Photo courtesy of A. Seigel www.flickr.com/photos/a_siegel/
AC use is a big driver in electricity usage during the summer in Texas.
I’m as annoyed as the next guy by reductionist cliches about about our state. But sometimes they feel so good, like air conditioning on a hot Texas summer day.
Air conditioning. It’s as Texas as cowboy hats and high school football. But, as we noted ast week, it’s also partially responsible for Texas’ impending electricity shortage. And in other parts of the world, its use is highly regulated to save power. That’s something Texans should consider as they tackle the state’s energy challenges, says Mincheul Kwon, a South Korean journalist visiting Austin from Seoul.
“In South Korea the government regulates indoor temperature in summer,” Kwon says in a report for KUT Austin. “Large commercial and office buildings must maintain a temperature of 79 degrees Fahrenheit or 26 degrees centigrade.”
The radioactive rod can be harmful if you experience prolonged exposure to it, the government says.
A radioactive rod belonging to Halliburton has finally been found.
The, rod, which had been missing since September 11, is used for hydraulic fracturing, aka fracking, to find the best areas of rock to break up and drill for oil and gas. As we reported a few weeks ago, the rod contained americium-241/beryllium, or Am-241, classified as a âCategory 3âČ source of radiation by the Nuclear Regulatory Commission. It’s dangerous if you’re exposed to it for prolonged periods.
The rod was lost by a three-man team of Halliburton oilfield workers. They had searched for weeks for it. Halliburton even turned to the National Guard for help. Teams searched an area of 130 square miles between the well site in Pecos and Odessa.
Weeks went by, and nothing. Then late Thursday night, the rod turned up. Continue Reading →
With the Texas drought, we experience swings: one week the drought monitor map looks good. Another it looks bad. This week, file it under the “good column.”
In case you missed it, Texas got some rain recently. All of Texas. “Practically the entire state got at least one inch of rain during the last week of September to Oct. 1,” the Texas A&M Agrilife Extension says in their latest crop and weather report, “with many regions getting as much as nine inches, according to the National Weather Service.”
And the results show. The latest US drought monitor map has only three percent of the state in the worst stage of drought, with nearly seventeen percent of Texas completely drought-free. A year ago this week, over 86 percent of the state was in the worst stage of drought. Continue Reading →
Crude oil from South Texas is loaded into tank cars bound for refineries on the Gulf Coast
So much crude oil is being produced in Texas and North Dakota that within the next couple of years, refineries on the Gulf Coast may no longer need to import any light crude. In fact, according to industry researchers, there may be so much light crude that the Gulf Coast could start experiencing the same bottleneck dilemma as the oil storage hub in Cushing, Oklahoma.
“We’re dubbing this region the ‘Cushing Coast’. We see a region in super-abundance of crude oil but with a real lack of pipeline capacity out and beyond the region,” says Greg Haas, research manager at Hart Energy, an oil industry publisher in Houston.
“We have this regional glut of crude cascading from Cushing, the inland areas, all hitting the shore,” says Haas. Continue Reading →
Abandoned coal company structures are seen on April 16, 2012 in Lynch, Kentucky. The historic coal mining town of Lynch once boasted a population of more than 10,000 and was once the largest coal camp in the world.
Looks like the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) isn’t taking “remanded” for an answer. Today the agency is asking a court to review an August decision that turned down an EPA rule aimed at reducing pollution from coal power plants across state lines, called the Cross State Air Pollution Rule.
In a filing with the DC Court of Appeals, the EPA asked for a “Petition for Rehearing En Banc.” We don’t know what that is, so we googled it. And it turns out it’s significant. En Banc is French for “by the full court.”
The original ruling in August was made by a three-judge panel of the appeals court. They voted along party lines, essentially — two Republican appointees for turning the rule down, one Democratic appointee for approving the proposed EPA rule. By asking for En Banc, the EPA wants to have the entire Court of Appeals (composed of eight judges, five of them Republican and three of them Democratic appointees) review the case. Continue Reading →
A family passes by one of the stands promoting green energy at the Climate Village in Cancun, Mexico, on December 4, 2010.
Scott Storment has a story he likes to tell about doing green business in Mexico.
“My first wind project [in Mexico] was outside of Monterrey,” Storment recalled Thursday at a panel on U.S.-Mexico border issues at the SXSW Eco conference. He has worked on energy projects along the U.S.-Mexico border for 20 years. His latest venture, Green Hub Advisors, focuses on renewable energy development in the region. To install that first wind turbine, Storment’s group had hired a professor from the Monterrey Institute of Technology. “He told us it was really difficult to set up,” Storment said, “so we took him out there.”
After off-roading for a while they got to the turbine. “And the only way they got the tower there was because the gentleman who owned the land was a narco-trafficker,” Storment said. “Typically, he didnât let people on his land, but he was a big fan of wind. He told us, ‘If you do do this, I want to buy wind energy.'”
Storment likes to use that story to illustrate the nuances of energy development along the border. While the region might be ripe for renewable energy projects, there are plenty of challenges as well. Continue Reading →
Warning were attached to bikes locked up outside SXSW Eco today, saying the bikes could be impounded.
South By Southwest Eco is Austin’s premiere sustainability conference, so it’s probably no surprise that you’ll find a lot of bike riders there. The conference even has a folding bike rental option.
But this morning there were so many cyclists parking at the entrance to the AT&T Conference Center, where the event is held, that every nearby signpost appeared to be taken. (There are no bike racks at the Center, or even within a few blocks, according to University of Texas’Â bike rack map.)
So, with nothing apparent to indicate they shouldn’t, cyclists (this reporter included) started locking up on the railings leading to the entrance.
And this week comes a story about how a University of Houston energy professor’s lavish lifestyle, buying thousands of dollars worth of luxury pens and stays at five-star hotels.
Professor of Physics Arthur B. Weglein‘s extravagant spending was exclusively reported by KHOU 11 Houston Tuesday. What did they find? Hotel stays at five-star properties like the Four Seasons and Fairmont, over $500 a night. Luxury car rentals of $180 a day, for riding around in Audis and Land Rovers. And over $26,000 expensed for dinners and booze at the Brazilian restaurant chain Fogo De Chao. Then there are the Mont Blanc luxury pens: $500 a pop, with $8,000 worth purchased over the years. All expensed to the University.
The professor’s excuse? Because his research receives funds from the oil and gas industry, he’s earned it. Continue Reading →
Smart thermostats like the Nest can give you more information about how you use energy, which could help reduce the strain on the Texas grid.
Epiphanies can come at the strangest times. Take the case of Michael Legatt.
Back in 2003 Legatt was in New York doing his laundry. He had loaded three washers, two dryers and was just getting ready to put the last quarter in the machine when all of the sudden the lights went out.
He figured he had tripped something by doing too much laundry at once. But it turned out he was just one of millions of people suddenly without power during the massive 2003 Northeast blackout, which affected 55 million people and took eleven lives.
“From the human side of things, we had a loss of what we call situational awareness,” Legatt says. A well-placed squirrel and a well-placed tree, among other factors, had suddenly plunged the most populous area of the country into darkness.
The fact that Legatt was doing his laundry wouldnât mean much except for one thing: he is now the “Human Factors Engineer,” for the Electric Reliability Council of Texas (ERCOT), which manages the Texas grid. He focuses on how Texans use energy and interact with the grid.
Professor Michael Mann is the Director of the Earth System Science Center at Penn State University and author of the famous "hockey stick" graph.
In 2010 Dr. Michael Mann, already world-renowned (and, in some corners, infamous) for linking global warming to CO2 emissions, published an editorial in the Washington Post.
Mann had recently seen many of his emails hacked and leaked in an unsuccessful attempt to discredit his work. He was also facing a lawsuit (also, ultimately, unsuccessful) by climate change skeptic Virginia Attorney General Ken Cuccinelli. The editorial Mann wrote was aimed at his critics, but it also served as a summary of his own findings and of the scientific consensus on climate change.
“Overloading the atmosphere with carbon dioxide from burning fossil fuels is heating the planet, shrinking the Arctic ice cap, melting glaciers and raising sea levels,” he wrote. “It is leading to more widespread drought, more frequent heat waves and more powerful hurricanes.”
Two years later, in the lead up to this week’s SXSW Eco Conference, we had the chance to ask Mann what, if anything, has changed.
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