" I wouldn't expect an acute shortage to result from these reasons. (I mean clearly my expectations are wrong given what is happening but this doesn't match my

" I wouldn't expect an acute shortage to result from these reasons. (I mean clearly my expectations are wrong given what is happening but this doesn't match my prior understanding of how things are supposed to work.)" Coal is actually pretty important to smooth out energy. There was something fascinating I learned during the Texas outage last year. At the time I was privy to private exchange emails among power engineers. One engineer explained that one of the problems they were having is that, with the closing of coal plants, the reliability of the grid goes down. And with a very good reason: You can store a massive pile of coal next to the plant for (basically) free [1]. oil, by comparison, is expensive to store, natgas more expensive still. What happens is, in the winter, the pressure of the natgas lines goes down as consumers drive up their thermostats. Therefore, natgas plants can't deliver the power required beacuse the gas isn't there. So, in the N. East of the USA where there are nasty cold snaps, power operators have piles of coal ready to be burned in coal plants. Most of the power is still from natgas throughout the year, but coal bails you out when it gets super cold (note, the midwest doesn't need this because it's always nastily cold there -> the natgas lines are built accordingly). [1] Some, having read the popular press explanations of the outage, will complain that renewables delivered 90% of what was requested. That's true, but only half of the story. The 90% figure was a de-rated amount of energy [2]. Basically dispatchers knew that renewables weren't going to deliver and adjusted their predictions accordingly. The blackout happened, therefore, because the power source that was expected to show up and deliver in this situation tripped over itself. There's no doubt natgas can deliver - it does every winter in the North - but it can't if it's not implemented properly, or if there's not enough gas pressure in the lines to deal with a massive sure. [2] None of this is meant to be a dismissal of renewable energy. Texas leads in renewables, and why shouldn't they? It's a resource that (can) cleans up our environment. But i power we can't treat things like panaceas and have to be realistic about where we stand.