Unreliable, insecure, unaffordable—words to describe fossil fuels, not renewable energy

"Solar panels don't work at night. Wind turbines don't work when it's calm. Renewables just aren't as reliable, or as affordable, or as secure as fossil fuels."

You’ve probably heard or read some version of these claims before. They’ve been floating around for decades, and keep showing up in policy decisions, campaign speeches, and news headlines. We decided to test each one against data and learned that, while there are some truths, these claims mostly fall apart under scrutiny. The bigger surprise is that there’s a much stronger case for these arguments against fossil fuels.

Here’s what we dug into.

It’s true that solar panels don’t work at night or during inclement weather, and wind turbines don’t work when it’s calm. It’s hard to build a power grid that relies on weather we can’t control, so it makes sense why people believe that renewable energy plants are unreliable.

There’s a strong example that clean energy critics love to cite: Germany in the winter of 2024. That country has invested more in renewable energy than almost any other, and an entire week of low wind and little sunlight left renewables supplying only 30% of its electricity. Germany had to fall back on coal, gas, and imported power to keep the lights on.

If that were the whole story, the reliability argument may hold up. But it isn't.

Fossil fuels fail too—often more dramatically

In 2021, Winter Storm Uri caused a deadly freeze throughout Texas that left millions without power for days. The dominant media narrative at the time blamed wind turbines, but a peer-reviewed study published in the journal Weather, Climate, and Society found that narrative was largely a myth. Researchers called it the "green energy misdirection."

According to a joint analysis by the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission (FERC) and the North American Electric Reliability Corporation (NERC), gas plants caused 87% of outages during Uri—more than double the damage caused by the next largest source. It came down to frozen pipelines, frozen compressors, and fuel that couldn't be delivered. The grid failed largely because of fossil fuels.

Then it happened again. In December 2022, Winter Storm Elliott hit during Christmas week. Gas generators were responsible for 70% of all forced outages, according to a PJM Interconnection report. Meanwhile, clean energy sources—wind, solar, nuclear, and hydro combined—accounted for only 7% of unavailable capacity, according to the FERC report. 

Uri and Elliott were two of the worst winter power crises in recent U.S. history. Both times, fossil fuels failed. Both times, the story blamed renewables.

And even when the weather cooperates, fossil fuels can be unreliable: Coal plants are offline roughly 15% of the time for maintenance, fuel issues, or unplanned outages.

The math on renewables’ actual contribution

Matt Chester, an energy analyst from Energy Central, got tired of seeing the same "wet blanket" argument that the sun doesn't shine 24/7 whenever there was good news about renewable energy. So he did the math himself and gave us a full report.

"I said, okay, I'm curious—if we look at those recent years and say: can we account for how much of that capacity of renewables added to the grid actually adds to the generation? Does that wet blanket hold up, or is there reason for the renewables crowd to be excited?" Chester said.

He pulled 10 years of energy generation data and built a new metric: how much practical power each energy source actually adds to the U.S. grid.

"The numbers were such that it wasn't even really close," he said. "Renewables in useful additions to the grid over the past 10 years blew away any other sources out of the water."

Wind and solar ranked first and second in practical grid additions in five of the last six years, according to Chester's analysis of EIA data. And that's only counting utility-scale solar—factor in rooftop solar, and the margin grows further.

Critics argue that renewables aren’t reliable because they imagine one solar panel going dark or one turbine standing still, but Matt’s data shows how millions of panels and turbines spread across a continent almost never stop at once—that combined energy matters. Renewables supplied roughly 24% of all U.S. electricity as of 2024, with wind and solar combined producing about 16% more than coal.

The storage piece critics keep ignoring

What critics fail to contextualize in almost every "renewables aren't reliable" argument is that solar and wind, when paired with energy storage, become strong energy sources. It’s true that, on their own, solar and wind systems are intermittent, but both technologies often generate more power than the grid needs—batteries can store that surplus for when output dips.

Analysts agree that if Germany had ample storage capacity, it likely wouldn't have needed to lean so heavily on fossil fuels during that 2024 cold snap. The country responded by investing in large-scale battery projects—by the end of 2026, it will likely have five times the battery capacity it had in 2024.

While energy storage systems can be expensive, battery costs have dropped 93% since 2010, according to the International Renewable Energy Agency (IRENA). And the results are already showing up: Texas added significant solar and battery capacity in 2025, and grid risk dropped from 16% to under 1%.

"I think batteries will maybe be that linchpin," Chester said. "People can understand very easily what it means to store energy and tap into it later. Once those prices come down, that's going to make all these decisions financially easy."

The verdict: The reliability argument against renewables has a grain of truth but a mountain of evidence against it.

The idea is that fossil fuels give America energy independence: the ability to power the country without depending on foreign adversaries. It's a bipartisan concern, and a real one.

But here's the problem with the fossil fuel version of energy security: oil and gas are globally traded commodities. Prices aren't set by who produces them—they're set by world markets. That means no matter how much the U.S. drills, American families are still exposed to price spikes every time there's a war, a hurricane, or a diplomatic crisis on the other side of the world.

Even subsidizing domestic fossil fuel production doesn't solve the problem. The International Institute for Sustainable Development found that subsidizing fossil fuel production doesn't guarantee affordable energy for local consumers, but rather boosts profits for fossil fuel companies selling into the global market, where prices are set regardless of where the fuel comes from.

Contrast that with wind and solar.

"Offshore wind directly improves national security largely because we can trace the entire supply chain back to our domestic inputs. The wind is in the U.S., it's built by American workers, and it reduces reliance on foreign oil and gas,” said Jessi Eidbo, senior energy adviser at the Sierra Club.

A 2025 analysis by Ember found that solar grew so fast globally in 2025 that it could’ve replaced the energy equivalent of all gas exports through the Strait of Hormuz—one of the most geopolitically volatile energy chokepoints on the planet, which is causing our current energy crisis due to the war in Iran.

The sun doesn't have a foreign policy. The wind doesn't respond to sanctions. Support for domestic wind and solar has come from both sides of the political aisle—not primarily as an environmental argument, but as a national security argument that actually holds up under scrutiny.

The verdict: The energy security argument was supposed to be the strongest case for fossil fuels. The data shows it's actually the strongest case against them.

This is the one that hits closest to home, because it shows up directly on your utility bill.

The argument: Fossil fuels are the affordable energy option. The infrastructure exists for them. Building out renewables requires expensive grid upgrades. And when the sun goes down, we're still relying on gas anyway, so we'd just be paying for both.

Some of that is true. Grid upgrades do cost real money, but many of those upgrades would be needed regardless, because our aging grid wasn't built to handle the surge in AI data centers and overall high electricity demand that’s happening right now. It’s not a renewable energy problem; it’s an infrastructure problem we're going to face either way.

But here's what the "affordable fossil fuels" argument doesn't tell you.

According to IRENA’s 2025 analysis, 91% of new renewable energy projects are now cheaper than the lowest-cost fossil fuel alternative. Solar is 41% cheaper on average. Onshore wind is 53% cheaper. And that's before factoring in fuel costs, because the sun and wind don't send you a bill. Gas plants, on the other hand, are permanently exposed to a volatile global market, which we already discussed.

At the utility scale, solar in the U.S. averaged $1.18 per watt in 2025, according to the Solar Energy Industries Association (SEIA). That's the cost of the equipment itself, before a single kilowatt-hour of free fuel from the sun.

Meanwhile, you’re paying for broken coal plants

While the "renewables are too expensive" argument circulates, the real costs of propping up fossil fuel infrastructure have quietly landed on ratepayers' bills.

Six coal plants scheduled to retire in 2025 have been forced to remain open under emergency orders. These weren't plants that utilities, grid operators, or state regulators asked to keep running: Nobody requested the orders, but they were issued anyway.

“All the facilities received an order at most a week—if not a couple of days—before the date of scheduled retirement,” Eidbo said.

Eidbo's team at the Sierra Club has been tracking these costs that she says land directly on us—the electricity customers. So far, these orders have cost ratepayers more than $300 million. The J.H. Campbell coal plant in Michigan—supposed to close in May 2025—has cost nearly $180 million in net costs, billed across 11 states.

Then there's the Schahfer plant in Indiana, where a turbine blade broke. The plant cannot physically operate at full capacity, yet Eidbo says it’s still being kept open, costing nearby ratepayers a collective $317,900 per day.

"It’s like handing you keys to a car with flat tires and saying, ' Good luck driving yourself to the hospital,’” Eidbo said. “The CEO has made a public statement that the turbine is broken and that despite the 90-day order to operate, they wouldn't be able to get it up and running for at least six months."

If all of these plants stay online, independent analysis from Grid Strategies estimates costs could hit $3.1 billion per year. Eidbo said, in the last 15 years, 330 coal plants have retired on their own because coal simply can't compete economically anymore. The market made that call—these orders overruled it.

The verdict: Fossil fuel plants are costing ratepayers millions of dollars in maintenance and fuel costs, and some aren’t even producing significant energy. Meanwhile, renewable energy systems continue to get cheaper every year and—once built—are “fueled” for free.

"Renewables are unreliable." "Fossil fuels are more affordable." "This is about energy security."

These aren't three independent concerns—they're the same argument, told three different ways, recycled whenever one version loses traction.

A research group analyzed fossil fuel industry lobbying documents dating back to 1967 and found the American Petroleum Institute and its allies have been making the same arguments against clean energy for more than 50 years.

According to OpenSecrets, the fossil fuel industry spent more than $150 million lobbying the federal government in 2024 alone—outspending the renewable energy industry roughly 10 to 1.

There is a grain of truth to every claim here, but it isn’t the whole story. When you dive into the research, you’ll find that fossil fuels are more unreliable, insecure, and expensive compared to renewable alternatives.

Meanwhile, renewables are scaling fast, getting cheaper every year, and generating more electricity than coal. Energy storage is closing the intermittency gap. And domestic wind and solar offer a kind of true U.S. energy independence that oil and gas never could.

"We still saw some of the highest volumes of clean energy come online in 2025," Eidbo said. "It's not only signaling that the market economics of clean energy still make sense. It's that there's an ability of that industry and the communities who want clean, pollution-free energy to fight back against these many barriers."

Yet, even Chester, who's bullish on renewables, acknowledges we can't ditch fossil fuels overnight. "We couldn't flip a switch and say the grid is all renewable," he said. "But renewables at 20%? Ten years ago, they weren't there. We're on the way up."

Changing how the whole country gets its power isn't a decision any one household can make. But the decision for your own home is yours. The average homeowner who goes solar saves between $37,000 and $154,000 on electricity over 25 years. Add battery storage, and you have backup power when the grid goes down—which, based on everything above, is worth thinking seriously about.