Fueling The Conversation, Week of April 27th, 2026
In most of the developed world, the availability of reliable electricity has become so widespread that people tend to take it for granted, overlooking the intricate system of generators, inverters, and wires that heat our homes and power our devices. The only time most people pay attention is when they open their monthly utility bill or, as more frequently occurs these days, during the winter months. That’s because the once reliable utility grid has become stressed.
For years now, affordability and reliability in the states run by Democratic governors has played second fiddle to “greening” the grid by replacing coal- and natural-gas generators with intermittent solar and wind capacity. Texas, though not a Blue state, is in a similar situation, though for different reasons. Blessed with generous wind resources in the hill country, generous federal and state subsidies for wind and solar generation, and a history of subsidizing transmission lines through Competitive Renewable Energy Zones, Texas has been hospitable to “green” sources. When a winter storm inevitably hits in these regions, utilities have to scramble to provide firm power to prevent outages.
The response to Winter Storm Fern, which put at least 85 million people in states from Texas to Massachusetts on alert for extreme cold in late January, is just the latest example of this phenomenon.
Emboldened by the Department of Energy waiving emissions rules, natural gas, coal, and even oil-burning plants were running at full capacity to ensure homes and businesses didn’t go without power during the storm. In Texas, 67% of its power came from natural gas, with only 9% from wind and none from solar. In the states covered by MISO, ranging from Louisiana to North Dakota, coal accounted for 40% of power generation. Because New England has shut down its coal plants and restricted natural gas pipelines, it was forced to burn oil to generate 40% of its power during most of the storm. Notably, the region generated more power from burning wood and trash than from wind power. Across the country, the U.S. Energy Information Administration reported that coal-fired electricity generation increased 31% and natural gas generation increased 14%, while generation from solar, wind, and hydropower declined during Winter Storm Fern.
Even if “green” energy is capable of providing power under favorable conditions, solar and wind’s ineptitude during critical moments — when stable electricity can mean the difference between life and death — raises questions about their value to the grid.
Texas’s 2021 Winter Storm Uri is another example. Uri left 4.5 million people without electricity. Gas-fired plants accounted for 55% of the capacity that failed to operate in the freezing conditions, while wind accounted for 22% and coal 18%. However, as IER’s Robert L. Bradley Jr. argued at the time, “Intermittent wind and solar power is a root cause of the Great Texas Blackout of 2021.” Even though a large amount of natural gas capacity went offline, it still provided the most electricity of any other source during the storm. In contrast, wind energy went from producing 40% of the state’s generation before the storm to a minimal amount after. Natural gas could have met Texas’s energy demands if subsidies for “green” energy sources hadn’t disincentivized investment in new natural gas capacity. As Bradley explains, “Phantom capacity—early retired gas and coal plants and would-have-been new capacity—was missed at a most crucial time. Poorly maintained capacity was another consequence of ruined margins from government-enabled, low-marginal-cost wind and solar.”
With 200 dead and a cost of over $100 billion to Texas’s economy, the results of Uri should have been a lesson to policymakers across the country that relying on intermittent power during adverse conditions means immense costs. Even if Winter Storm Fern didn’t lead to casualty levels as high as those of Uri, that difference shouldn’t be mistaken for improvement. The North American Electricity Reliability Corporation’s Long-Term Reliability Assessment found that “[t]he overall resource adequacy outlook for the North American [bulk power system] is worsening…13 of 23 assessment areas face resource adequacy challenges over the next 10 years,” adding that “[t]he continuing shift in the resource mix toward weather-dependent resources and less fuel diversity increases risks of supply shortfalls during winter months.”
Clearly, winter storms impose burdens that are frustrating to deal with, especially in an advanced society accustomed to easy, reliable access to technology and transportation. Dealing with the effects of winter will always be hard, but that doesn’t mean we should make it harder by replacing reliable energy with weather-dependent alternatives. If politicians want the grid’s conditions to remain out of sight and out of mind for most Americans, they should stop pursuing energy policy as if winter conditions are anomalous.
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Fueling the Conversation, a weekly column by IER President Tom Pyle, offers a principled take on energy events. Energy underpins all aspects of modern life, so policies that artificially limit production hurt everyday people paying to heat their homes and drive to work. “Green” groups push these policies for ideological reasons, but this column uses economic logic and hard facts to advocate for energy freedom.
