Climate Change Action USA Needed as Freezing Temperatures Hit Texas

Texas’ rare freezing temperatures, plunging to as low as -20C, have buckled its energy infrastructure, leaving millions of Texans without power.

Some news outlets blamed the blackouts on renewable energy failure—freezing wind turbines that could not supply the grid. The message is clear: Renewable energy is not robust enough, and we can’t trust it, some pundits say.

The truth is Texas enjoys a diversity of energy sources, including renewable energy—wind and solar—gas, nuclear, and coal. However, renewable energy only accounts for a ten percent share of the state’s energy mix. The rest is from fossil fuels, namely natural gas and coal.

According to the NY Times article, the state’s widespread electricity failure was primarily caused by freezing natural gas pipelines. Freezing temperatures stalled natural gas production, Texas’s primary power source. Coal and nuclear plant productions dropped as well.  The wind is just a tiny fraction of the state’s power mix.

The CBC article says this about the Texas blackouts: ” Two things happened at the same time in Texas… there was record demand for power to heat homes and keep warm, and this coincided with a loss of power generation from plants that weren’t equipped to deal with extreme cold.”  

According to Emily Grubert, an assistant professor of environmental engineering at the Georgia Institute of Technology, “They might not have walls even in quite the same way. They might not have insulated pipes.… The whole grid was subject to extreme conditions it was not designed to handle.”

Also, the Texas grid is “notoriously isolated” from the rest of its neighbouring states, preventing the rest of the country from helping them. 

Texas’s disaster revealed the energy infrastructure’s vulnerability to extreme weather events. 

Under the Biden administration, the United States has rejoined the Paris Climate Accord. Biden is set to roll out a climate plan that will outline America’s path to decarbonizing its economy—a promise kept during his campaign.

According to Guy Scriven, The Economist’s Climate Risk correspondent, Biden’s focus on climate has given companies incentives to make climate-friendly decisions. General Motors and Jaguar Land Rover have pledged to sell more electric vehicles and gradually discontinue producing internal combustion engines.

Washington’s shift of power and the new administration’s focus on tackling climate change have also encouraged climate mitigation actions worldwide. A strategy gaining momentum in Europe gives shareholders a voice to influence their companies on how quickly they want them to decarbonize. Through this, shareholders can now make their companies more transparent with their decarbonization plans and corporate bosses’ accountability.

In his first days in office, Biden fulfilled his campaign promise to tackle climate change by cancelling the Keystone XL pipeline, issuing a moratorium on fossil fuel drilling on federal land, and rejoining the Paris Agreement. His administration believes the creation of good-paying jobs will follow the transition to renewable energy and a green economy.

“Building resilient and sustainable infrastructure that can withstand extreme weather and a changing climate will play an integral role in creating millions of good-paying, union jobs, creating a clean energy economy, and meeting the president’s goal of reaching a net-zero emissions future by 2050″ says Vedant Patel, a White House assistant press secretary (Searcy, 2021).

To read more about the cause of Texas’s widespread blackouts, click the links below.

VIDEO CREDIT:

Title: HOUSTON TEXAS WINTER SNOW STORM OF 2021 DJI MAVIC MINI 2.webm
Author: Fish & Trips
Date: 15 Feb 2021

FEATURED IMAGE CREDIT: Fish & Trips