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 Bachelor’s Degree in International Relations from Brigham Young University.
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 wouldn’t 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.
Ah, manmade earthquakes. Something that certainly seems feasible, but just not right.
There’s been a spate of quakes in the Dallas-Fort Worth area over the last few years, scientifically linked by geologists to wells used for disposing of fracking fluids. The two latest quakes hit Dallas Saturday night, followed by a minor one Sunday evening. While damage from these quakes has been minimal (in many cases, nonexistent), they’re certainly getting folks attention.
A coal plant may have to stay running this winter.
Update: On October 30, ERCOT announced that they will not need to keep the coal power units running this winter for transmission and system reliability.Â
After a coal power plant said they’ll be shutting down some of their units over the winter, the group behind the Texas grid announced last week that it may pay them to keep running anyways.
But that group, the Electric Reliability Council of Texas (ERCOT), insists it’s not because the grid needs to “keep the lights on” for demand reasons. It’s because the transmission lines used by those coal power plants need to have a certain amount of juice running through them, or the grid won’t work correctly.
“The whole purpose of the transmission system is to get power from power plants to consumer loads,” explains Dan Woodfin, ERCOT’s Director of Grid Operations. “When a generator shuts down, that changes the power flows on that transmission system. So we have to make sure that we can get power from the remaining power plants to higher loads.”
Energy efficiency in Texas will become less of a priority under new state rules.
On Friday, the Public Utility Commission, which oversees much of the electricity market in Texas, voted to make energy efficiency less of a priority in the power-hungry state.
While Texas’ population and industry is booming, not enough new power generation is coming on line to meet energy needs during times of peak demand.
In 1999, the Texas legislature passed Senate Bill 7, which mandated that private utilities meet ten percent of their new demand through energy efficiency programs. That incentivized companies to provide energy efficiency discounts for things like insulation, and window and air conditioner upgrades to their customers. That was paid for by a small charge on every consumer’s bill. Those upgrades would also result in them using less power, and paying lower power bills.
Because of the initial program’s success, the lege took things a step further in 2007 with higher energy efficiency requirements and bonuses. Currently, private power companies must anwer for twenty-five percent of their new demand with reductions in use from energy efficiency upgrades. That number will grow to up to thirty percent next year.
Now that’s likely to change. The new rule by the Public Utility Commission (PUC) puts a cap on how much consumers can be charged for the efficiency program. And it exempts some industrial customers completely. Continue Reading →
“Couldn’t happen to a more deserving state,” Reddit user quelar wrote. “Perhaps this may change some peoples minds about the dangers of global warming. But I know it won’t.”
The idea that Texas deserved the drought because of state officials that deny climate change (starting with the governor) and industry-friendly policies is no doubt offensive to a wide variety of people in the state. And turns out it’s offensive to many in the Reddit community, too.
RjoTTU0bio writes that he thinks the drought has forced many Texans to confront the reality of climate change: “As a Texan with a brother in Austin, parents in Houston, a girlfriend in Dallas, and that attends a college in Lubbock, I have seen it all. I witnessed the buffalo bayou drying up in west Houston, the dust storms in the plains, the drying up of lake Travis in Austin/Marble Falls, the yellowing of yards in the suburbs, and the fires (some controlled) that hit central and north Texas.” Continue Reading →
Roland Ruiz is the new general manager of the Edwards Aquifer Authority.
He’s not exactly new to the job, as he’s been serving as interim general manager for a while, but Thursday the Edwards Aquifer Authority (EAA) officially selected Roland Ruiz as their new general manager.
Ruiz, who used to run communications at the Authority, stepped in as general manager in June, after Karl Dreher was abruptly placed on leave and then fired. The San Antonio Express-News reported at the time that the board voted 8 to 6 to terminate its contract with Dreher. Chairwoman Luana Buckner was quoted saying that Dreher “lacked the management skills to reach the goals of the board.”
“The board felt very positive about offering the full time general manager position to Mr. Ruiz,” EAA board chairman Luana Buckner said in a statement. “He knows the region well and in his tenure with the EAA he has proven himself as a highly capable leader who can build relationships with our stakeholders across the region and represent the agency and its mission effectively.”
His background in communications will probably come in handy as well.
The Texas Attorney General says that $TK million in lawsuits against the Obama administration has been a "bargain" for Texans.
Despite a mixed record of suing the Obama administration (five wins, eight losses, and two dismissals as of last count), Texas Attorney General Greg Abbott says today that all these lawsuits are a “bargain” for Texans.
In an op-ed published in the Dallas Morning Newsand emailed to reporters, Abbott says that one recent victory against the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) “saved more than 500 jobs and protected Texans’ access to reliable electricity — which was jeopardized by the EPA’s draconian regulations.”
But it wasn’t clear which recent case he was referring to. Or where that 500 jobs figure came from.
So we called up Abbott’s press office to ask which case it was.
Charles Castillo picked up the phone. “Do you really think your listeners are going to care which case?” he said, laughing.
Well, yes, we do. It turns out Abbott is referring to the Cross State Air Pollution Rule, which aims to reduce pollution — mostly from coal power plants — across state lines. A federal appeals court vacated that rule in August, sending it back to the EPA. It could be revised within a year.
Jefferson County Court at Law Judge Tom Rugg listens to arguments in the property rights case earlier this month.
Another court case appears to be breaking in favor of the Keystone XL pipeline, which will take heavy crude harvested in Canadian sand pits to refineries on the Texas Gulf Coast.
On Tuesday, Judge Tom Rugg of Jefferson County Court at Law 1 indicated that he believes TransCanada, the Canadian company behind the pipeline, has the right to begin building the Keystone XL on private land near Beaumont, Texas. Houston brothers David and James Holland own the land. They lease some 4,000 acres out for rice farming and ranching under a group called Texas Rice Land Partners. There are already dozens of pipelines on their land, but they feel TransCanada low-balled them with their offer to build the pipeline across it. The company is trying to use eminent domain to go ahead and build it anyways.
But they can’t take the land just yet. The writ of possession — the ruling that would give TransCanada the right to seize the land — hasn’t been issued. That will likely come down in a hearing Friday, according to the Judge.
“If the bond issues are sorted out, I believe under the law that the pipeline is allowed a writ of possession,” Judge Rugg tells StateImpact Texas. (Reading Judge Rugg’s ruling will make your head hurt. And he sympathizes with that. “It is such a complex thing that we’re dealing with that I just didn’t know how to make it simpler,” the judge says.)
Those bond issues that will be addressed Friday deal with how much TransCanada needs to put up in a bond. That’s a payment that TransCanada sets aside in case they ultimately lose their court battle against the landowners to cover damage from construction of the pipeline. Right now that bond is set at $5,000. And the landowners feel that isn’t enough.
‘Here’s Where it Gets Troublesome’
There’s a lot of uncharted water here in challenging the bond amount, according to Judge Rugg. “Here’s where it gets a little troublesome,” Judge Rugg says. “This is an area that has almost never been litigated in the history of condemnation litigation in the state.” And that’s just the beginning. Continue Reading →
Over 300 million forested trees have been lost to the Texas drought.
The tally of the Texas drought‘s toll continues. After an extensive survey, the Texas A&M Forest Service today puts the number of rural trees killed by the Texas drought at 301 million. That falls right in the middle of a December 2011 estimate by the service that between 100 and 500 million trees had been killed by the drought.
The survey only applies to trees in rural forest areas. The number of trees in urban settings that were lost to the drought was pegged at over five million earlier this year.
A&M Forest Service conducted the study by using on-the-ground research as well as satellite imagery. It includes not just trees that were directly killed by the drought, but also trees that died because they became more susceptible to disease or infestation because of stress from the drought.
The Texas A&M Forest Service says that there is some good news here, though. Continue Reading →
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