Natural gas plants accounted for majority of Texas winter storm failures

While some politicians sought to blame renewable energy for deadly power disruptions in February, a new report from two key agencies shows that natural gas was also a major factor. 

The new preliminary report found that of the 1,045 generators that experienced outages, reductions or failures to start, 604 of them  — or nearly 58 percent — were natural gas units.

Natural gas also made up about 55 percent of the actual power that had unplanned disruptions, while 22 percent was wind and 18 percent was coal. 

But, natural gas is also the biggest source of electric power in Texas, making up more generation as of June than coal, renewables and nuclear combined. 

The state has found that more than 150 people died in the storm, while a BuzzFeed News analysis from May found an even greater number of casualties. 

Following the outages, Texas Gov. Greg Abbott (R) claimed that the fault lied with renewables.

[Rachel Frazin]

24 September 2021

IEEFA