Two thousand miles across nearly 40 states, from New Mexico to Maine, Winter Storm Fern delivered ice, snow, and bone-chilling cold. More than 200 million people were impacted. Nearly 1 million lost power.
Grid operators, utility planners, and policy analysts will remember Fern for its stress-testing of the grid. The grid passed, but net-zero energy policy, with its heavy reliance on wind and solar, failed.
CEO of Florida Municipal Power Agency Jacob Williams posted on LinkedIn at 7 p.m. on Sunday, Jan. 25, that loads were up 10% from the morning and 90% “of power generation is natural gas, coal, nuclear, or oil in Texas to the Plains to Mid-Atlantic to NY/Northeast.”
After decades of deployment, lavish federal subsidies, a complicit media with relentless headlines trumpeting the energy transition, and the end of fossil fuels, wind and solar accounted for only 9% of the generating portfolio.
Texas, scarred by grid failure during Winter Storm Uri, provides the clearest gap between installed capacity and operational reality. Despite having more than 40,000 megawatts of installed wind, wind contributed only about 5,000 megawatts during the coldest, highest-load hours.
By comparison, Texas’s gas, coal, and nuclear fleet were workhorses with “85-90% uptime from those units during the height of the storm,” wrote Brent Bennett, Policy Director at Texas Public Policy Foundation.
In Colorado, as temperatures plummeted, power remained available because coal plants remained operational, and natural gas flowed steadily. On Jan. 24, natural gas and coal supplied 85% of Xcel Energy’s power, even though together they account for 55% of Xcel’s generating portfolio.
One of those coal units, Comanche 2, was slated for premature retirement on Dec. 31, 2025. At Xcel’s request, the Colorado Public Utilities Commission kept it in service and lifted its restrictions just days before Fern. When faced with a choice between emissions targets and keeping the lights on, regulators turned to resources they knew would perform. The decision proved wise. Wind and solar, 45% of Xcel’s portfolio, delivered just 14% of generation.
Imported power, often a necessary component of net zero, proved a risky way to ensure reliability. Days before Fern hit the Northeast, Gov. Maura Healey (D-MA) touted Quebec hydropower as a pillar of the state’s energy strategy. When needed, it failed to show up as Quebec imported New York’s natural gas to meet its own needs. With renewables unavailable and natural gas aggressively discouraged, ISO-New England burned oil to generate 40% of its output during peak cold.
Renewables, mostly wood and refuse, accounted for just 4%. Wind and solar were barely rounding errors. Scarcity of reliable power caused electricity prices to skyrocket.
Still, nearly 1 million customers, primarily in the Southeast, lost power due to ice-damaged transmission and distribution lines, not a shortage of generation. Extreme-weather reliability depends on firm resources, durable infrastructure, and the ability to operate through localized failures. Net zero policies heavily invest in wind and solar while also forcing electrification, concentrating risk in vulnerable overhead electric systems, and eliminating parallel fuel pathways, such as buried natural gas, that provide resilience.
Faced with skyrocketing costs, support for decarbonization policies is weakening. A poll of New England women shows that net zero support and opposition are effectively tied, with stronger intensity among opponents and a large share undecided.
A RESOLUTION FOR 2026: ENERGY THAT ACTUALLY WORKS
For years, policymakers and advocates have assured the public that wind and solar could replace firm, baseload generation while lowering costs. During Fern, those assurances collided with reality. When demand was highest, wind and solar output were lowest, and the grid survived the stress test because dispatchable, thermal generation showed up for work, but sometimes at a high cost.
Absent course correction, grids in states pursuing aggressive net zero policies will become increasingly fragile as intermittent resources grow and firm generation shrinks. They’ll also become increasingly expensive as operators scramble for reliability during scarcity events.
Fern’s lesson: Physics doesn’t care what lawmakers put on paper.
Amy O. Cooke is the visiting energy policy fellow at State Policy Network.