Texas

Energy and Environment Reporting for Texas

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Using less and saving more through ingenuity and efficiency.

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How 1,000 Pounds of Butter Can Power a Home for 3 Days

Don’t tell Paula Deen, but butter can be used for something other than making fried butter balls. Turns out that in addition to making everything taste better (yes, even bacon), butter can also make energy. And not just any butter, but a large sculpture of it “showing a boy lead­ing his prize-winning calf through a […]

Massive Solar Project Coming to San Antonio

Just days after the ribbon was cut on the largest solar farm in Texas outside Austin, San Antonio has announced a new solar project that would dwarf its neighbor to the North: a 400 megawatt solar project that would be twice as large as any solar farm currently runningin the world. Some key points: There […]

Pinwheels of Energy: Texas’ Offshore Wind Potential

Do you ever enjoy the cool breezes on the beaches of the Gulf Coast? Well, those winds could one day be cooling you down in your own home. A few years from now, you might stand on the shore and see miles and miles of massive three-pointed stars rotating along the surface of the sea. They’re offshore […]

Chevy to Volt Owners: Baby, Come Back

Tuesday we told you about the man who paid for (and charges) his Chevy Volt with solar panels on the roof of his house. Today comes news he’s going to have to do with a loaner for a little while. In what the Associated Press is calling a “move similar to a recall,” General Motors is […]

Pass the Saltwater: Desalination and the Future of Water in Texas

Texas just capped a year drier than a week-old kolache, with record heat and rainfall totals a good foot or more below where they should have been. Some towns have actually come close to running out of water. And while above-average December rains helped much of the state, they didn’t do enough to restore water […]

How One Man’s Roof Paid for His Car

It’s the first feel-good sustainability story of 2012. A man in Orlando, Florida installed solar panels on the roof of his home, sold the excess power back to the grid, and then used that money to make a down payment on a new Chevy Volt, the plug-in car that gets 60 miles to the gallon. […]

5 Wacky Ways to Fix the Planet

With heat, tornadoes, drought, fires, extreme weather and flooding, the climate has certainly caught the world’s attention in 2011. While scientists debate just how much the world is warming and how much of that has to do with human impact, others are taking it upon themselves to reverse the changes through technology. Here are five […]

Now Shipping: Container Coffeehouses

Would you like a manifest with your soy latte? Starbucks is getting into the coffeehouse-inside-a-shipping-container game, the New York Times reports, with plans to open a store in Seattle constructed out of four used shipping containers. But for Texas, shipping container coffehouses aren’t an innovation. There are two in Austin, one of them just steps […]

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