Green New Deal would have left many more Texans in the dark: Lt. Gov. Dan Patrick

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Texas would still be without power if AOC’s green new deal was in place: Texas Lieutenant Governor

Dan Patrick cautions against removing fossil fuels from Texas’ energy supply following winter storm blackout.

If Texas had implemented Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez’s Green New Deal, the state would still be without power after last week's deadly winter storms, Lt. Gov. Dan Patrick told ""The Faulkner Focus" Wednesday

"It’s very clear to America and to Texas that you cannot count on renewables – wind or solar" Patrick told host Harris Faulkner. "They can be part of your portfolio, as they are in Texas, but what got our power back was natural gas, nuclear and clean-burning coal."

Patrick added that the widely quoted statistic that about 25% of Texas’ energy comes from renewable sources, that's only true "when the weather is nice, the sun's out, the wind's blowing."

"But in tough times, like in the coldest days in the winter and in the hottest days in the summer, we can't rely on them," he explained. "So we lost about half of our renewals going into this storm.

AOC SAYS GREEN NEW DEAL WOULD HAVE HELPED TO PREVENT TEXAS BLACKOUTS

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"When I hear AOC say that Texas should have had two or three times all renewables, we would still be without power," Patrick said. "I mean, we would be up a little bit. But you cannot count on the wind and the sun. You have to have investments in natural gas and [nuclear power] and in clean-burning coal. So that addresses that issue.

Ocasio-Cortez said last week that the Green New Deal would have prevented the power outages across Texas that left millions without heat or running water.

"The infrastructure failures in Texas are quite literally what happens when you *don’t* pursue a Green New Deal," Ocasio-Cortez, D-N.Y., tweeted Feb. 17.

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At a press conference a day earlier, ERCOT, the operator of the state’s power grid, said that failures in natural gas, coal, and nuclear energy infrastructure were responsible for nearly twice as many outages as those caused by frozen wind turbines.

Texas Gov. Greg Abbott and many state leaders have criticized the handling of the state’s power grid. Abbot later called for an investigation into the ERCOT in order to prevent more outages.

Fox News' Megan Henney contributed to this report.