Former Texas Gov. Rick Perry said that millions of Texans, who have been out of power for days amid this winter storm, find the outages preferable to federal government intervening in the state’s energy crisis.
Perry was interviewed and featured in Republican House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy’s blog post about the freezing temperatures that have decimated the state’s ability to provide power to its residents. As of Wednesday, more than 2.7 million Texans remain out of power with more freezing temperatures ahead in the coming days, according to the Electric Reliability Council of Texas.
Although every form of power was knocked offline by the weather, Perry took aim at renewable sources of energy, some of which are subsidized by the federal government.
“If wind and solar is where we’re headed, the last 48 hours ought to give everybody a real pause and go wait a minute,” Perry said. “We need to have a baseload. And the only way you can get a baseload in this country is [with] natural gas, coal, and nuclear.”
Perry, a former Secretary of Energy for the Trump administration, said that the Department of Energy could help Texas better analyze its risks and recommend investments in weatherization, transmission, and energy storage. But, federal subsidies in renewable energy or making the Texas grid part of a larger nationwide grid, is not the answer, he said.
“Texans would be without electricity for longer than three days to keep the federal government out of their business,” Perry said “partly rhetorically,” according to the blog. “Try not to let whatever the crisis of the day is take your eye off of having a resilient grid that keeps America safe personally, economically, and strategically.”
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