Wind Turbines Didn’t Cause Texas Energy Crisis

A steep decline in energy generated by fossil fuels and nuclear power plants was largely responsible for the power outages in Texas during the deep freeze that recently gripped the state, according to the operators of the state’s power grid.

Despite that fact, several high-profile conservative figures — including the state’s governor — have wrongly placed the blame for power outages on wind turbines and have tied the issue to the Green New Deal, legislation Democrats proposed in 2019 with the aim of creating jobs and significantly reducing the country’s greenhouse gas emissions. It didn’t pass in either the House or the Senate, but its tenets are still popular among progressives. President Joe Biden has supported its framework.

Texas Gov. Greg Abbott, a Republican, Fox News host Sean Hannity on Feb. 16, “This shows how the Green New Deal would be a deadly deal for the United States of America. … Our wind and our solar, they got shut down and they were collectively more than 10% of our power grid, and that thrust Texas into a situation where it was lacking power in a statewide basis.”