The Texas freeze that led to numerous blackouts has made the state painfully aware of the shortcomings of its power grid, but the real problem is much larger, and goes way beyond Texas.
We have just witnessed the damage caused by poorly designed energy grids—rolling blackouts, skyrocketing electricity prices, people sleeping in their cars and in one insulated room to keep warm. At the same time a weaponized right wing media swings into action blaming wind turbines and the green new deal for Texas’s energy woes. There is a pattern here. These are variants of stories told after California’s forest fires and resulting power outages. But we see no easy end of power outages that have plagued electricity supply in recent years while adverse weather events seem to get more frequent and impactful. (See Figure 1)
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