11-year-old boy who had just seen snow for the first time died in an unheated Texas mobile home. Authorities suspect hypothermia.

An ailing 75-year-old Vietnam veteran who left his house to fetch an oxygen tank from his truck and froze to death there.

These are just a handful of the Texans who, authorities say, apparently froze to death during the devastating winter storm that has paralyzed the state, cut off heat and power to millions, and plunged a proud people into the cold of a pre-Industrial Revolution-like existence where basic necessities like food and drinkable water are now in short supply.

A foretaste of collapse

I have noticed that if you talk about economic collapse (in other words, a realist) you are automatically put on the "Right". 

If you are a liberal you see things in rosy-coloured spectacles and blame the situation on "the other side" 

The Temporary Collapse Of Texas Is Foreshadowing The Total Collapse Of The United States

Michael Snyder

Economic Collapse Blog,

18 February, 2021

We are getting a very short preview of what will eventually happen to the United States as a whole.  America’s infrastructure is aging and crumbling.  Our power grids were never intended to support so many people, our water systems are a complete joke, and it has become utterly apparent that we would be completely lost if a major long-term national emergency ever struck.  Texas has immense wealth and vast energy resources, but now it is being called a “failed state”.  If it can’t even handle a few days of cold weather, what is the rest of America going to look like when things really start to get chaotic in this country?

At this point, it has become clear that the power grid in Texas is in far worse shape than anyone ever imagined.  When extremely cold weather hit the state, demand for energy surged dramatically.  At the same time, about half of the wind turbines that Texas relies upon froze, and the rest of the system simply could not handle the massive increase in demand.

Millions of Texans were without power for days, and hundreds of thousands are still without power as I write this article.

And now we are learning that Texas was literally just moments away from “a catastrophic failure” that could have resulted in blackouts “for months”…

Texas’ power grid was “seconds and minutes” away from a catastrophic failure that could have left Texans in the dark for months, officials with the entity that operates the grid said Thursday.

As millions of customers throughout the state begin to have power restored after days of massive blackouts, officials with the Electric Reliability Council of Texas, or ERCOT, which operates the power grid that covers most of the state, said Texas was dangerously close to a worst-case scenario: uncontrolled blackouts across the state.

I can’t even imagine how nightmarish things would have eventually gotten in Texas if there had actually been blackouts for months.

According to one expert, the state really was right on the verge of a “worst case scenario”…

The worst case scenario: Demand for power outstrips the supply of power generation available on the grid, causing equipment to catch fire, substations to blow and power lines to go down.

If the grid had gone totally offline, the physical damage to power infrastructure from overwhelming the grid could have taken months to repair, said Bernadette Johnson, senior vice president of power and renewables at Enverus, an oil and gas software and information company headquartered in Austin.

For years, I have been telling my readers that they have got to have a back up plan for power, because during a major emergency the grid can fail.

And when it fails, it can literally cost some people their lives.  I was deeply saddened when I learned that one man in Texas actually froze to death sitting in his own recliner…

As Texas suffered through days of power outages, a man reportedly froze to death in his recliner with his wife clinging to life beside him.

The man was found dead in his Abilene home on Wednesday after being without power for several days in the record cold.

Most Americans don’t realize that much of the rest of the world actually has much better power infrastructure than we do.  Just check out these numbers…

In Japan, the average home sees only 4 minutes of power outages per year. In the American Midwest, the figure is 92 minutes per year. In the Northeast, it’s 214 minutes; all those figures cover only regular outages and not those caused by extreme weather or fires.

As our population has grown and our infrastructure has aged, performance has just gotten worse and worse.  In fact, things ran much more smoothly all the way back in the mid-1980s…

According to an analysis by Climate Central, major outages (affecting more than 50,000 homes or businesses) grew ten times more common from the mid-1980s to 2012. From 2003 to 2012, weather-related outages doubled. In a 2017 report, the American Society of Civil Engineers reported that there were 3,571 total outages in 2015, lasting 49 minutes on average. The U.S. Energy Administration reports that in 2016, the average utility customer had 1.3 power interruptions, and their total blackout time averaged four hours.

America is literally crumbling all around us, and it getting worse with each passing year.

Our water systems are another example.

In Texas, the cold weather literally caused thousands of pipes to burst.  The damage caused by all of these ruined pipes is going to be in the billions of dollars.

Right now, we are being told that a total of 797 water systems in the state are currently reporting problems with “frozen or broken pipes”…

Some 13.5 million people are facing water disruptions with 797 water systems throughout the state reporting issues such as frozen or broken pipes, according to Toby Baker, executive director for the Texas Commission on Environmental Quality. About 725 systems are under a boil water advisory, Baker said during a press conference Thursday.

Overall, approximately 7 million residents of the state live in areas that have been ordered to boil water, and it could take months for service to fully return to normal.

Without water, none of us can survive for long, and it is absolutely imperative that you have a back up plan in case your local system goes down.

In Houston, people that are without water in their homes have been forced to line up to fill buckets at a public spigot…

Meanwhile, in scenes reminiscent of a third world country, Houston residents resorted to filling up buckets of water from a spigot in a local neighborhood.

One Houston resident, whose power has just gone back on Thursday after three days but still has no water, told DailyMail.com: ‘It is crazy that we just watched NASA land on Mars but here in Houston most of us still don’t have drinking water.’

You can watch video of this happening right here.  Of course if your local water system completely fails, there won’t even be a public spigot available for you to get water.

Shortages of food and other essential supplies are also being reported in Texas.

For Philip Shelley and his young wife, the situation became quite desperate fairly rapidly…

Philip Shelley, a resident of Fort Worth, told CNN that he, his wife Amber and 11-month-old daughter, Ava, were struggling to stay warm and fed. Amber is pregnant and due April 4.

“(Ava) is down to half a can of formula,” Shelley said. “Stores are out if not extremely low on food. Most of our food in the refrigerator is spoiled. Freezer food is close to thawed but we have no way to heat it up.”

So what would they have done if the blackouts had lasted for months?

All over the state, extremely long lines have been forming at local supermarkets.  In some cases, people have started waiting way before the stores actually open…

Joe Giovannoli, 29, arrived at a Central Market supermarket in Austin at 8:30 a.m. Thursday, an hour-and-a-half before it opened. Minutes later, more than 200 people had lined up behind him in the biting 26-degree weather.

Giovannoli’s wife is three months pregnant and the power in their one-bedroom Austin apartment blinked out Tuesday night. After a water pipe broke, firefighters also turned off the building’s water, he said. Giovannoli said he realized he still had it better than many others across Texas, but worried how long things will take to get back to normal.

This is happening in communities across Texas, and you can see video of one of these “bread lines” right here.

Of course those that had gotten prepared in advance did not have to wait in such long lines because they already had food.

Sadly, even though Joe Giovannoli had gotten to the supermarket so early, he later received really bad news…

A few minutes before the store opened its doors, a manager stepped outside and warned those waiting in line that supplies inside were low: No produce, no baked goods, not much canned food.

“We haven’t had a delivery in four days,” he said.

Remember, this is just a temporary crisis in Texas that is only going to last for a few days.

So what would happen if a severe long-term national emergency disrupted food, water and power systems for months on end?

All it took to cause a short-term “collapse scenario” in the state of Texas was some cold weather.

Eventually, much worse things will happen to our nation, and it has become clear that we are not ready.

So get prepared while you still can, because time is running out.

The irony of wind power

Is there an irony that wind power is supposed to be the weapon against climate change (and weather whiplash),yet when a severe winter storm from the Arctic it is wind power that gives up the ghost.

Cascend: Data Shows Wind-Power Was Chief Culprit Of Texas Grid Collapse

Zero Hedge,

20 February, 2021

With the worst of the Texas power crisis now behind us, the blame and fingerpointing begins, and while the jury is still out whose actions (or lack thereof) may have led to the deadly and widespread blackouts that shocked Texas this week, Cascend Strategy writes that "in case there was any doubt why the Texas grid collapsed, the data is clear"

• Wind failed as “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."

• Natural gas made up the difference for a while

• But then everything else followed down

Some more detail from Cascend which lays out the events of this week in sequence:

• A massive cold snap drove demand for electricity well beyond normal levels

• Wind power failed to deliver it’s expected power – almost 40% of expected power – in part due to lack of winterized wind turbines

• Natural gas (as always) made up the difference...

• but then suffered from lack of supply from non-winterized delivery

• Coal and nuclear both underperformed, but not by much, due to non-winterized equipment

• Solar underperformed for a few days but is back, although is far too intermittent to help without storage except during heat waves

• And Texas’ grid couldn’t buy enough power from neighbors to make up the difference

• Nor are power producers required to keep a reserve of power

The simple 5-step solution according to Cascend:

• Winterize equipment

• Require power reserve

• Connect the Texas grid better

• Add solar with storage (storage is key)

• And add more natural gas

As some others have summarized the Texas disaster best...

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?

Did Wind Power Fall Hard During the Great Texas Storm? Yep. Twice.

PJ Media,

19 February, 2021

Texas is that rare state that has everything: oil, natural gas, coal, space for wind and solar, rare-earth minerals, great food, good-looking people, and abundant humility

Maybe not that last one. And we haven’t had a Super Bowl champion in much too long a time.

Anyway, Friday morning I pulled electric power generation data by source from the United States Energy Information Administration. EIA is reputable and authoritative, to the extent that any government agency is. Insert shrug emoji if you wish. I mostly trust their data. It’s EIA’s data everyone cites when they, accurately, say the United States reduced carbon emissions faster than other developed nations and ahead of the Paris Accords targets over the past few years. EIA’s data attributes that to the rise of natural gas as a cheap, reliable, and clean power source. So you’ve probably trusted their data too, whether you were aware of it or not.

Here’s what their Texas energy generation graph of the past week says.

The beige line at the top is natural gas, the green line in the middle is wind. Take note of what that line does between Feb 15-16 and then again on Feb. 17. Also take note of what the beige line is doing during that second period.

I’ll add some arrows to point out wind’s lowest generation points.

Just for perspective, let’s look at the past 30 days of Texas power generation, including this lousy week.

Other than a brief snowstorm in Austin on January 10 (about 1.5 inches), January was pretty mild, though colder than January 2020. The average temperature in Austin, which is pretty central, was 53.6 degrees. A year ago it was over 57 degrees.

I’m not here to bash or praise any particular power source. All-of-the-above is my way. But baseline performance and reliability, and the ability to throttle output to meet demand, have to be included in the discussion. It would be for the good of the state and the world to understand what happened and what can happen.

All the major power sources suffered compared to expected output to one extent or another during the storm that froze the whole state. But wind didn’t just dip, it collapsed, two times — according to the EIA’s data. You can see that more sharply in the 30-day graph than the 7-day graph. It has since bounced back, but so have coal and nuclear, after a freezing issue at the STP nuclear plant near Houston (that never put anyone in any nuclear accident danger).

The data tells a major part of the story of the past week. It also holds some lessons for the future.

Hydroelectric (the blue line) doesn’t produce enough to merit much discussion.

At the current level of storage technology, solar isn’t terribly viable yet. Solar also suffered a serious output loss in the storm’s early days according to the EIA charts.

Coal and nuclear (brown and purple lines respectively) are steady Eddies when we need them to be. Both dipped in output, but both were pretty reliable. Neither appears to be very capable of being throttled to meet demand when it surges. They provide steady baseline output. Coal output fluctuated a lot before the storm as wind was used more, but stepped up to provide pretty steady output until the 15th. That’s when the snow and ice storm was blanketing and freezing Texas, along with more than 70% of the whole United States. Nuclear dipped at the same time because of the STP issue.

Natural gas can be throttled when demand surges. It was, as the graph shows, though natural gas lines reportedly froze too. Overall it kept millions from freezing to death in their homes. Just look at its output line in the 30-day graph once the storm starts versus the weeks prior. It’s around 200% above pre-storm (mild weather) output. That’s amazing.

Wind is great when the weather is great. When the weather deteriorates, wind is liable to do the same as it is currently used in Texas.

Imagine a future in which we’re more dependent on wind but the turbines aren’t winterized. That won’t do. They won’t perform. So if we remain as dependent or become more dependent on wind power, we will have to mandate winterization. That will make them somewhat more expensive. Wind is already heavily subsidized — actual subsidies, not the ordinary business tax write-offs that Democrats claim are subsidies when discussing fossil fuels. So wind might get even more subsidies. I’m not advocating that, just reading the room.

We’re nowhere near the point of doing away with fossil fuels. That’s not in the cards for a long time. For one thing, you can’t even make many of the components for wind and solar generation without petroleum and the plastics derived from it.

Also imagine a future in which California wins and we’re all driving electric cars. The grid already can’t handle that, according to Elon Musk, though Texas’ grid is probably closer to handling it than others, thanks to natural gas. A full fleet of millions of electric cars would have contributed to obliterating the grid during this crisis. Texans also may not have been able to use their cars to keep warm when their home power went out.

Why?

Gas and diesel engines use the heat they generate from internal combustion to heat the cabin. Electric cars don’t. Their engines create very little heat. The fact that electric cars struggle in the cold is a known issue with them. They’d have drained their batteries if people had to use them to heat themselves and their loved ones during this crisis. Batteries also don’t perform as well in cold versus optimum temperatures between 60 to 80 degrees.

[W]hile an internal combustion engine generates its own heat, which warms the engine and the car occupants, an EV has to find that warmth somewhere else, either scavenging the small amount of heat that motors and inverters make or running a heater. That takes energy, meaning there’s less power available to move the wheels.

Additionally, to protect the battery—the most expensive component of an EV—the onboard computer may limit how it’s used in extreme low temperatures. The Tesla Model S owners manual warns: “In cold weather, some of the stored energy in the Battery may not be available on your drive because the battery is too cold.” Tesla adds a snowflake icon next to the range indicator to show it might be impacted. Typically, an EV will cover around 20 percent fewer miles in cold weather versus beach weather.

There goes the grid.

Bryan Preston served as chief of staff to Texas Railroad Commissioner Ryan Sitton. The Texas Railroad Commission regulates oil and gas production in the Lone Star State, which is the nation’s top energy-producing state. He is the author of Hubble’s Revelations: The Amazing Time Machine and Its Most Important Discoveries. He’s a veteran, author, and Texan.

Biden’s Executive Order gave China access to the US Grid

 Biden’s Insane Executive Order on Climate Change Gave China Access to the US Grid – Suddenly There’s an Energy Crisis In Texas – Any Relationship?

(The following information was provided by a TGP reader.)

Gateway Pundit,

 20 February, 2021

On Joe Biden’s first day in office, he signed an Executive Order (EO) that led to Texans literally freezing to death this past week.  Biden claimed his actions were to protect the climate but they helped China and made America less secure.

On his first day in office, Joe Biden signed a number of EOs.  This was made possible by the Barr DOJ.  Bill Barr was fast-tracking Biden’s EOs while he was slow-walking President Trump’s.

Barr enabled Biden to be able to sign his EO on climate his first day in office.

Biden’s EO on the Environment helped China

The Executive Order on Protecting Public Health and the Environment and Restoring Science to Tackle the Climate Crisis said in its first paragraph of Section 1 (emphasis added) :

Where the Federal Government has failed to meet that commitment in the past, it must advance environmental justice. In carrying out this charge, the Federal Government must be guided by the best science and be protected by processes that ensure the integrity of Federal decision-making. It is, therefore, the policy of my Administration to listen to the science; to improve public health and protect our environment; to ensure access to clean air and water; to limit exposure to dangerous chemicals and pesticides; to hold polluters accountable, including those who disproportionately harm communities of color and low-income communities; to reduce greenhouse gas emissions; to bolster resilience to the impacts of climate change; to restore and expand our national treasures and monuments; and to prioritize both environmental justice and the creation of the well-paying union jobs necessary to deliver on these goals.

Of course, this is a total sham.  Best science?  The integrity of Federal decision-making (code for destroying President Trump’s decisions of integrity)?  Communities of color (in a climate change EO)?  Environmental justice?  Union jobs?  Really, what the hell.  [No one voted for this garbage and Democrats stole the election to push this through.]

Hidden towards the bottom of the EO, is a clause about China.  It turns out that the same day Biden shut down the Keystone Pipeline, he also lifted the security on our power grid for 90 days (Trump’s EO the year prior secured our power grid by giving China no access.)

(c) Executive Order 13920 of May 1, 2020 (Securing the United States Bulk-Power System), is hereby suspended for 90 days. The Secretary of Energy and the Director of OMB shall jointly consider whether to recommend that a replacement order be issued.

This was just a small little paragraph tucked away in one of Biden’s EO’s the first day he was in office under the umbrella of “restoring science to tackle the climate crisis”.  Of course, science and climate crisis are polar opposites.  Looking over the EO, there appears to be nothing that benefits the United States of America which begs the question, who wrote and approved this mess?

Biden ended President Trump’s EO protecting the US power grid from China

President Trump’s May 1, 2020, EO Securing the United States Bulk-Power System stated:

foreign adversaries are increasingly creating and exploiting vulnerabilities in the United States bulk-power system, which provides the electricity that supports our national defense, vital emergency services, critical infrastructure, economy, and way of life. The bulk-power system is a target of those seeking to commit malicious acts against the United States and its people, including malicious cyber activities, because a successful attack on our bulk-power system would present significant risks to our economy, human health and safety, and would render the United States less capable of acting in defense of itself and its allies.”

What prompted Trump’s EO was a report from the Department of Energy dated 2014 (the Obama years) that found:

Since the late 1990’s, the United States has experienced an increased demand for LPTs; however, despite the growing need, the United States has a limited domestic capacity to produce LPTs. In 2010, six power transformer manufacturing facilities existed in the United States, and together, they met approximately 15 percent of the Nation’s demand for power transformers of a capacity rating greater than or equal to 60 megavolt-amperes (MVA).

Trump said the following when he initiated his EO (emphasis added):

“[F]oreign adversaries are increasingly creating and exploiting vulnerabilities in the United States bulk-power system, which provides the electricity that supports our national defense, vital emergency services, critical infrastructure, economy, and way of life. The bulk-power system is a target of those seeking to commit malicious acts against the United States and its people, including malicious cyber activities, because a successful attack on our bulk-power system would present significant risks to our economy, human health and safety, and would render the United States less capable of acting in defense of itself and its allies,” Trump said in explaining why he wanted to keep foreign equipment out of the nation’s power grid.

The remaining supply was provided by foreign entities, mainly China.  President Trump recognized that American security and independence relied on certain products being manufactured in the US.

On January 16th President Trumps Energy Chief announced:

As of January 16, 2021, then-Secretary of Energy Dan Brouillette issued a “prohibition order designed to reduce the risks that entities associated with the People’s Republic of China pose to the Nation’s BPS.”

“The order prohibits utilities that supply critical defense facilities (CDF) from procuring from the People’s Republic of China, specific BPS electric equipment that poses an undue risk to the BPS, the security or resilience of critical infrastructure, the economy, national security, or safety and security of Americans,” a press release adds.

But then four days later, Biden stopped these actions, promoting US safety and security and conservatives spoke out:

Biden and Obama don’t seem to care about made in the USA.  It’s shocking that Biden would want to remove these protections from China and other countries and allow them back into the US market.  But that’s what he did with his climate change EO.

Suddenly this past week we have an energy crisis in Texas.   Is there any relationship between Biden’s EO and this?  We’ll never know.