Meter Reading: Watch Out, Coal; Austin Gets Oily; and More

Photo by KENZO TRIBOUILLARD/AFP/Getty Images

Panels of a photovoltaic power station installed on the roof of a building in the new Clichy-Batignolles district in Paris.

A new report says renewables will continue to rise, Austin is becoming more attractive to the oil and gas industry, and why trees fall so easily in a storm. All in this morning’s meter reading:

• Here Comes the Sun: Bloomberg looks at a new report from the International Energy Agency that predicts renewable energy will be on par with coal power in just a few decades. “Wind farms, solar parks and hydroelectric dams are forecast to become the second biggest power generator in 2015 and rise to almost a third of all generation in 2035, a level approaching that of coal,” they write.
• Keep Austin Oiled: In the Texas Tribune, Kate Galbraith writes about how Austin is becoming a destination for the oil and gas industry. “Despite its “Keep Austin Weird” slogan and passion for clean energy,” Galbraith writes, “Austin is increasingly attracting oil and gas companies like Three Rivers, a small firm founded in 2009 that focuses on oil development in West Texas and New Mexico, aided by the high oil prices of recent years. Austin’s oil industry, about 4,000 workers strong, is still dwarfed by Houston and Dallas. But the city’s entrepreneurial bent and reputation as an attractive place to live, along with the top-tier petroleum engineering program at UT, have trumped the fact that Austin is far from the oilfields.”
• If a Tree Falls … The Scientific American wonders why storms knock trees down so easily, and talks to a few experts for answers. They’re not comforting: “The first thing to know is that all trees have the potential to fail at some level of force from wind, snow, ice, either singly or in combination,” one expert tells them.
• Pipelines, Trains and Automobiles: This will be of interest to the ongoing debate on eminent domain and energy development in Texas. The Calgary Herald reports that as some companies in Canada are being squeezed to find land for their pipelines and face delays on projects like the Keystone XL, they’re opting to ship their oil by rail instead. “Railways have been carrying oil for a century and were the only way to move crude before major pipelines were developed beginning in the 1940s,” they write. “But the rail option isn’t cheap and wasn’t viable until two things changed.”