As you may know, Texas is facing some unusual weather. They’re being hit with freezing temperatures, brutal ice storms and perhaps surprisingly, power outages are making everything much worse. How is a state renowned for its energy production having so many power outages right now? Well, unfortunately, Texas has overemphasized wind as a source of power in their state and the turbines have frozen up to the point where they won’t spin and produce power because of the historic ice and sub-zero temperatures. Former Texas Governor and United States Secretary of Energy Rick Perry told Fox News last night that an overreliance on green energy would get Americans killed.
So the point is, you need to have a diversity of energy sources no matter where you are. And [there] couldn’t be a greater example of that in the state of Texas right now. We got massive amount of wind farms out in West Texas, that are frozen up there just like a propeller on an airplane. They froze up last night, no wind out there. All of that wind energy was lost. It’s incredibly important to have a diverse, I think you had a number of things that lined up for the perfect storm, if you will. But the point is, that’s what those of us in government are supposed to do, we’re supposed to try to look over the horizon, see the things that are the challenges.
Having a diverse base load of energy is incredibly important. We started taking coal plants off, we started taking nuclear plants off. And if this country is going to continue to grow is going to continue to have aced that it’s going to have to be competitive in the world, we’ve got to have an energy supply that is diverse, a baseload that, you know, when you call on it, it’s going to be there. That means that fossil fuels have to be a part of that, we’ve got to use mean liquefied natural gas, I mean, natural gas is abundant in this country. We have stepped away from our nuclear energy compact fusion reactors, I’m telling you, we ought to be looking at all of the different ways to use fusion reactors. There’s some great progress being made in that field right now.
And I don’t hear the current administration, I don’t hear the green New Deal talking about anything other than wind and solar. And those are fine. You can use them have them, have them out there. We certainly have that diversity in the state of Texas. But the point is, you better be thinking long term in this game. And there’s not enough people thinking long term. …. I mean, think about if we were in the AOC world, fast forward 10 years, and everything is solar, everything is wind. And you have this type of event, this type of, I mean, it’s nine degrees in Round Top, Texas, we’re the same latitude as Houston, nine degrees. And if you don’t have power, you’re gonna, you’re gonna die. I mean, there are countless lives that could be lost with this type of reckless adhering to a philosophy that, quite frankly, is not scientific.”
Estimates vary a bit, but in the United States today, about 88% of our power comes from oil, natural gas, coal, and nuclear power. Only 12% of our power comes from renewable energy and even the biggest portion of that is from hydropower in dams and burning wood products. Our tiny solar industry is kept afloat by the government and wind power is much more reliant on conventional fuels than people realize. The turbines are made with fossil fuels and many of them use fossil fuels to spin when the wind isn’t blowing. Of course, that doesn’t work when the wind turbine is frozen up in an ice storm. If tomorrow, we moved completely away from fossil fuels and had to only use renewable energy, the entire country would just go dark. Could that change after decades of technological advances? Absolutely, but we are not there yet. We are not even close to there yet. So, this obsession with green energy and hatred of fossil fuels isn’t based in reality. Go too heavy into renewable energy too fast and it will destroy the economy and kill a lot of people. That’s not hyperbole, that’s reality.
John Hawkins is the author of 101 Things All Young Adults Should Know.
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