Terrence Henry reports on energy and the environment for StateImpact Texas. His radio, print and television work has appeared in the New York Times, The Washington Post, The Atlantic, NPR, The Texas Tribune, The History Channel and other outlets.
He has previously worked at The Washington Post and The Atlantic. He earned a Bachelorâs Degree in International Relations from Brigham Young University.
Tonight presidential candidate Mitt Romney will face incumbent President Barack Obama in the second of three debates in a tight race for an election just weeks away. Energy has been more of an issue in this election than recent presidential contests, with the candidates squaring off on coal, green jobs and climate change.
Today a new nationwide poll of over two thousand people by the University of Texas at Austin provides a glimpse into what voters feel about the policies of both candidates. And the results show a preference for the current president’s policies.
“Overall, 37 percent of respondents say Obamaâs platform is best for the country, while 28 percent favor Romneyâs views on energy,” says the new poll. “More than a third of those surveyed (35 percent) are not sure whose energy policies they prefer or are undecided.”
Sheril Kirshenbaum, director of the University of Texas at Austin Energy Poll, says in a statement that while the economy is a big issue this election, “two out of three consumers say energy issues are important to them,â she says. âSupport for increased production of domestic energy supplies remains strong, and weâre also seeing a lot of interest in the promotion of alternative forms of energy and energy-saving technologies that crosses party lines.â
And climate change is becoming more of an issue as well. Here’s what the poll found: Continue Reading →
From January to September the U.S. had the warmest first nine months of the year in its history, according to the latest ‘State of the Climate‘ report from the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA). And there have been numerous other anomalies in the climate as of late, the report says.
“The average combined global land and ocean surface temperature for September 2012 tied with 2005 as the warmest September on record, at 0.67°C (1.21°F) above the 20th century average of 15.6°C (60.1°F),” the report says. The records go back to 1880.
There are some other happenings in the earth’s climate that may interest you, like the fact that Japan saw record warmth, while the U.K was cooler than normal. You can read about them all over at the NOAA.
Pipe is stacked at the southern site of the Keystone XL pipeline on March 22, 2012 in Cushing, Oklahoma.
Two reporters for The New York Times were detained Wednesday while covering protesters at the construction of the Keystone XL pipeline in Wood County in East Texas. The two reporters, Dan Frosch and Brandon Thibodeaux, who identified themselves as members of the media, were handcuffed by a pipeline company security guard and a local police officer. After ten minutes, the two were released, but told they had to leave the property or face arrest. They were on private property at the time at the invitation of the landowner.
When the incident first came to our attention, we emailed several questions to TransCanada, the company behind the Keystone XL pipeline. They sent a statement to the media (which you can read after the jump) that failed to address our questions, but promised they would get to them. After 24 hours, we now have some answers. And, inevitably, more questions.
TransCanada says the two Times reporters were in the pipeline’s right of way at the time of the arrest, and that they were detained by an off-duty police officer contracted to provide security for the pipeline construction. Continue Reading →
UPDATE: The latest on this story can be found here.
The massive (and controversial) Keystone XL pipeline, which will take heavy crude harvested from oil sand pits in Canada to refineries on the Gulf Coast, is currently under construction. And it’s also under protest.
For weeks, protesters have chained themselves to tractors and fences in attempts to halt construction of the pipeline. Some have camped out in trees in the pipeline’s path. And several private landowners have protested the pipeline’s construction as well. Landowner Eleanor Fairchild was arrested this week on her own property for trespsassing as she and actress Daryl Hannah attempted to stop a bulldozer clearing a path for the pipeline. You can watch their protest in the video above.
Joining the ranks Wednesday were two reporters covering the protests for TheNew York Times. Reporter Dan Frosch and an unnamed photographer accompanying him were covering a protest on private land yesterday when they were handcuffed and detained by a security guard for TransCanada (the Canadian company behind the pipeline) and local police.
The reporters were on the private land at the invitation of the landowner, but were detained for trespassing, according to a spokesperson for the newspaper. After identifying themselves as members of the media, they were released, but told they had to leave the property immediately or they’d be arrested for trespassing. Continue Reading →
As Texas moves away from coal and towards natural gas for its power plants, it stands to save billions of gallons of water in the process, according to a new study by the University of Texas at Austin’s Webber Energy Group. And in planning for the future, switching to gas will save even more. You can see a video version of the report above.
âItâs not realistic to switch our power plants today to something else, but as a state we are considering what our power mix will be over the next few decades, because many of the things we built three or four decades ago are up for retirement or a retrofit to be maintained for a longer lifetime,â Michael Webber, a professor of Mechanical Engineering that leads the group, tells KUT. âAnd as we contemplate those decisions, itâs worth keeping the water impact in mind.â Â Natural gas uses less coal even if you account of the water needed to drill via hydraulic fracturing, or “fracking,” for the gas.
The authors of the study posit that for the year 2007, if Texas’ coal power plants had been natural gas ones instead, it would have saved enough water for a million Texan households for a year.
âSince then, weâve been off to the races,â says Warren Lasher, the Texas gridâs system planner. He appeared on a panel on solar and wind development in Texas at the SXSW Eco conference last week. Now there are about 6,500 wind turbines in Texas. Youâll mostly find them in the panhandle, and some on the coast. Texas is the biggest wind energy state in the country, and one of the largest wind energy producers in the world, with more wind capacity than France, Italy or Great Britain, as of the beginning of this year. (A federal tax credit â now being lambasted by some state officials and power companies â also helped.)
Most of that wind is in the panhandle, the incubator for Texasâ experiment with renewables. It can get quite gusty there. âThe trees kind of tilt to the side up there,â Lasher joked. âAnd now transmission lines do, too.â* Theyâre designed to change direction with the wind (as it inevitably does), which reduces stress from torque on the turbine, resulting in less maintenance.
But while thereâs plenty of wind â and now plenty of turbines â in the panhandle, there arenât that many people. 85 percent of the stateâs population now lives in cities, and that number is growing. Continue Reading →
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 →
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 →
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Tonight presidential candidate Mitt Romney will face incumbent President Barack Obama in the second of three debates in a tight race for an election just weeks away. Energy has been more of an issue in this election than recent presidential contests, with the candidates squaring off on coal, green jobs and climate change.
