Renewable energy is resilient energy

Starting on the night of Valentine’s Day, extreme weather in Texas caused water supplies at a nuclear reactor to freeze, impeding the ability to create steam needed to spin turbines and generate electricity.

Gas wells also froze, limiting supplies to natural gas-fired power plants and almost all gas that was available was shifted to local heating needs instead of electricity generation. This infrastructure can be weatherized, but Texas took the calculated risk of not spending money on such measures.

There have been tragic consequences of these decisions, the full extent of which is still unknown. There will be plenty of reviews and analyses of what led to such decisions, but it is a sad state of affairs that these decisions (and the preceding planned blackouts) even needed to be made in the first place.

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