Republican Texas Rep. Dan Crenshaw on Wednesday took a crack at explaining why Texas' energy infrastructure couldn't handle this week's winter storm in the state.
The unusually harsh winter storm has killed at least 23 people, according to the New York Times, and left millions of customers without power in the state amid dangerously low temperatures.
Crenshaw added that some wind turbines in West Texas had to be "de-iced," leading to a drop in wind power from 31 gigawatts to 6, and the existing wind energy stored in batteries was also depleted because the batteries could not handle the cold weather.
Additionally, one of four nuclear reactors in Texas turned off "due to a safety sensor freezing" and oil and gas could not be transported because of frozen pipes, the congressman said.
The congressman blamed the state's infrastructure shortfalls this week on "years of federal subsidies for wind" that has led to an "over-reliance" on the clean energy source "and an under-investment in new gas and nuclear plants," adding that fossil fuels "are the only thing" that saved the state's residents from freezing.
The Texas Tribune on Wednesday noted that the lack of wind energy available in Texas right now makes up only a fraction of the total loss of the state's power-generating capabilities that has left millions without power.
The outlet cited the Electric Reliability Council of Texas, which said Tuesday that Texas had lost 16 gigawatts of energy from wind turbines versus 30 gigawatts from nuclear, gas and coal energy.
Crenshaw said this week's tribulations raise "serious concerns about the reliability of renewable-reliant power grids during extreme weather" and "the push to decommission baseload power sources like natural gas, which are more reliable than wind and are critical right now to keeping the lights on in Texas."