Washington:
The White House stated on Thursday a extreme winter storm engulfing Texas and nearby states was the sort of intense climate occasion that climate adjust is triggering, rejecting assertions by Texas officials that “green energy” brought on widespread energy outages.
The crisis in the biggest US oil- and gas-creating state has place Democratic President Joe Biden’s White House squarely at odds with Republican Texas Governor Greg Abbott, who initially did not acknowledge Biden’s 2020 election win.
Abbott had ordered state officials in January to fight Biden’s push to combat climate adjust by pausing new oil and gas leases, and cutting fossil fuel subsidies.
Biden spoke with Abbott late on Thursday, promising the federal government would continue to work with state and nearby authorities to meet the important requires of these impacted, the White House stated in a statement. Biden also stated he would instruct more federal agencies to look into quick actions that could be taken to enable Texans.
White House homeland safety adviser Liz Sherwood-Randall told reporters earlier that 1 million or more individuals have been nonetheless suffering energy outages as a outcome of the storm and blamed it on climate adjust, which some Republican officials in impacted states have denied or downplayed.
“The extreme weather events that we’re experiencing this week … do yet again demonstrate to us that climate change is real and it’s happening now, and we’re not adequately prepared for it,” she told a White House phone briefing.
White House spokeswoman Jen Psaki stated Biden also spoke two days ago with Abbott, who came below fire this week immediately after initially blaming the crisis on Democratic efforts to transition to green power sources and away from fossil fuels.
She noted that the Texas agency that operates the state’s energy grid itself had stated that failures in solar and wind energy have been the “least significant factor in the blackout.”
Reports that recommended otherwise have been inaccurate, Psaki stated, adding it was important to assess how to much better defend the US national infrastructure and make sure its resilience going forward.
The Electric Reliability Council of Texas (ERCOT), a cooperative accountable for 90% of the state’s electrical energy, stated on Thursday it had created “significant progress” in restoring energy. It did not provide detailed figures.
Some 325,000 Texas households have been nonetheless devoid of energy, down from about 2.7 million on Wednesday, according to poweroutage.com, a internet site that tracks outages.
Infrastructure weaknesses
Angry residents have educated significantly of their ire on ERCOT, which critics say did not heed warnings immediately after a cold-climate meltdown in 2011 to make sure that Texas’ power infrastructure, which relies mostly on all-natural gas, was winterized.
Two-thirds of the electric energy that was lost through the cold was due to a lack of all-natural gas supplies, and one-third came from wind turbine shutdowns, stated Jim Blackburn, an environmental lawyer and Rice University professor.
Abbott stated on Thursday he asked the state legislature to mandate the winterization of generators.
Sherwood-Randall stated the storm, which left millions of individuals in freezing temperatures devoid of heat and sufficient water stress had exposed weaknesses in American infrastructure that necessary to be addressed.
“Power grids across our country, particularly in Texas, are overloaded by the demands that are placed on them under these conditions, and the infrastructure is not built to withstand these extreme conditions,” she stated.
Biden would lead an work to “strengthen and harden our critical infrastructure so that it can be prepared to meet a full spectrum of challenges that we’re likely to face,” Sherwood-Randall added.
Psaki stated the administration was working to hammer out a huge infrastructure modernization program that would be introduced as soon as Congress passed a $1.9 trillion coronavirus relief package.
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