“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we need to be investing in building out more renewable energy sources with better transmission and storage to replace outdated systems.”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.

“No, frozen wind turbines are not mainly to blame for the massive power outages in Texas. But renewable energy subsidies are.”

“The greatest danger that Texans now face is the political establishment’s continued unwillingness to challenge the renewable-energy lobby. If that happens, the result will be more of the same: increased cost of electricity and decreased reliability of the electric grid. 

Well, that didn’t take long.

The same day Texas started experiencing blackouts in the midst of an unprecedented winter storm, critics started pointing to markets as the problem. Wednesday’s Dallas Morning News ran a Bloomberg Wire story that claimed “The extreme cold appears to have caught Texas’s highly decentralized electricity market by surprise.”

Yes, Texas has experienced significant power outages. But it is not alone. PowerOutage.us shows that Oregon, Oklahoma, Louisiana, Kentucky, and West Virginia–all with highly regulated electric grids–have also experienced significant outages. …

Ed. note: This post, originally published at MasterResource in November 2012, is reposted verbatim for its relevancy now that wind power has two seasons of questionable output: freezing winter as well as stagnant summer. (Two updates are provided in brackets at the end of the article.) The ‘seen’ today is the frozen wind turbine; the ‘unseen’ is the gist of the post below: phantom fossil-fired generation capacity given the ruined economics from unfair competition.

“It is well known that Texas is undergoing a major challenge in maintaining resource adequacy due to improper price signals; less well known is that a significant portion of the problem can be laid directly on the doorstep of subsidies for wind generation.”

The federal Production Tax Credit (PTC), which currently provides a $0.022/kWh subsidy to qualifying renewables, is set to expire at year-end.…

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.…