I’m writing from Texas, so I’ll try to finish this column before the electricity goes out.
As you may have heard, we’ve had an unusually powerful winter storm here, and despite the fact that every third home has a super-service four-wheel drive van, Texas has stopped. When some ice settled on the highway, half a dozen people were killed in the ensuing 135 car crash.
Meanwhile, after years of mocking Californians for their self-imposed energy problems, jeans are experiencing continued blackouts – and a lot of blackouts that refuse to roll but instead stubbornly sit in place – because our power grid it cannot keep pace with demand.
Like California, Texas ’energy shortage is largely artificial: the state produces an extraordinary amount of natural gas, but there has been an unfortunate divestment in infrastructure ranging from pipelines to winter equipment to utility companies. You may not have fuel at all if you can’t get it where it’s needed or use it once it’s there.
What Texas has invested in renewables, especially wind. These have had a particularly low yield: the state’s electricity grid regulator reports that while wind and solar continue to account for a relatively small share of the state’s global energy mix, they account for 40 percent. of storm-closed capacity: Of the 45 gigawatts that darkened, 18 gigawatts were wind and solar.
The wind is, in many ways, a good bet for Texas, especially in the western and northern parts of the state, Saudi Arabia storms. The sunny parts of the state also generate some solar energy, which is also welcome. The problem is that these energy sources are unreliable. Solar panels don’t work with a couple of inches of snow on top, and an ice storm can cause massive wind turbines to freeze and stop working. By now, most of these Texas turbines do not function as energy sources, but are modern art.
It may seem perverse to think of global warming when it’s so cold outside, but the situation in Texas speaks directly to this issue. There are good faith disputes over climate policy.
The left wants to use the threat of climate change as a license to redo the whole economy and government according to its preferred lines: energy policy, yes, but also, from transport to architecture, and from the labor law to foreign relations and trade. The argument for replacing natural gas electricity with wind and solar energy is that reducing our use of fossil fuels could, if the practice were widespread enough, help mitigate the effects of climate change already underway.
But there is another way to examine the question. If the predictions are correct and we are willing to experience more extreme weather events, including unusually severe winter storms, it might be more convenient to invest in adaptation than in the much more uncertain project of severely limiting greenhouse gas emissions at all. the world, an effort that would require the voluntary and honest cooperation of countries like India and China, which are unlikely to meet.
We have a lot of natural gas in the United States, but we have inadequate infrastructure, which makes much of that fuel useless in a situation like this. We need more oil and gas pipeline capacity instead of less, a Biden administration problem is not right. Gas power plants are much cleaner than coal-fired power plants and are based on a fuel we have in abundance. We should add a large gas generation capacity. And instead of trying to figure out how to run a modern industrial economy with the power of pixie dust and the unicorn, we could invest some of that money to make sure the infrastructure we already have will work under the conditions that we can wait.
Of course, we could add a lot of electricity to a very low carbon cost, if we were so inclined: this means more nuclear energy, which, unlike wind and solar, provides a reliable baseline for generation. . Bill Gates ’new flexible reactors being developed by TerraPower could change the game, and the challenges of nuclear power are more a matter of finance and regulation than science and engineering. Facilitating the connection of nuclear power online is something that can be solved through politics.
Despite the insistence of some of my conservative friends, climate change is no mistake. But granting the reality is not the same as granting the far-reaching schemes of the left, even including the so-called Green New Deal. Instead, we should try to make smart, economical decisions that maximize the use of the desirable resources we already have under our command, balancing environmental concerns with other pressing issues, such as being able to maintain American homes heated and the lights on when some snow falls in Sant Antoni.
Kevin D. Williamson’s book “Big White Ghetto: Dead Broken, Stone-Cold Stupid, and High on Rage in the Dank Woolly Wilds of the‘ Real America ’” (Regnery) is now out.