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The story occurred in February 2021when a historic winter storm that affected much of the state of Texas generated the last great electric blackout. Between February 13 and 17, extremely low temperatures and adverse weather conditions caused the disconnection of more than 4.5 million homes and business, some for several days. The event is considered one of the blackouts more serious in history Modern of the United States, so much that politics tried to take advantage of the “guilty.”
The mirage of the wind. As we said, in February 2021, Texas lived one of the most serious energy crises in its modern history, when a winter storm paralyzed a good part of the state, causing massive power cuts, dozens of deaths and extreme conditions that affected millions.
In the midst of chaos, the governor Greg Abbott appeared on national television (in Sean Hannity program, in Fox News) to directly hold the renewable energies of collapse, and especially wind. In a sharp statement, he said that the ruling showed that the State and the country continued to need fossil fuels to guarantee the winter supply. However, the accusation, repeated by other leaders conservatives and related media, not only It was wrong but deeply interested, because the data showed that the main person in charge of the collapse had been … Natural gas, not the wind.
The Texas Network and its fragility. Texas has a unique electrical grid, known as Ercot (Electric Reliability Council of Texas), which operates almost independent of the rest of the national network. This deliberate disconnection, designed to avoid federal regulations, also prevents the State from importing electricity easily in case of emergency. Thus, when temperatures fell dramatically in February 2021, many electric plants (especially those fed with natural gas) They were not prepared To operate in freezing conditions.
The pipes froze, the valves failed and gas production collapsed, just at the time of greatest energy demand. Although some wind turbines also froze, their weight on the network was relatively small: about 7 % of the production planned for that time of the year, according to expert calculations. Most cuts came from thermal and nuclear plants that could not operate due to lack of fuel or technical problems derived from extreme cold.
Politics in a blackout. Despite this evidence, the narrative that was quickly imposed in conservative sectors was that the ruling had been caused by clean energy. From Fox News to the Wall Street JournalHE They multiplied the voices that ridiculed the renewables, called them “non -reliable” and demanded a return to coal -based energy. An old ideological campaign against environmental policies was reactivated and, in particular, against the Green New Deal promoted by some Democratic legislators.
Even false images were shared, such as a photograph of frozen turbines supposedly in Texas that It turned out to be from Swedencaptured years ago during a thaw test. Social networks, media and politicians such as Congresswoman Lauren Bobert or state senator Mike Thompson They spread without contrast Uninformed arguments that placed wind and solar energy as guilty of the blackout, reinforcing a rhetoric that had been downed long before the incident.
The response of experts. Numerous researchers and electrical systems specialists They denied the official version repeated by the governor and other leaders. Jesse Jenkins, engineer of the Energy System of Princeton, summarized in a phrase What happened: “All generation sources are being beaten.”
Indeed, freezing affected both gas and coal, nuclear and renewable plants. The problem was not a single technology, but the lack of preparation of the infrastructure set in the face of extreme weather conditions. Leah Stokes, political scientist at the University of California in Santa Barbara, The irony stressed to New York Times of the situation: the same fossil fuels that were feeding climate change were those that had failed in an increasingly common weather scenario.
From that prism, what did not support the system was not renewable energy, but an obsolete network model, little resilient and possibly more focused on economic efficiency than in climate emergencies.
Climate change as a backdrop. Plus: the crisis occurred just when Joe Biden came to the presidency and had signed his First executive orders In climatic matters, reincorporating the United States to the Paris Agreement and canceling the Keystone XL pipeline.
Under that context, the Texas blackout became a discursive battlefield between those who asked for more investment in clean energy and resilience, and who defended the continuous and reinforced use of fossil fuels. Biden had made it clear that his vision went through Modernize infrastructure Energy of the country, generate green jobs and reduce emissions towards a zero net target in 2050, but the storm served the opposition sectors as excuse to discredit said agenda.
Broken system Far from demonstrating an alleged “uselessness” of wind energy, the Texas blackout In 2021 it was a more warning about the vulnerabilities of an energy system unable to adapt to the 21st century climate. While the authorities blamed the turbines, millions of people froze without heating, hospitals worked with emergency generators, and citizens (such as state deputy Brandon Woodard, in Kansas) they wondered if those interruptions would become A new standard.
If you want also, the event left a teaching: reliability does not depend on a type of energy source, but on an integrated, resistant and modernized system that combines technologies, storage, interconnections and preparation against climatic extremes that will be more frequent. In Texas, loading the blame for the wind was a convenient, but dangerous distraction. As almost always, the true enemy were not renewable, but negligence.
Image | POT
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