Joe Biden's renewables failure

This past weekend, the nation's power grid was forced into a stare-down with our electrical grid. It wasn't pretty. It never is when propaganda-spin collides with reality and facts.

Democrats keep telling us about the virtues of renewables. Conservatives remind people that facts trump ideology. This WSJ editorial isn't gentle with the ideologues:

The climate lobby wants to force all homes and buildings to shift to electric heating even though it is less efficient than gas furnaces in frigid weather. When temperatures fall below freezing, heat pumps consume more and more power. "With a generation fleet that is more nat gas heavy than ever before, we are using twice as much gas to heat homes through electricity as we do with gas furnaces," former Federal Energy Regulatory Commission Chairman Pat Wood told Bloomberg.

Population growth in the Sun Belt has increased the strain on the grid—even as large numbers of coal and nuclear plants that provide baseload power have shut down owing to competition from heavily subsidized renewables and cheap natural gas. The Texas grid has become especially dependent on wind and gas.

Natural gas is usually a reliable power source that can ramp up when demand increases or wind power flags. But in very cold temperatures pipes can freeze and gas is diverted for heating. On Friday morning, wind power and temperatures in Texas both plunged. As electric demand hit a winter record, gas power generation doubled.

In short, these rolling blackouts could've been prevented by a fossil fuel-based energy policy. That's part of it. Here's another part of it:

The PJM Interconnection, which provides electricity to 65 million people across 13 eastern states, usually has surplus power that it exports to neighboring grids experiencing shortages, but this time it was caught short. Gas plants in the region couldn’t get enough fuel, which for public-health reasons is prioritized for heating.

I just skimmed Phil Flynn's daily energy report. Phil nailed it in the opening paragraph of his report:

The winter storm of the century hit and the death toll is rising. This storm has been made worse by green energy obsession. Short-sighted, ideologically driven anti-fossil fuel religion is increasingly damaging our economy and putting lives needlessly at risk. Force-feeding the country with energy sources that are not reliable in part was a factor in energy shortfalls causing a rolling blackout and shortages of natural gas. Many parts of the country are being forced to use electric heat that is vulnerable in extreme weather conditions. That, along with news that China is lifting covid restrictions, has oil and products breaking out to the upside suggesting that the recent price declines in gasoline and diesel are coming to a chilly end.

We're sitting on the world's largest deposits of clean-burning fossil fuels. Thanks to Biden's policies, we're living like we're in energy poverty. It's time to end this administration's fossil fuel poverty program. It's time to open the spigots on production:

We should live like energy royalty. Instead, thanks to this administration's policies, we're living like energy paupers. That's foolish.

Readers of The Phil Flynn Energy Report know that I have been a critic of some of these anti-fossil fuel policies for a long time. Not only because of the lack of investment in the grid and betting on energy sources that cannot be sustained, but also because of the lack of investment for future fossil fuels that will be needed. The succession with climate change needs to be balanced but still protecting lives, especially at times where they are most vulnerable to adverse weather conditions.

If you aren't getting Mr. Flynn's energy reports, you're missing tons of important energy information. I'll close with this from the WSJ editorial:

New England leaned on oil to generate 40% of its power this weekend even as its grid operator pleaded with customers to conserve power. New York’s embargo on gas pipelines limits supply to New England, which depends on gas for heating and increasingly electricity as coal and nuclear plants have closed. But the region can’t import enough liquefied natural gas in a pinch.