Renewables weren’t primary factor in Texas’ mid-April power crunch
In mid-April, the Texas power grid was faced with a dilemma that looked dangerously familiar to the conditions that led to the February blackouts during the deadly winter freeze: Electricity supply was struggling to keep up with demand.
The Electric Reliability Council of Texas assured Texans that the mid-April tightness in the energy market wouldn’t lead to any widespread blackouts, but the situation produced more questions about the grid’s overall reliability. In a reprise of the blame casting that occurred in the aftermath of the February blackouts, many observers pointed fingers at the state’s renewable energy generators.
PolitiFact s ruling: Mostly False
Here s why: In mid-April, the Texas power grid was faced with a dilemma that looked dangerously familiar to the conditions that led to the February blackouts during the deadly winter freeze: Electricity supply was struggling to keep up with demand.
The Electric Reliability Council of Texas assured Texans that the mid-April tightness in the energy market wouldn t lead to any widespread blackouts, but the situation produced more questions about the grid’s overall reliability. In a reprise of the blame casting that occurred in the aftermath of the February blackouts, many observers pointed fingers at the state’s renewable energy generators.
Dilip Vishwanat/Getty Images; Samantha Lee/Insider This story is available exclusively to Insider subscribers. Become an Insider and start reading now.
Joe Biden plans to pay for his climate, infrastructure and jobs bill with higher taxes instead of deficit spending
Democratic politicians have been scared off from ambitious deficit spending to avoid spiking interest rates imposed by so-called bond vigilantes.
But investors demand safe assets like federal debt, so rates are extremely low, and the Federal Reserve can keep them low.
Alex Yablon is a Brooklyn-based journalist and Contributing Opinion Writer.
This is an opinion column. The thoughts expressed are those of the author.
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Yet China’s latest five year plan increases investment in coal and omits any cap on total energy consumption. This leads to the observation that ‘the central contradiction between expanding the smokestack economy and promoting green growth appears unresolved.’ The lack of a cap on total energy consumption was a notable exclusion.
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âDespite pledges to cut emissions, China goes on a coal spree,â a Yale Environment 360 headline proclaimed. In the article, China based freelancer Michael Standaert argues that there is a ‘real and figurative haze about how strong its climate ambitions really are and how quickly the country can wean itself from coal.
Introduction
Predictions of impending climate catastrophe have prompted policymakers across the world to declare a climate emergency and advocate to enact sweeping reforms to energy, transportation, and infrastructure. Without immediate action to rapidly and dramatically overhaul the energy system to eliminate the use of fossil fuels, these predictions envisage worldwide crises of food and water insecurity, habitability, extreme weather, and other shocks to civilization which would make the planet less habitable. Based upon these predictions, many Western governments have made avoiding this crisis priority number one for government policy, and most importantly, are allocating resources to meet the challenge.
However, the security-related risks of the United States pursuing decarbonization merit further scrutiny, especially with respect to decarbonization’s impact on the shipbuilding industrial base and its ability to contribute in a protracted great power conflict. Examples aboun