Greg Abbott Blames Texas Power Outages on Green Energy but State Depends on Gas

Greg Abbott Blames Texas Power Outages on Green Energy but State Depends on Gas

Texas Governor Greg Abbott has blamed recent widespread power outages in his state on green energy and criticized the proposed Green New Deal favored by progressive Democrats.Abbott, a Republican, spoke to Fox News' Sean Hannity on Tuesday and emphasized wind turbines in Texas that failed due to the cold weather. More than 4 million people were left without power or heat in freezing temperatures."This shows how the Green New Deal would be a deadly deal for the United States of America," Abbott said, saying that wind and solar energy make up "collectively more than 10 percent of our power grid.""It just shows that fossil fuel is necessary for the state of Texas as well as other states to make sure we'll be able to heat our homes in the winter time and cool our homes in the summer time," he said.However, the Electric Reliability Council of Texas (ERCOT), which oversees most of the state's electrical grid, has placed the blame for the outages on Texas' reliance on natural gas.Dan Woodfin, a senior director at ERCOT, told The Texas Tribune on Tuesday that more than half of their winter generating capacity is offline and that much of this is powered by