Texas current electricity issues show a lesson for decarbonization. Texas is hot, and has an abundance of winter peaking wind power, and still is having major issues in the winter.

Meeting cold winter demand with clean energy is a much more difficult problem than summer demand.

To be clear, Texas and other regions can and will continue to rapidly decarbonize. And this is also a recent phenomenon, only possible because solar is so cheap and successful. But winter cold is a much different challenge and we need new tools and approaches to decarbonization.

And a key reminder, just like California last summer, although people are jumping in to blame renewables for this situation, it’s the fossil fuel resources that are struggling that compound this challenge. Good overview here: https://twitter.com/cohan_ds/status/1360984613519302656

I should have added “it’s also” in this tweet. No one thing—coal or gas reliability, renewables, lack of demand response—is solely responsible for this. It’s a systems level issue that will require a holistic approach to address while still keeping the pace for decarbonization.