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 →
Photo courtesy of A. Seigel www.flickr.com/photos/a_siegel/
AC use is a big driver in electricity usage during the summer in Texas.
I’m as annoyed as the next guy by reductionist cliches about about our state. But sometimes they feel so good, like air conditioning on a hot Texas summer day.
Air conditioning. It’s as Texas as cowboy hats and high school football. But, as we noted ast week, it’s also partially responsible for Texas’ impending electricity shortage. And in other parts of the world, its use is highly regulated to save power. That’s something Texans should consider as they tackle the state’s energy challenges, says Mincheul Kwon, a South Korean journalist visiting Austin from Seoul.
“In South Korea the government regulates indoor temperature in summer,” Kwon says in a report for KUT Austin. “Large commercial and office buildings must maintain a temperature of 79 degrees Fahrenheit or 26 degrees centigrade.”
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 →
Crude oil from South Texas is loaded into tank cars bound for refineries on the Gulf Coast
So much crude oil is being produced in Texas and North Dakota that within the next couple of years, refineries on the Gulf Coast may no longer need to import any light crude. In fact, according to industry researchers, there may be so much light crude that the Gulf Coast could start experiencing the same bottleneck dilemma as the oil storage hub in Cushing, Oklahoma.
“We’re dubbing this region the ‘Cushing Coast’. We see a region in super-abundance of crude oil but with a real lack of pipeline capacity out and beyond the region,” says Greg Haas, research manager at Hart Energy, an oil industry publisher in Houston.
“We have this regional glut of crude cascading from Cushing, the inland areas, all hitting the shore,” says Haas. 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 →
Warning were attached to bikes locked up outside SXSW Eco today, saying the bikes could be impounded.
South By Southwest Eco is Austin’s premiere sustainability conference, so it’s probably no surprise that you’ll find a lot of bike riders there. The conference even has a folding bike rental option.
But this morning there were so many cyclists parking at the entrance to the AT&T Conference Center, where the event is held, that every nearby signpost appeared to be taken. (There are no bike racks at the Center, or even within a few blocks, according to University of Texas’Â bike rack map.)
So, with nothing apparent to indicate they shouldn’t, cyclists (this reporter included) started locking up on the railings leading to the entrance.
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 →
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