Today, let’s remember all those affected by the severe cold weather this week and pray that no more deaths will result from it. Pray also for those who have lost family members and friends because of it.
It was unanticipated that such an event would begin the day after my last post on climate change. In it, I quoted Vijay Jayaraj as saying, “. . . in 2020, the wind sector could not operate to its potential even in the months that are traditionally considered to be best for operations. ‘A prominent reason for the decline was the unseasonable and sharp reduction in wind speeds in resource-rich States’ (Gujarat, Rajasthan and Tamil Nadu), leading to an approximately 41 per cent reduction in wind generation in July 2020 compared with July 2019.”
There is an even greater reduction in wind power generation if the windmills are frozen solid!
Just such an unseasonable event occurred in Texas when the extreme cold froze the windmills. According to wattsupwiththat.com, “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.”
Jason Isaac, a former state representative and current director of Life: Powered, a project of the Texas Public Policy Foundation, said, “These windmills are frozen, they’re completely shut down, and the rest of them are barely producing electricity.” It was estimated to be 10% of their expected output.
We must acknowledge that there were warnings about the need to weatherize the gas lines, and it was not done. Even with fossil fuels, there is a limit to what they can do if the equipment is not maintained. If they could have kept up with the extra load necessitated by the failing wind power has not been addressed yet as far as I know.
Masterresource.org reported:
Where was solar, the most rapidly growing new energy source in Texas, Monday night? Where solar is every night—off the grid, for the simple reason that the sun was not shining. Some might claim this is no big deal because solar is not designed to generate electricity at night. Exactly. Its primary design feature also proved to be its main design flaw Monday night.
I urge you to visit the website and read more about the influx of renewables in Texas. Why is this happening in a state that is awash with fossil fuels? The answer is subsidies. According to the Institute for Energy Research, the subsidies are astonishing:
According to the Joint Committee on Taxation, the production tax credit for wind is estimated to cost taxpayers $4.9 billion in fiscal year 2020, the investment tax credit for solar is estimated to cost $2.4 billion, and the three tax deductions for oil and gas listed below combined are estimated to cost $0.9 billion. (Emphasis added.)
If you have a copy of my book Who’s Got Dibs on Your Kids? you can turn to chapter 3, Who’s Got Dibs on Your Kids ENVIRONMENT?. At the bottom of page 51, I quote Warren Buffett, an outspoken Democrat, as saying, “[We] get a tax credit if we build a lot of wind farms. That’s the only reason to build them. They don’t make sense without the tax credit.”
Check out what your kids are being taught about renewable energy. Have them ready to discuss the pros and cons of going completely off fossil fuels.