Mexico is blaming the United States as 4.77 million Mexican businesses and homes were reportedly left without power amid a halt in US natural gas imports due to severely cold weather.
While 80% of the electricity has been restored in Mexico’s northern states, the massive electricity blackouts have given the Mexican government more reason to seek an end to their reliance on the United States for natural gas, gasoline, and diesel.
“What is the lesson in all of this? We must produce,” said President Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador. “We are seeing that we must seek to be self-sufficient.”
Also known as AMLO, the President of Mexico wants to bolster CFE’s influence on the Mexican power grid. He hopes to pass a congressional bill that would give CFE priority in providing electricity to the nation. While some have argued that this would impact the new USMCA trade deal, AMLO said that this would not be the case.
The US is currently facing one of the worst energy crises in modern history. Millions of Americans are dealing with widespread power outages in the state of Texas, as their vastly used wind turbines have been iced over and rendered ineffective, placing increased stress on the nation’s dwindling natural gas supplies, as National File reported:
Historically low temperatures have iced over wind turbines across Texas, which do not have any systems capable of keeping them running through cold weather.
“This is a unique winter storm that’s more widespread with lots of moisture in West Texas, where there’s a lot of times not a lot of moisture,” Senior Director of System Operations for the Electric Reliability Council of Texas Dan Woodfin noted, adding, “It’s certainly more than what we would typically assume.”
Half of Texas' wind turbines are OFFLINE because of the ice storm.
Green energy works.
Except when you need it the most.
— Daniel Turner (@DanielTurnerPTF) February 15, 2021
The crisis in Texas could serve as an example of the shortcomings of green energy technology.