In what will be welcome news to environmental groups, on Tuesday the Texas grid gave the green light to Luminant to idle two units at their Monticello coal power plant and lignite mine in Northeast Texas for the winter.
Photo by SAUL LOEB/AFP/Getty Images
Smoke stacks at American Electric Power's (AEP) Mountaineer coal power plant in New Haven, West Virginia, October 30, 2009.
Earlier this fall, the Electric Reliability Council of Texas (ERCOT), which runs the grid, announced they would review Luminant’s request to idle the units from December until June. Luminant wants to mothball them over the winter because they say they aren’t making enough money to keep them running.
The company had threatened to shut the same coal units down last year because of an impending Environmental Protection Agency rule. When that rule was remanded, Luminant said they would mothball the units  — which are nearly forty years old — for half the year because they aren’t profitable.
“With power prices very low, those two units are not economical to run during these low demand seasons,” Allan Koenig, vice president of communications for Energy Future Holdings, the parent company for Luminant, told us earlier this month. Energy Future Holdings is currently in a financial bind — a recent Bloomberg News analysis declared the company “technically insolvent.” The last seven quarters have seen consecutive losses for the company. Continue Reading →
Photo courtesy of JeffGunn via flickr's creative commons. http://www.flickr.com/photos/jeffgunn/
Lawmakers in the upcoming legislative session will be debating ways to fund a water plan that some think is not enough.
When it comes to the cost of the looming water crisis in Texas, the State Water Development Board is ready with some helpful numbers. They are generally big ones.
If the state does nothing to cope with its booming population and dwindling water supply, Texas businesses will lose $116 billion over the next 50 years. The state as a whole will lose more than 1 million jobs.
$53 billion is the price tag of the plan that the Board thinks will avert those losses and assure water security into this century. But the state has never funded the plan.
A man pushes a woman and a dog in a boat a boat after their neighborhood experienced flooding due to Hurricane Sandy, on October 30, 2012, in Little Ferry, New Jersey.
“We can never say one specific event is because of climate change, but what we can say is that climate change has altered the background conditions over which these events occur,” Hayhoe tells us. A hurricane at this time of year, for instance, isn’t highly unusual. She says it happens about once every ten years.
“But what is unusual about Sandy is the size, the strength, and the pathway or trajectory it followed,” Hayhoe says. The first, and most obvious, climate change factor that exacerbated Sandy was a rise in sea levels:
Sea Level Rise: Hayhoe says that on average, sea levels have gone up about seven inches in the last hundred years in the U.S. because of climate change. “So when any hurricane occurs, you now have an extra seven inches of height on the storm surges,” Hayhoe says. That can flood an otherwise safe street, or topple a sea wall or levee that would normally hold. Continue Reading →
A young boy runs along Rockaway Beach as Hurricane Sandy begins to affect the area on October 29, 2012 in the Queens borough of New York City.
In this handout image supplied by the US Coast Guard, The HMS Bounty, a 180-foot sailboat, is submerged in the Atlantic Ocean during Hurricane Sandy approximately 90 miles southeast of Hatteras, North Carolina, on October 29, 2012. Of the 16-person crew, the Coast Guard rescued 14, recovered a woman who was later pronounced dead and are searching for the captain. The HMS Bounty was built for the 1962 film Mutiny On The Bounty and was also used in Pirates Of The Caribbean.
A couple walks in the rain as a darkened Manhattan is viewed after much of the city lost electricity due to the affects of Hurricane Sandy on October 30, 2012 in New York, United States.
In this handout GOES satellite image provided by NASA, Hurricane Sandy, pictured at 1240 UTC, churns off the east coast on October 29, 2012 in the Atlantic Ocean.
The Empire State Building towers in the background of an apartment buliding in Chelsea, New York City, with the facade broken off October 30, 2012 the morning after Hurricane Sandy.
Waves break next to an apartment building which flooded from Hurricane Sandy on October 30, 2012 in Atlantic City, New Jersey.
Water floods the Plaza Shops in the wake of Hurricane Sandy, on October 30, 2012 in Manhattan, New York.
Heavy surf caused by Hurricane Sandy buckles Ocean Ave on October 30, 2012 in Avalon, New Jersey.
A flooded Brooklyn Battery park Tunnel October 30, 2012 as New Yorkers clean up the morning after Hurricane Sandy’s landfall.
Rising water, caused by Hurricane Sandy, rushes into a subterranian parking garage on October 29, 2012, in the Financial District of New York, United States.
Ocean Avenue is flooded caused by Hurricane Sandy, on October 29, 2012 in Cape May, The New Jersey coastline is feeling the full force of Sandy’s heavy winds and record floodwaters.
A photographer shoots waves generated from the remnants Hurricane Sandy as they crash into the shoreline of Lake Michigan on October 30, 2012 in Chicago, Illinois. Waves up to 25 feet high generated by winds up to 50 miles-per-hour were expected on the lake.
A newspaper cabinet is washed up on Ocean Ave., on October 30, 2012 in Cape May, New Jersey.
Some six million people were without power this morning because of Hurricane Sandy, and at least 33 are dead, many of them killed by falling trees. Travel and transportation has largely come to a standstill in many areas of the Northeast. In the photos above, you can see the impact of one of the most destructive storms in the area’s history.
And while the storm’s physical damage is limited to the East, that doesn’t mean it hasn’t been felt here in Texas. Many flights have been canceled at Texas airports. And several Texas utilities are sending staff East to help restore power in areas affected by Sandy.
Some thirty tree-trimming and eight distribution contractors from Austin Energy are headed Northeast to help, as are crews from Entergy, Oncor, and CenterPoint. AEP Texas is sending 81 employees to West Virginia to help AEP crews there restore power, and has released an additional 38 contact crews to help as well. And San Antonio’s CPS energy has a convoy of some 50 workers headed out to assist in restoring power in the Northeast.
Thousands of new drilling sites mean a surge in record keeping for the state's regulators
With fracking and improved technology, oil and gas drilling is surging in parts of Texas. But the  Railroad Commission  of Texas (RRC) that regulates the industry has computers that can’t keep up.
“We have a lot of technology in our industry and the agency that oversees us needs to be up to par with us,” says Deb Hastings, Executive Vice President of the Texas Oil and Gas Association.
But it isn’t. Just ask one of the agency’s three elected commissioners, like David Porter.
“Quite frankly, that’s the biggest problem we’ve got at the Railroad Commission is our IT system,” Porter said at a conference in San Antonio recently. “And we’re probably stuck somewhere in the mid 90s as far as technology and software is concerned. Its not acceptable, we’ve got to improve that.” Continue Reading →
People stand on the beach watching the heavy surf caused by the approaching Hurricane Sandy, on October 28, 2012 in Cape May, New Jersey. Hurricane Sandy is expected to hit the New Jersey coastline sometime on Monday bringing heavy winds and floodwaters.
A sign on dispay in Grand Central Station in New York October 28, 2012 as the MTA has been began an orderly shutdown of commuter rail and subway service in preparation for Hurricane Sandy .
In this handout GOES satellite image provided by NASA, Hurricane Sandy, pictured at 1410 UTC, churns off the east coast on October 28, 2012 in the Atlantic Ocean.
The North Shore Community Church displays a sign alluding to Hurricane Sandy on October 28, 2012 in Oyster Bay, New York.
A man walks on the boardwalk ahead of Hurricane Sandy on October 28, 2012 in Atlantic City, New Jersey. Governor Chris Christie?s emergency declaration is shutting down the city?s casinos and 30,000 residents are being told to evacuate. (
A boarded-up store remains open for business as the first signs of Hurricane Sandy approach on October 28, 2012 in Fairfield, Connecticut. The storm, which could affect tens of millions of people in the eastern third of the U.S., is expected to bring days of rain, high winds and possibly heavy snow in parts of Ohio and West Virginia.
nly a few bread items remain on the shelves at the Waldbaums grocery store as Hurricane Sandy approaches on October 28, 2012 in Long Beach, New York.
A man carrys a case of water down Lexington Avenue in midtown in New York October 28, 2012 as stores begin to close down in preparation for Hurricane Sandy .
A loader makes a sand barrier on the beach to help stop storm surge from approaching hurricane Sandy, on October 28, 2012 in Cape May, New Jersey. Hurricane Sandy is expected to hit the New Jersey coastline sometime on Monday bringing heavy winds and floodwaters.
A sign reads “Danger Ocean Closed” at the entrance to the beach, due to approaching Hurricane Sandy, on October 28, 2012 in Ocean City, New Jersey.
As Hurricane Sandy cuts a path of destruction through the eastern states, many are wondering about the science behind this ‘Frankenstorm’ and whether it has any clear connection to global climate change.
“There is a hierarchy of weather events which scientists feel they understand well enough for establishing climate change links,” Frank writes. “Global temperature rises and extreme heat rank high on that list, but Hurricanes rank low.” That being said, Frank write that warmer ocean temperatures do lead to more evaporation, “and that likely leads to storms with more and more dangerous rainfall of the kind we saw with Hurricane Irene last year.”
In situations like Sandy, climate scientists will often use an analogy: climate change is like putting expected extreme weather events on steroids. These scientists say that while it’s difficult to immediately attribute specific events to climate change (though not impossible, according to Frank), it is possible to say that many of these events are made worse by it.
Dr. Jay Famiglietti says groundwater in parts of Texas is depleting "at a pretty rapid clip."
The myriad issues of water and drought in Texas are often confusing. There’s the hundreds of pages in the Texas Water Plan, numerous surface water districts, and then the completely different set of rules that applies to water underground.
Trying to sort through that confusion is Dr. Jay Famiglietti, a professor at UC Irvine. He and a team of scientists, including researchers at the University of Texas at Austin, use satellites and computer models to track freshwater availability.
“I wish I could say the outlook was super-positive, but there are some real hot spots,” Famiglietti says. “Groundwater is depleting at a pretty rapid clip” in parts of Texas, and the state’s population will only continue to grow. Dr. Famiglietti will speak tonight at UT’s Environmental Sciences Institute, part of their ‘Hot Science: Cool Talk‘ series (all the info is here, it’s free and open to the public). We sat down with him to learn more about what’s happening to Texas’ water supplies, and why cultural changes may be necessary for the state’s survival.
Q: We’ve spent a lot of time looking at the drought, and when we came across this monitoring system of groundwater, it was fascinating.  You’re essentially looking from space at what’s happening with water underground. Can you explain to us how it works?
A: Yeah, it’s pretty amazing stuff. So really GRACE (Gravity Recovery and Climate Experiment) isn’t sensing water. What it’s measuring is mass. It’s a satellite that was designed to measure earth’s gravity field and how that changes over time.
So anything that has mass, exerts a gravitational attraction. So if you’re over the mountains say, compared to the plains, you’re going to have a stronger gravitational attraction over the mountains compared to a flatter region with less mass.
The way that relates to water is, the gravitational field actually changes over time. If you think about Texas, a dry Texas with no water, and then imagine covering Texas with a foot of water, it’s going to be much heavier. Water is super heavy. Continue Reading →
The dove that flew into Ryan Adams' house was both a blessing and a curse.
The Texas Parks and Wildlife Department has been receiving hate mail from around the country thanks to the gastronomic adventures of an Austin-area food blogger. It all started when the man’s unlikely dinner literally went bump in the night.
Ryan Adams was watching Project Runway with his wife when it happened.
“All of a sudden there was this loud BAM!” Adams remembers, “And we realized it came from outside.”
He walked into his backyard and saw something lying in the grass by his house.
“It was very dark,” he says. At first he thought it might be a bat.
“It was actually laying right here next to the fig tree,” Adams says, pointing to the location of the animal’s demise. “I came over [and] picked it up. It was just a dove. It didn’t have any sores, any lesions, it was perfectly fine.”
That’s when the thought dawned on him. Eat the bird. Continue Reading →
Higher limits for wholesale power prices were approved by the Public Utility Commission today.
The Public Utility Commission of Texas, which oversees electricity in the state, voted today to raise the limit on how much power providers can charge.
That price – known as the offer cap – happens when the grid gets stretched to capacity. It’s essentially the maximum amount companies can charge for wholesale power. Today the commission tripled the cap from its level of $3,000 earlier in the year to $9,000. (Earlier this summer the commission increased the offer cap to $4,500.)
The hope is that higher profits for generators will result in new power plants. The Texas grid is predicted to fall below its target level of power reserves in a few years, and with low profits for power plants right now, new plants just aren’t being built in Texas’ private, energy-only market.
Some consumer and trade groups are opposed to the change, as it isn’t clear what kind of impact the higher wholesale prices could have on residential customers. The Texas Industrial Energy Consumer group said in a memo to the commission that if the $9,000 price caps were in place during the long, hot year of 2011, it would have added 80 percent to wholesale power prices, an overall increase of $13.3 to $14 billion.
Water rates are rising across rural Texas, say consumer advocates.
The face of the rural Texas water provider is changing. Jim Boyle, a lawyer with the group Texas Rate Payers United, says years ago most water companies were mom and pop operations, owned by families within the communities they served. Then the great roll-up began.
“We have three or four companies that have come into Texas, one from California, one from Pennsylvania,” he recently told the Texas House Committee on County Affairs. “They’ve come to Texas and they’ve bought hundred of subdivisions systems.”
But it’s not the consolidation that ‘s the problem. According to Boyle, it’s what happens afterwards. He says the companies are raising water rates across the state. When rural customers from unincorporated parts of Texas try to challenge the rate hikes before the Texas Commission on Environmental Quality, they’re faced with nearly insurmountable financial roadblocks.
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