February 22 – Bill Gates, an American billionaire and founder of Microsoft, said in an interview with CNN on the 20th that deaths caused by extreme cold weather in Texas could have been avoided.
Texas’s natural gas power plant did not have built facilities that can withstand extreme weather, resulting in millions of people in the state being critically out of power.
According to the Associated Press, as of the 20th local time, about 70 people have died in Texas and other states hit by the winter cold, including car accidents, carbon monoxide poisoning, drowning, house fires and hypothermia.
In response, Texas Governor Abbott explained that the reason for the large-scale power outage was that the wind turbine was frozen.
Renewable energy generation has decreased in winter, and wind and solar power stations, which account for about 10% of the state’s electricity supply, have been temporarily closed, leaving people in a power outage situation.
As a proponent of renewable energy, Gates refuted the claim that the power outage was not due to the state’s dependence on renewable energy, mainly because natural gas power plants should have built to withstand extreme weather, but in reality they did not.
Gates said that global climate change is considered to be the main cause of extreme weather events, and increasing the use of renewable energy can avoid future disasters such as winter cold storms.
