This Christmas, the United States suffered the most freezing weather in decades, and the deadly snowstorm exposed deep flaws in the US energy system.

The severe cold that has swept across much of the United States over the past few days has killed dozens of people and caused millions of temporary power outages. The storm evokes memories of a deadly winter storm in 2021, which caused widespread power outages in Texas.However, the areas where the power outage occurred spread from the south to the Midwest and northeast, which should theoretically have more experience and preparation to cope with extreme cold and snowstorms than Texas, but after this extreme weather, it has been found that even these places do not have corresponding plans, which shows the insufficient supply of natural gas in the United States and the unpredictable shortcomings of renewable energy sources such as wind and solar energy.

Michael Webber, a professor of energy resources at the University of Texas at Austin, said:

Winter storms have exposed the vulnerability of our energy systems, and although the variability of wind and solar energy is well known and discussed, the freezing of natural gas pipelines also shows the fragility of natural gas systems.

Natural gas is the main fuel for heating and power generation in the US in winter because of frozen oil and gas wells and broken pipelines. In the face of extremely cold weather, its supply suffered the biggest decline in more than a decade, causing prices to soar. America's largest power grid is on the verge of being forced to rotate power outages, while some residents in at least 24 states have suffered at least temporary blackouts.

According to media estimates, U.S. natural gas production suffered its worst one-day decline in more than a decade on December 23. About 10% of the supply was blocked by frozen gas wells. On December 24, production fell to 84.2 billion cubic feet, 16% below the normal level, and did not improve the following day. Major utilities from Texas to New York City are urging customers to save electricity to protect supply. By December 26th, the country produced about 90 billion cubic feet of natural gas for heating and power generation, about 10 per cent below normal.

The decline in natural gas supply was mainly concentrated in the north-eastern Appalachian Mountains, which fell to its lowest level since 2018.

At the same time, supplies from Appalachia to the Tennessee Valley and the Midwest have more than halved than normal due to dilapidated pipeline infrastructure.

On Friday, Christmas Eve, physical delivery of natural gas to a hub in North and South Carolina and Virginia was $60 per million British thermal units, up nearly 65% from two days ago. By Saturday Christmas Eve, natural gas prices in Washington, D.C., and parts of New England briefly exceeded $100.

For the third winter in a row, the pipeline freeze reduced US natural gas production by at least 8 billion cubic feet a day, highlighting the increased impact of the weather on US energy production.

From February 13 to 17, 2021, a large ice storm affected the United States, northern Mexico and parts of Canada. The snowstorm swept from the Pacific Northwest to the southern United States and then moved to the Midwest and Northeast a few days later. The winter storm caused more than 170 million people across the United States to receive winter weather warnings and caused power outages for more than 9.72 million homes in the United States and Mexico. In addition, water supplies for hundreds of thousands of residents in Mississippi and Tennessee have been affected. The storm also brought destructive bad weather, including several tornadoes, to the southeastern United States.

Eli Rubin, an analyst at EBW AnalyticsGroup, said the extreme weather dealt a heavy blow to natural gas and power systems:

It is difficult to regard the winter storm of February 2021 as an one-off event.

The storm also caused casualties in the United States. Buffalo, New York is the area hardest hit by the blizzard, with record snowfall and as many as 27 deaths are reported. Officials warn that the death toll could continue to climb in the coming days as more bodies are confirmed.

The scale of the storm is extremely unusual, with temperatures dropping to minus 46 degrees Celsius in some parts of the United States and affecting most of the mainland at the same time, the power grid cannot be maintained by seconding electricity from neighboring states, thus causing a wider range of disasters.