John Kerry, Biden’s “climate czar,” tried to claim otherwise, explaining pipeline workers laid off by Biden’s actions can just get other jobs. “Let them make the solar panels,” he quipped.

Of course, Biden’s emissions targets don’t apply to the elites. Kerry also said that a private jet “Is the only choice for someone like me.”

There’s nothing “green” about the hundreds of thousands of square miles of habitat, farmland, forest, and scenic vistas that would be destroyed to make way for the Green New Deal.

https://www.cfact.org/2021/04/29/are-the-texas-blackouts-a-preview-of-bidens-coming-green-new-deal/

By Adam Houser, Craig Rucker

“Don’t mess with Texas!”

Unfortunately, “messing with Texas” is exactly what so-called “renewable” energy recently did with Lone Star residents.

In mid-February, extreme cold temperatures rocked the state, as well as much of the nation.

Yet, unlike the rest of America, Texas was also hit with widespread power outages leaving millions shivering in the cold. It is believed that dozens have died in the tragedy.

Texas gets approximately 24 percent of its energy from wind and solar, which is significantly more than the rest of the nation. The national average is only 3 percent from wind and solar. As the record cold hit Texas from February 8 to February 16, renewable power generation dropped from 24 percent to an abysmal 8.3 percent as turbines froze and solar panels were covered with snow.

In the weeks that followed, Leftist politicians and the media have embarked on an extensive PR campaign, trying to blame everything for the blackouts – except for wind and solar.

The main narrative tries to shift blame to the supposed failure of coal and gas backup power. Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez and Senator Chuck Schumer even doubled down on green energy, claiming that if Texas had enacted a Green New Deal, the energy crisis would have never happened.

Nothing could be further from the truth.

Wind power generation during the freeze diminished by a whopping 93 percent, while natural gas generation increased by 450 percent to try to make up the difference.

Imagine how much worse the crisis would have been if natural gas had been completely phased out via a Green New Deal.

But unfortunately, the “spin” didn’t stop there.

Other narratives have tried to say that gas pipelines froze, preventing gas backup from kicking in at the right times and in the right places. But where these pipelines did freeze, the blame rests on more green policy.

The Wall Street Journal reported that: “Thanks to the Clean Air Act, pipeline compressors run on electricity now rather than natural gas. So blackouts meant to conserve electricity can actually reduce it, by knocking gas-burning generators offline.”

Finally, the Left tried to claim that Texas wind turbines weren’t properly winterized.

But even in states up north, where winterization is utilized, renewable power generation decreased significantly. In New York, New England, and the rest of the Mid-Atlantic during the cold streak, power from renewable sources went from a few thousand megawatt-hours to close to zero at many points, according to the Energy Information Administration.

Texas isn’t the only place to succumb to blackouts due to an over-reliance on renewable power.

In 2016, Australia faced blackouts as 40 percent of its energy supply was converted from coal to wind. When strong winds knocked out power lines, the grid couldn’t keep up.

In August of 2020, California couldn’t make up the extra power needed to cope with a heat wave hitting the state due to its huge push of renewables. Peak demand hits in the evenings when these renewables aren’t producing. As a result, the Golden State went dark.

Finally, just this January, much of Europe was hit with blackouts as snow and cold hit solar power hard. Germany in particular was forced to rely on coal backup power to make it through.

While these blackouts from Texas and beyond are tragic enough by themselves, what’s worse is that this may be a sign of things to come for the rest of America.

The Biden administration is moving forward with executive actions to force the nation to switch to more solar, wind, and electric vehicles on a national and industrial scale.

Biden has already signed orders that cancelled the Keystone pipeline, placed a moratorium on oil leasing in the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge (ANWR), rejoined the Paris Climate Accord, and put an indefinite moratorium on new oil and gas leases on federal lands and waters.

But what’s more is that Biden is planning to double the emissions targets that former President Obama had put in place and order all agencies and departments to make climate change their number one focus.

These actions will increase prices, destroy jobs, and make our grid more susceptible to weather events – all for zero impact on the climate.

John Kerry, Biden’s “climate czar,” tried to claim otherwise, explaining pipeline workers laid off by Biden’s actions can just get other jobs. “Let them make the solar panels,” he quipped.

Of course, Biden’s emissions targets don’t apply to the elites. Kerry also said that a private jet “Is the only choice for someone like me.”

Analysis from Ronald Stein at cfact.org shows that all these green jobs Kerry is touting are actually going to China and India.

Stein explains: “Kerry has learned very little from the first two countries to go Green – Germany and Australia. Neither countries’ manufacturing sector can compete with China and India.”

He goes on to add that Germany’s renewable energy push, its “Energiewende” program, has shed 50 percent of its workforce, going from 300,000 jobs in the renewable energy sector in 2011 to 150,000 in 2018.

China and India, meanwhile, are moving forward as fast as possible with coal power, mining, and everything else they can do to support their booming industrial sectors.

Additionally, going “green” on a national scale actually won’t help our environment at all. In fact, it will make our environment worse.

CFACT senior policy analyst Paul Driessen writes that to meet America’s energy needs while going 100 percent “renewable,” it would require 350,000 square miles of solar panels (or the size of Nevada, Arizona, and New Mexico combined), or about 820,000 square miles of land for wind turbines (which is over one fourth of the continental United States).

This doesn’t even include the transmission lines, access space and maintenance areas, or the additional backup power needed for when the renewables go dark.

There’s nothing “green” about the hundreds of thousands of square miles of habitat, farmland, forest, and scenic vistas that would be destroyed to make way for the Green New Deal.

Let’s be blunt: The green jobs promised from Biden’s radical environmental policy are pure fantasy. Instead, as history has shown, we can expect widespread blackouts, extensive job losses, and massive environmental destruction to be the more likely reality.

Author

• Adam Houser Adam Houser coordinates student leaders as National Director of CFACT’s collegians program and writes on issues of climate and energy.
• Craig Rucker Craig Rucker is a co-founder of CFACT and currently serves as its president.

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