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Alex Epstein Profile picture
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18 Feb, 6 tweets, 2 min read
The head of the main oil/gas regulator in TX has released a statement confirming my analysis that "the root cause of the TX blackouts is a national and state policy that has prioritized the adoption of unreliable wind/solar energy over reliable energy."

facebook.com/WayneChristian…
"ERCOT was notified over a decade ago that TX power plants had failed to adequately weatherize....Instead of spending our resources making our grid more resilient, policy and spending has focused on mandating or subsidizing wind and solar to expand their presence on the grid.
"
"The takeaway...should not be the failure of fossil fuels, but the failure of leadership at ERCOT and the dangers of relying on intermittent, unreliable forms of energy like wind....Had TX been using 100% renewables, we would have had 100% blackouts."
Here's my full analysis of the situation in TX:

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More from @AlexEpstein

Alex Epstein Profile picture
19 Feb
Q: Is the solution to TX's reliability problems to join the national grid and be regulated by the Federal government?

A: No, because the Federal government is pursuing policies that are even more anti-reliability than TX's. The solution is pro-reliability policies in TX.

THREAD
Many say the problem causing the massive TX blackouts is TX's insistence on being an independent grid, depriving it of ample power from local states as well as wise regulation from the Federal government. But joining today's Federal grid would make TX's problems far worse.
Texas is perfectly capable of having an ultra-reliable grid on its own. It is the size of a fairly-large country. Any weather challenges it has faced or will face have been easily dealt with by grids around the world using reliable and resilient nuclear, coal, and gas plants.
Read 20 tweets
Alex Epstein Profile picture
19 Feb
An energy engineer on @curryja's blog has written the best account of the TX blackouts so far.

It confirms my analysis that "the root cause of the TX blackouts is...policy that has prioritized the adoption of unreliable wind/solar energy."

THREAD

judithcurry.com/2021/02/18/ass…
"Who is responsible for providing adequate capacity in Texas during extreme conditions? The short answer is no one."
"[ERCOT doesn't] ensure that the resources can deliver power under adverse conditions, they don’t require that generators have secured firm fuel supplies, and they don’t make sure the resources will be ready and available to operate."
Read 18 tweets
Alex Epstein Profile picture
17 Feb
Many people have asked me what I think of Twitter-promoted @JesseJenkins' account of the TX situation. Turns out he preemptively blocked me, but looking at his thread from another account I believe it's deliberately superficial, evading root causes that damn his favored policies.
Let's start with the simple truth: *the only real reason reliability has suddenly become an issue, everywhere*, is that policy now rewards unreliability and punishes reliability.

For much more on this read @MeredithAngwin's excellent "Shorting the Grid."
The primary goal of policies that reward reliability and punish reliability is to reduce CO2 emissions by the bizarre method of promoting unreliable solar and wind at the expense of reliable nuclear, as well as all other reliable power sources.
Read 12 tweets
Alex Epstein Profile picture
16 Feb
There is a lot of conflicting "information" about the TX blackouts. Here's the bottom line: the root cause of the TX blackouts is a national and state policy that has prioritized the adoption of unreliable wind/solar energy over reliable energy.

THREAD
For the last decade+ policy in TX and in the US has been focused on mandating or subsidizing as much wind and solar as possible. TX has bragged about being the biggest wind generator in the US.
The TX focus on wind has come above all at the expense of coal, which has the resiliency advantage (along with nuclear) of being able to store large quantities of fuel onsite; gas mostly requires "just in time" delivery from pipelines.
Read 20 tweets
Alex Epstein Profile picture
15 Feb
I hereby declare today Renewable Blackout Day, in which wind/solar propagandists turn off their power and heat--in apology to their victims in Texas.

Please invite people to participate via quote tweet. I invite @algore, @AOC, and Larry Fink.
Read 4 tweets
Alex Epstein Profile picture
12 Feb
The widely-publicized claim that fossil fuels cause 1 in 5 deaths is the worst kind of pseudoscience. It ignores fossil fuels' life-extending benefits and wildly overstates their negative side-effects. In reality, fossil fuels lengthen 5 out of 5 lives.

THREAD
A recent study by Harvard and UK universities is being circulated as proof that fossil fuels are responsible for 1 in 5 deaths--over 8 million deaths annually.

And yet the places where fossil fuel use has grown most in recent decades have had skyrocketing life expectancies.
Since 1980, India's fossil fuel use has increased by 700% and China's has increased by 600%. Did this lead to many more premature deaths given "fossil fuels cause 1 in 5 deaths"? No, India's life expectancy increased by almost 16 years and China's increased by almost 10!
Read 11 tweets

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