Letter to the Editor (USA Today)

The USA Today refused to print it. I’ll post it here anyway.

On March 6, USA Today published an opinion piece by Katie Rock titled Fracking Gas is Too Risky for Our Climate Future. The title alone indicates the energy literacy of the author (i.e. there is no such thing as “fracking gas”).

Publishing such energy illiteracy by trusted news is why the general public, primarily on the coasts, fails to understand that energy is not exactly a partisan issue. Your readers might be surprised to learn that Texas implemented one of the earliest Renewable Portfolio Standard mandates in the country, under George W. Bush in 1999 at the request of Enron’s CEO Kenny Lay. This mandate predates California’s by three years, Colorado’s by four, and Bernie Sanders’ Vermont by six. Moreover, Obama’s Secretary of Energy, Dr. Enrest Moniz, is an advocate of natural gas (CH4, mostly hydrogen), among many other energy leaders on the “left.”

Katie Rock depicts the lessons from the recent Polar Vortex that crippled Texas’ ERCOT with equal inaccuracy. Nearly all of her points are factually inaccurate. For example, she writes, “we should reject claims that renewable energy is less reliable than our dependence on fossil fuels.” Even clean-energy advocate, Jesse Jenkins of Princeton University, admits renewables are “reliably unreliable.”

The reality in Texas is that all fuels faced failure – wind at a rate of 93% and natural gas at a rate of 36%. Fingerpointing is why Texas failed to internalize the lessons of the 2011 blackouts that were also caused by the Polar Vortex. Lives are too important for that kind of superficial analysis. As Dr. Scott Tinker reminds us, “we have to be completely factual, and factually complete.”