Prior to joining Climatewire in 2016, Benjamin Storrow worked at newspapers in Massachusetts and Wyoming. Benjamin has a degree in international affairs from George Washington University.
Utilities across the northern U.S. have long fortified themselves against extreme cold, preventing the widespread outages seen in Texas last week. The dirty secret: The power systems remain highly reliant on fossil fuels to keep the lights on.
Texas halved its use of coal in the last decade. But the power crisis that seized the state last week could alter plans for future closures.
Opponents of renewable energy blame frozen wind turbines for the state's electricity crisis. But there were bigger failures involving natural gas.
The power grid in Texas nearly melted down during a heat wave in 2019. Now a deep freeze is causing widespread blackouts. The whiplash crises warn of what's to come in a warming world, experts say.
President Biden chose a champion of offshore wind to lead an agency that can uncork a stream of renewable energy projects in the ocean. That unsettles the fishing industry.