Did the Wall Street Journal Deliberately Lie to Vilify Reliance on Wind Power?

             Today, the Editorial Board of the Wall Street Journal reports that wind power represents 42% of the currently generated power in Texas and that freezing weather reduced output to 8%: “The problem is Texas’s overreliance on wind power that has left the grid more vulnerable to bad weather. Half of wind turbines froze last week, causing wind’s share of electricity to plunge to 8% from 42%.” See https://www.wsj.com/articles/the-political-making-of-a-texas-power-outage-11613518653.

            Does 42% strike you as an overestimate?  Multiple sources report that the current generating capacity from wind power in Texas actually represents about 17.4-25%.  See https://comptroller.texas.gov/economy/fiscal-notes/2020/august/ercot.php; https://www.expressnews.com/business/article/Wind-overtook-coal-as-a-power-source-in-Texas-15875284.php; https://www.statesman.com/story/news/2021/02/14/historic-winter-storm-freezes-texas-wind-turbines-hampering-electric-generation/4483230001/.

            The Journal and Texas Governor  Greg Abbott (see https://nymag.com/intelligencer/2021/02/what-gov-greg-abbott-gets-wrong-about-texas-power-failures.html) appear hellbent on blaming green power generation for the outages in the state.  Such a convenient and false target.  Might the lack of regulations requiring back up power have played a role?  How about the creation of an independent power grid manager with virtually no interconnection with backup power sources?  Who needs consumer safeguards-even for an unquestioned public necessity—when the marketplace can solve any and all problems?

            Yet another example where rather than try to determine the truth, people who know better see the advantage in creating false statistics to “prove” a point.

            Lies, damn lies and statistics.  Maybe the the authors wrote 24% and the numbers got reversed.  Of course, the Wall Street Journal would never lie to make a point.