One could reasonably argue that since wind and solar power wouldn't save their bacon in an extreme weather situation it could also be perceived as a mal-investm

One could reasonably argue that since wind and solar power wouldn't save their bacon in an extreme weather situation it could also be perceived as a mal-investment, HHOS. If investing in "green" energy can divert capital and attention from systems reliability and resiliency, ERCOT's got some splainin' to do...especially since the author (Mackey) asserts that wind and solar were not expected to produce in the winter, whereas Texas supposedly has about 30 GW of wind power capacity[1]. The article seems to be relying mostly on indignant protestations. In reality solar and wind must be coupled with storage in order to act as reliable baseload generation. So although solar and wind (and hydro) can reduce combustion generation, it can't be relied on to offset these particular risks of excessive demand (from people freezing, y'know?) which resulted in costly exposure. As evidenced by the reduced capacity. [1] There exist more balanced analysis that cite data, e.g https://www.americanexperiment.org/2021/02/wind-energy-fails-grading-the-reliability-of-energy-sources-during-the-texas-power-outages https://www.americanexperiment.org/2021/02/wind-energy-fails...