One big factor in that slowing consumption trend is something called demand response, programs that get participants to use less power when supplies on the grid are tight, like during the hot Texas afternoons when air conditioners across the state are running full-time. Some utilities and power companies give rebates for using less power during that time, or to shift power use to other times of the day.
These demand response programs are on the rise in Texas. In Austin, enough participants are expected this summer that the city is saving itself from using an entire power plant.
So we’ve put together a list of the available programs we could find in Texas for demand response: Continue Reading →
Residents of North Texas testifying before the Railroad Commission in Austin in January 2014.
A Very Different Oil and Gas ‘Boom’ Comes to Texas
“You might think you were in Iraq or Afghanistan,” Greg Morrison told a panel of state officials in Azle, Texas recently. “It feels like a semi truck hitting your house with a bomb going off.”
He was describing the experience of a 3.6 magnitude earthquake that hit his North Texas town late last year. Earthquakes were all but unknown in the area until a few years ago; now communities in the region are experiencing dozens of them, sometimes multiple times a day. In fact, there was one near the North Texas community of Benbrook just this weekend.
North Texas is not alone in being shook up. As the oil and gas boom has taken off, several areas of Texas (as well as other states) are experiencing quakes. These are often areas where drilling is taking place or where drilling waste water disposal wells are present. And, in many instances, residents are reporting loud noises — a “boom” — along with the shaking. Continue Reading →
Pipe is stacked at the southern site of the Keystone XL pipeline on March 22, 2012 in Cushing, Oklahoma.
An updated review of the environmental impact of the proposed Keystone XL pipeline was released by the State Department today. The pipeline will take heavy oil harvested from tar sands in Canada to refineries on the Gulf Coast of Texas. The final environmental impact review finds that the pipeline will have an impact on the climate, but a limited one, because tar sands oil will be extracted regardless of whether or not the pipeline is built.
The pipeline, a project of the Canadian company TransCanada, has become a political football over the last few years: Republicans have attacked the President for delaying it; environmental groups say approval of the pipeline and development of tar sands means “game over” for climate change.
But drawing a line in the tar sands on this one pipeline could ignore the larger reality: the report notes that heavy oil in Canada is already being extracted, and likely to make it to the market one way or another. “Approval or denial of any one crude oil transport project, including the proposed [Keystone XL pipeline], is unlikely to significantly impact the rate of extraction in the oil sands, or the continued demand for heavy crude oil at refineries in the United States,” the State Department report says. Continue Reading →
Workers prepare a fence with Super Bowl ads at the Metlife Stadium in East Rutherford, New Jersey, January 28, 2014. The stadium's solar panels are visible on the roof.
Sunday’s big game will be notable for being the first “Mass Transit” Super Bowl: you can’t take a cab or a limo, and parking passes are extremely limited and expensive. If you want to get to the game, you’re likely going to be taking a train or the bus. It’s also a greener super bowl because of composting, tree plantings and biofuels. And on top of all that, MetLife Stadium will have some help from the sun.
Over a thousand solar panels will generate electricity for nearly 1,000 LED lights at the game, according to the Energy Information Administration (EIA). While solar power isn’t nearly enough to take care of a stadium’s energy needs during a game, it still makes a difference, according to Dale Sweetnam with the EIA. “These onsite energy systems can help reduce the amount of electricity pulled from the local distribution grid,” Sweetnam writes. “When stadiums are not in use, their PV systems can feed electricity into the local grid.” Continue Reading →
For years, Texas has struggled with how to solve its energy crunch: forecasts said not enough power plants were being built to meet the demands of a growing population and a booming state. But it turns out the state’s supplies are likely adequate. Despite all the growth in Texas, peak power demand hasn’t increased as fast as expected.
To understand why, it helps to start with those long, hot Texas summer afternoons just six months ago.
“Our electricity problems in Texas are almost entirely because of air conditioning in the afternoons in the summer,” said Michael Webber, Deputy Director of the Energy Institute at the University of Texas. “In fact, in the whole year we have an excess of electricity, except for a few hours, in a few weeks of the year.”
That problem with the Texas electricity market isn’t unique.
“Across the nation, we have something like a trillion dollars of capital in our power plants And we use those power plants on average 42 percent of the time,” Webber said. “This is incredibly irrational.”
But what if you could shift power use? What if you could incentivize people to use less during that time of peak demand? A relatively recent development could be the answer. It’s called ‘Demand Response.’
Workers clean tarballs from the BP oil spill on Waveland beach December 6, 2010 in Waveland, Mississippi.
Bad as the BP Deepwater Horizon spill was with its oil tainting miles of Texas beaches (36 miles to be exact, according to the state), there is now restoration money floating into Texas.
As part of an agreement reached in 2011 for “early oil spill restoration,” BP is paying Texas and four other Gulf Coast states a total of $1 billion. Texas’s portion is $100 million.
But in Texas, there is disagreement over what deserves the most immediate attention, a debate that goes something like this: Restrooms v. Wetlands.
Despite the dropping temperatures and extreme cold weather events like the Polar Vortex earlier this month, the science hasn’t changed on global warming. University of Texas at Austin atmospheric scientist Dr. Ned Vizy says that more extreme cold snaps are actually a predictable symptom of an warming climate.
“Over the past decade or so, you’re seeing a greater occurrence of these extreme events such as cold snaps, the tornado outbreak up in Oklahoma, the droughts,” he says. Continue Reading →
A picture provided to StateImpact Texas from property rights activist Julia Trigg Crawford of what she said was work on the Keystone pipeline.
Before the oil started flowing in earnest through the southern part of the Keystone XL pipeline last week, land owner and property rights activist Julia Trigg Crawford noticed work crews unearthing parts of of the pipeline. When StateImpact called Crawford for a quote about the pipeline’s activation, she mentioned that activity.
“Track hoes, skids, water trucks, electrical trucks and construction crews showed up,” Crawford said. “They unearthed the pipeline, attached wires and sensors, wrapped it in something and then covered it up.”
Crawford added that TransCanada, the company that owns the pipeline, told her it had been installing temperature sensors. StateImpact Texas emailed TransCanada for confirmation, but did not hear back by the piece’s Wednesday morning deadline, a fact noted in the original article.
Wednesday evening TransCanada sent an email explaining the work.
Lynda Stokes is the mayor of Reno in Parker County, where more than 30 earthquakes have been recorded since November.
The mayor of one of the small towns at the center of Texas’ latest earthquake swarm traveled to Austin last week to speak to oil and gas regulators. While Lynda Stokes, the mayor of Reno, Texas, didn’t get any answers from the Railroad Commission of Texas (which oversees drilling in the state), she did get a chance to have her voice — along with those of many other residents from the region — heard.
“Nowhere in my wildest dreams did I believe that here in Reno, Texas, we would have earthquakes,” Stokes tells Dallas’ KERA News. Her area of Texas has seen over thirty quakes, the largest a magnitude 3.6, since November. “They feel like you’re living right next to the freeway and a big truck just came rumbling through your living room.”
KERA’s Vice President of News, Rick Holter, talked to Stokes about the quakes and what could happen next, including the possibility of a city ordinance to ban disposal wells, which are believed to be behind the quakes. Take a listen to the interview:
Stokes and others called on the Railroad Commission to immediately suspend operations at the disposal wells in the area.
State Rep. Bill Callegari spoke about water policy at this years TAMEST conference.
State Rep. Bill Callegari (R-Houston), more than many lawmakers, knows water. An engineer, he holds “Class A” certifications in water and wastewater management. During his time in the Texas legislature, much of it spent serving on the House Natural Resources Committee, he authored several major bills on water management and water utilities. His office biography calls him “the state’s leading water expert in the Texas Legislature.”
The Katy Republican is also not what you would call an impartial observer. Having served as president of national and international water companies for decades, he hopes to work with two of his sons — also in the water business — after his upcoming retirement from the House. Like so many other state lawmakers in a part-time legislature, he often finds himself weighing in on policy discussions that have a bearing on his business future.
With those disclaimers, we thought it would be interesting to touch base with Rep. Callegari ahead of his retirement. Lawmakers have run plenty of victory laps taken since the passage of Proposition 6, the ballot measure that aims to fund the state water plan with billions in seed money. But even supporters of Prop 6 admit it will not solve all of the state’s problems.
StateImpact Texas: Now that there’s money in the fund for water projects. Are we going to see a lot more action at the regional water planning level?
Rep. Callegari: Â The prioritization, in my opinion, is really going to be the most important aspect of this: How do you really determine which project to build first? Continue Reading →
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