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The outages led to major public criticism of the legislators and state agencies over their apparent failure to heed warnings about the grid’s inability to handle extreme weather conditions. Energy experts said the collapse was due in part to the state’s decision to not require equipment upgrades for a more resilient system.

House Speaker Nancy Pelosi said on Thursday that she expects the House Energy and Commerce Committee to probe the energy problems in Texas.

Jennifer Granholm, President Joe Biden‘s nominee for energy secretary, said the U.S. must upgrade its grid infrastructure as soon as possible. “One thing is certain: America’s electricity grid is simply not able to handle extreme weather events,” she wrote in a tweet on Wednesday.

Though the GOP has overseen the state’s energy sector for decades, Republican Gov. Greg Abbott, along with other conservative state leaders, have falsely blamed the outages on renewable energy sources like wind and solar, which comprise only a small fraction of the state’s energy.

Abbott claimed in a Fox news interview this week that dependence on wind and solar power “thrust Texas into a situation where it was lacking power in a statewide basis,” an argument which was contradicted by his own energy department.

Read more:
Texas blackouts show how vulnerable power grid is to climate change
How the grid failed and what could stop it from happening again
Texas outages hit water supplies as thousands struggle without power for a fourth day

Julian Castro, a former mayor of San Antonio, Texas, tweeted: “Governor Abbott failed to prepare for this storm, was too slow to respond, and now blames everyone but himself for this mess.”

“He neglected the state’s antiquated and deregulated electrical grid,” said Castro, who also served as secretary of the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development.

Rick Perry, the former Texas governor and energy secretary for the Trump administration, proclaimed on Wednesday that Texans would prefer to endure even longer outages “to keep the federal government out of their business” and stop Democrats from implementing regulations to address climate change.

Still, the vast majority of this week’s outages stemmed from issues with limited natural gas production and frozen supplies at natural gas, coal and nuclear facilities — not from solar and wind failures.