Dropping Context 1

Many pundits are claiming that the state’s power problems this week show the failure of fossil fuels. These pundits are guilty of dropping context–of looking at isolated facts. But if we want to make rational policy decisions, we must consider the full context. We must look at all of the relevant facts. And the facts show that the power outages were not a failure of fossil fuels, but rather, a failure of policy.

For years, energy policy—on both the state and national levels—has focused on wind and solar power generation. Indeed, public officials in Texas have bragged that the state leads the nation in wind capacity. But capacity is a misleading number. Capacity is what a particular energy source can deliver, not what it actually does deliver.

To illustrate, Texas has a wind capacity of over 31 gigawatts. However, because the wind doesn’t always blow, the electricity that is actually generated falls far short of that number. As of 5 AM on February 18, ERCOT reports the previous hour’s demand at just under 50 gigawatts while wind generated less than 5.4 gigawatts. In other words, wind is generating less than 20 percent of its capacity and about 10 percent of the state’s total energy needs.

The fact is, wind and solar are unreliable. And when demand spikes, as it has this week, reliance on renewable energy sources will inevitably lead to power outages.

A combination of subsidies, “clean” energy mandates, and similar policies have incentivized the construction of additional unreliable energy sources. At the same time, energy policies have penalized the owners of reliable energy sources—oil, gas, and nuclear power plants.

As Alex Epstein, author of The Moral Case for Fossil Fuels and EnergyTalkingPoints.com writes,

As bad as TX’s plans to “rely on unreliables” are, they are nothing compared to the Biden Plan, which calls for nearly 100% solar and wind electricity by 2035! Everyone should be asking him how the hell his plan would have fared in TX this week.

Texas is the energy capital of the world. We achieved that status by protecting the freedom of entrepreneurs and businesses to produce the energy that powers every industry. If we wish to avoid another energy catastrophe, then we must reverse the current policy trends and adopt pro-freedom energy policies.

As millions of Texans have painfully learned this week, energy policies have practical consequences. The right policies will lead to abundant, cheap, and reliable energy. The wrong policies will lead to suffering and death.