Republicans feel blast of Texan rage over blizzards

A political row is raging over the future of America’s energy supply after more than three million Texans were left without power or running water.

Connor Cash snowboards down the steps of a library at Texas Christian University in Fort Worth on Thursday. Picture: AFP

A political row is raging over the future of America’s energy supply after more than three million Texans were left without power or running water when the state’s electricity system failed and another winter storm moved in.

A spell of freezing weather has been blamed for causing more than 30 deaths across the country and some cities have recorded the lowest temperatures in more than a half-century.

In Texas, where the electricity network is independent of the national grid, a surge in demand for power to heat homes coincided with the failure of power stations and pipelines in the freezing weather.

Greg Abbott, the state’s Republican governor, sought to blame the failures on renewable energy plants and suggested that the crisis demonstrated the flaws in a plan promoted by Democrats in congress to move away from oil and natural gas. “This shows how the Green New Deal would be a deadly deal for the United States,” he told Fox News. However, he acknowledged that renewable sources of energy amounted to only 10 per cent of the state’s supply and he conceded that the failures also affected natural gas, coal and nuclear plants.

The Electric Reliability Council of Texas, which runs the state’s grid, said that natural gas, coal and nuclear power systems were responsible for nearly twice as many outages as snow covered solar panels and iced up wind turbines. Mr Abbott has called on the leaders of the council to resign, saying they had withheld information.

Critics said that Texas had failed to learn the lessons of past power failures in cold snaps and argued that its heavily deregulated market gave utilities little incentive to invest in winter-proofing their systems.

Julian Castro, a former mayor of San Antonio who served in the Obama administration, said the governor “failed to prepare for this storm, was too slow to respond and now blames everyone but himself for this mess. He neglected the state’s antiquated and deregulated electrical grid.”

Other Republican leaders in the state were reminded of barbs they aimed at California last summer during blackouts caused by wildfires. Both of the state’s US senators suggested at the time that it showed what would happen if Democrats were given control of energy policy.

“I got no defence,” Ted Cruz replied in a tweet. “A blizzard strikes Texas & our state shuts down. Not good! Stay safe!”

Meanwhile in his farmhouse south of San Antonio Roy McMullen was wearing several layers of clothing and could see his breath appearing in clouds. He and his wife, Cindy, had been using baby wipes to clean themselves.

“I look like Grizzly Adams,” he said. Their power had been mostly off since Sunday, along with running water. At the pet store they run in Pleasanton, “all the animals are doing OK but it’s been hard on the tropical fish”, he said.

When the power comes on for an hour or so, his wife heats water for milk bottles for the calves she is handfeeding and runs hot water out to the elderly pairs of parrots that are expecting chicks. “Hopefully the four white-belly caique eggs that were to hatch a few days ago will make it through this very cold darkness,” she said.

The last “great snowfall in 1985 was pleasant compared to this as the house stayed comfy and warm”, she said. It was warmer on Thursday AEDT but they were expecting more snow and freezing rain. “On Saturday it’s supposed to be in the 60s or 70s (Fahrenheit),” her husband said. “There is an end in sight.”

The Times