If you’re like me, I’m guessing you didn’t.
I’m also guessing that in the wake of a severe arctic storm blasting the United States, you’ve probably heard something to the effect that “frozen wind turbines caused millions of people to lose power during freezing temperatures across the Lone Star state.”
What you probably didn’t hear from these same folks is that wind energy makes up a mere 24 percent of Texas energy production, and that at least 80 percent of outages across the state were due to the failures of coal and gas powered plants.
To be clear, wind farms in Texas ran at about half the capacity they were expected to. While there were issues with frozen wind turbines, they can absolutely be used effectively in cold climates if they’re designed to do so (there are, after all, wind farms in Antarctica of all places.)