WASHINGTON (AP) — The Trump administration said Friday that its use of emergency orders to keep aging coal-fired plants operating helped prevent a major blackout from power shortages during the brutally frigid weather that has gripped most of America for the past two weeks.

Scattered outages occurred because of ice accumulation that felled local power lines, leaving hundreds of thousands without power, at least briefly. But the nation’s regional power grids generally maintained reliable electricity service, with natural gas and coal leading the way, Energy Secretary Chris Wright and other officials said.

“The big picture story is where we actually got energy from during this storm,” Wright said at a news conference at the Energy Department. “In fact, we had times where our existing capacity couldn’t deliver anything and the lights would have gone out if not for emergency orders.’’

Critics said Wright’s comments understated the role that wind and solar power played during the storm, adding that the administration’s orders over the past nine months to keep some oil and coal-fired plants open past their planned retirement dates could cost U.S. utility customers billions of dollars over the next few years.

In the lead-up to the storm and cold temperatures, Wright also excused utilities from pollution limits on fossil fuel-fired plants and ordered that backup generators at data centers and other large facilities be available to grid operators and utilities to supply emergency power.

Trump administration’s ‘way of doing business’

Deputy Energy Secretary James Danly drew a contrast with the grid performance during a similar severe storm in 2021, calling the Trump administration’s approach a “new way of doing business” during power emergencies.

“The bottom line here is that we managed to ensure that there was sufficient capacity,” Danly said. “Not one area had a blackout or a forced outage due to loss of capacity.”

There were nearly 1 million outages during the storm’s peak, but most were not long-lasting, Danly said. Nearly 55,000 customers were without power as of Friday, including more than 17,000 in Mississippi and 7,000 in Texas, according to the outage tracking website poweroutage.us.

Wright cited statistics showing that natural gas — long the nation’s leading source of electricity — provided 43% of electric power at peak generation during the storm, followed by coal at 24% and nuclear at 15%. Renewables such as wind, solar and hydropower provided a combined 14%, Wright said.

Wright and President Donald Trump have frequently made the case for their fossil fuel-friendly orders, blaming the Biden administration and Democratic-leaning states for policies they say threaten the reliability of the nation’s electric grid and drive up electricity bills.

The proportion of coal and natural gas power rose substantially during the storm, while the proportion of wind power used during the storm dropped by 40%, Wright said. Solar stayed flat at a fraction of the amount of coal and natural gas power.

Wright dismissed solar as “meaningless” during a severe storm in certain regions and said, “It’s not an all-weather power source.”

Pushback on orders to keep coal plants running

Some state and utility officials have chafed at Wright’s orders to keep plants operating, saying they’re not necessary for emergency power and are simply raising electric bills for regular ratepayers to keep relatively expensive plants operating.

Preventing the nation’s coal plants from retiring over the next three years could cost consumers at least $3 billion per year, according to a report from Grid Strategies, a consulting firm.

“A lot of these plants were retiring because they’re no longer economic to operate,” said Michael Goggin, an executive vice president at Grid Strategies. “It’s expensive to keep them going.”

Opponents have challenged the coal orders in court, arguing that Congress intended for emergency powers to be used only in rare, temporary cases.

The nonprofit owners of the Craig Generating Station in Colorado, the Tri-State Generation and Transmission Association and Platte River Power Authority, last week filed a protest with the Energy Department seeking to reverse Wright’s order to keep its Unit 1 operating. The Dec. 30 order came one day before it was to shut down.

In its request for a rehearing, the nonprofits said its members and communities were unfairly being forced to pay to keep a costly and unreliable plant operating and that the department didn’t even comply with the law requiring it to show why this was the best alternative. They also said the department’s order unfairly punished them for the mistakes of other utilities.

Wright brushed off the criticism, saying there would be “far larger costs from blackouts.”

Solar and wind said to save consumers ‘billions’

Clean energy advocates said that renewable sources saved consumers billions during the storm and helped ensure the lights stayed on, especially in regions that have significant investments in wind, solar, and energy storage.

In Texas, wind, solar and storage provided about 25% of power for the grid’s 27 million customers — a major increase over 2021 and a key reason blackouts were largely avoided, said John Hensley, a senior vice president at the American Clean Power Association, an industry group.

Wind and solar also accounted for significant power in the Midwest and Southwest, Hensley said. In the mid-Atlantic region served by grid operator PJM, only 5% of power came from wind and solar generation, a fact Hensley blamed on lack of investment in renewables in the region, as well as hostility by the Trump administration to new wind and solar power.

Blaming renewables for not performing during the storm “is like trying to blame someone on the bench for losing the game,” Hensley said. “They didn’t get a chance” to play.

CAPE TOWN, South Africa (AP) — China and South Africa signed a framework agreement for a new trade deal on Friday as Africa’s leading economy looks to other options following the high import tariffs imposed on it by the U.S. and its diplomatic fallout with the Trump administration.

South Africa’s Ministry of Trade and Industry said the agreement would start negotiations over a deal that would give some South African goods, such as fruit, duty-free access to the Chinese market. The ministry said it expected the trade deal to be finalized by the end of March.

In return, the trade ministry said China will get enhanced investment opportunities in South Africa, where its car sales have seen rapid growth.

The U.S. slapped 30% duties on some South African goods under U.S. President Donald Trump’s reciprocal tariffs policy — one of the higher rates applied across the world. South Africa has said it is still negotiating with the U.S. for a better deal.

The China-South Africa deal follows others looking for alternatives to U.S. partnership in the face of Trump’s aggressive trade policies.

The announcement on the negotiations between China and South Africa came days after Trump issued a short-term renewal of a longstanding free-trade agreement between the U.S. and African nations. The U.S. extended the African Growth and Opportunity Act, which South Africa is a major beneficiary of, just until the end of the year and indicated it would be modified to fit the administration’s America First policy.

China is already South Africa’s largest trade partner for both imports and exports, while Chinese economic influence across the African continent continues to grow and it dominates in the extraction of Africa’s critical minerals that are key components for new high-tech products.

“South Africa looks forward to working with China in a friendly, pragmatic and flexible manner,” the trade ministry said.

Trade and Industry Minister Parks Tau, who traveled to China to sign the agreement, said the deal would benefit South Africa’s mining, agriculture, renewable energy and technology sectors.

U.S.-South Africa diplomatic ties have plunged to their worst point in decades after the Trump administration accused South Africa of pursuing an anti-American foreign policy and allowing the violent persecution of a white minority group at home. South Africa’s government has denied allegations that white Afrikaner farmers are being killed in a widespread effort to seize their land as baseless.

Trump has also barred South Africa from taking part in meetings of the Group of 20 rich and developing nations this year in the U.S.

South Africa’s biggest exports to China are gold, iron ore and platinum-group metals, while Chinese cars have quickly grown their market share in South Africa. Industry groups estimate Chinese brands have grown from around 2.8% of the South African market in 2020 to between 11% and 15% last year.

China’s BYD overtook Elon Musk’s Tesla in 2025 as the world’s biggest electric vehicle maker.

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AP Africa news: https://apnews.com/hub/africa

WASHINGTON (AP) — A hearing about oversight of the U.S. financial system devolved into insults several times Wednesday as Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent clashed with Democratic lawmakers over fiscal policy, the business dealings of the Trump family and other issues.

Appearances by treasury secretaries on Capitol Hill are more typically known for staid exchanges over economic policy than for political theater, but Wednesday’s hearing of the House Financial Services Committee hearing featured several fiery exchanges between the Republican Cabinet member and Democrats, with Bessent even lobbing insults back to the lawmakers.

Bessent called Rep. Sylvia Garcia “confused” when she questioned how undocumented immigrants could affect housing affordability across the country, prompting the Texas Democrat to snap back, “Don’t be demeaning to me, alright?”

Bessent later mocked a question from Rep. Stephen Lynch, D-Mass., about shuttered investigations into cryptocurrency firms. Lynch expressed frustration with Bessent’s interruptions, saying, “Mister Chairman, the answers have to be responsive if we are going to have a serious hearing.”

Bessent replied, “Well, the questions have to be serious.”

After a back-and-forth over whether tariffs cause inflation or one-time price increases for consumers, California Democratic Rep. Maxine Waters asked committee leaders to intervene with Bessent: “Can someone shut him up?”

And in a fiery exchange with Rep. Gregory Meeks over the Abu Dhabi royal family’s investment into the Trump family’s World Liberty Financial cryptocurrency firm last year, the New York Democrat dropped an F-bomb as he shouted at Bessent: “Stop covering for the president! Stop being a flunky!”

The Treasury Department did not immediately respond to a request for comment on the fireworks.

Bessent’s performance was “not a role you typically see a treasury secretary play,” said Graham Steele, a former assistant secretary for financial institutions under Biden-era Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen. The department has traditionally “been removed from some of the day-to-day, hand-to-hand political combat,” Steele said in an interview.

He recalled his former boss having tense exchanges over climate change and policy issues with Republican lawmakers during committee hearings, but the exchanges were not personal, he said, noting treasury secretaries have to strike a “delicate balance” of working with the White House while safeguarding the “economic stature” of the country internationally.

In recent months, Bessent has ratcheted up his insults when it comes to Democratic leaders.

He has called California Gov. Gavin Newsom “economically illiterate,” compared him to the fictional serial killer Patrick Bateman, and called him “a brontosaurus with a brain the size of a walnut.” He has on several occasions called Massachusetts Sen. Elizabeth Warren an “American Peronist” after she told American financial institutions not to finance the Trump administration’s massive support package for Argentina.

Bessent’s combativeness is, in part, a sign of the times, said David Lublin, chair of the Department of Government at American University’s School of Public Affairs.

“President Trump has shown he likes belligerence and he likes nominees and others who defend him vociferously,” Lublin told The Associated Press.

“It’s hard to say that this is unusual for this political environment. What used to be the normal modicum of respect for Congress has frayed to the point of vanishing,” Lublin said.

What was unusual, in Lublin’s view, was for Bessent to reveal his thoughts on monetary policy — normally the purview of the Federal Reserve — and his insistence that Trump has the right to interfere with the decision-making of the central bank. “You have a cabinet secretary defending the president’s efforts to erode institutions,” Lublin said.

On Thursday, Bessent will get another opportunity to spar with lawmakers. He is scheduled to appear before the Senate Banking, Housing and Urban Affairs Committee on the same topic: the annual report by the Financial Stability Oversight Council, which Bessent leads.