“It’s unfortunate that the Georgetown [100 percent renewable] experiment went so quickly from being a success story to being something of a cautionary example,” said Adrian Shelley, director of the Texas office of Public Citizen, a consumer advocacy group.
“Gore wasn’t available for an interview with E&E News last week to discuss the electric situation in Georgetown [Texas].”
It was supposed to be green and cheap, a 25-year fixed-price contract for solar and wind beginning in 2018. Instead, as one news story in October 2019 reported: “After losing tens of millions of citizens’ money on a green energy gamble, city officials are trying to escape their self-inflicted mess.” How? By filing a lawsuit against its solar provider Buckthorn Westex to cancel its 25-year contract. A countersuit by Buckthorn followed.…
“The U.S. wind industry has … demonstrated reliability and performance levels that make them very competitive.”
– American Wind Energy Association (AWEA), 1986
“If anything, [the Texas power crisis] shows why we need to be investing in building out more renewable energy sources with better transmission and storage to replace outdated systems.”
– American Clean Power Association [AWEA], 2021
The wind lobby in a desperate hour wants to claim the mantle of patriotism and the imprimatur of the future. An industry created from unique government favors calls its critics unfair and backward looking. Never mind that wind is not a modern grid energy because of its ancient problem of intermittency.
Here is the retort from Heather Zichal, CEO, American Clean Power Association (which absorbed the American Wind Energy Association last year):
…It is disgraceful to see the longtime antagonists of clean power – who attack it whether it is raining, snowing, or the sun is shining – engaging in a politically opportunistic charade misleading Americans to promote an agenda that has nothing to do with restoring power to Texas communities.
For the future Rolling Stone Bill Wyman, growing up in Penge, South London, the atrocious weather meant that his bricklayer father was laid off work and no money came in. “There wasn’t enough food to go round, so he’d hit a couple of us, send us to bed without any dinner,” one of Bill’s brothers recalled. ‘Get to bed, don’t argue!’”
The rationing coupons that still had to be presented for everything from eggs to pieces of scraggy Argentine meat, from petrol to bed linen and “economy” suits, seemed far more squalid and unjust than during the war.
It’s a winter snow/ice emergency across Texas, where the state’s electricity planners have failed millions of consumers, particularly in energy-capital Houston.
Amid the frozen wind turbines and disincentives to reliable, baseload generation (coal in particular), our prosperity will pull us through.…