A Detailed Look At The F-Bomb Camaro | HotCars HotCars
* This article was originally published here
Sunday, February 28, 2021
February 28 Green Energy News
Headline News:
- “Environmental Collapse: It’s Time Economists Put The Planet On Their Balance Sheets” • A ‘ground-sparing’ economic report on biodiversity indicates that economic practice has to change because the world is finite. Climate change results from a larger issue, the threat to our life support systems from the plunder and demise of our natural environment. [RenewEconomy]
Earth (NASA Goddard Space Flight Center, public domain)
- “Texas Shows Us Our Water Future With Climate Change: It Ain’t Pretty” • Earlier this week, 1 in 22 Americans didn’t have water or was on a boil water alert. Texas did not suffer alone, as people in Oklahoma and Louisiana also lost water. Sadly, the storm was just a glimpse of how climate change will impact our water supplies. [CleanTechnica]
- “Bill Gates Is Wrong About Nuclear Power” • In his new book, Bill Gates argues that nuclear power is needed to respond to climate disaster because it’s the only emissions-free source of energy that can be supplied around the clock. He fails to see that the paradigm it fits in is obsolete, it is not needed, and it still has unsolved waste issues. [The Hankyoreh]
- “Renewable Energy Lasting Solution To Oil-Price Crisis” • As petroleum prices soar, it is time to examine the overall energy scenario for India. Rises in petroleum costs are tied to increased inflation. Also, India imports almost 100% of its petroleum, so higher costs also imply less favorable trade balance. These are not problems for renewables. [The Hans India]
- “SMT Energy Announces Partnership With Goldman Sachs Renewable Power” • SMT Energy and Goldman Sachs Renewable Power announced a strategic partnership to develop renewable energy assets in the US. In the partnership’s first transaction, GSRP is acquiring 55 MW of community solar facilities in upstate New York from SMT. [ThomasNet News]
For more news, please visit geoharvey – Daily News about Energy and Climate Change.
* This article was originally published here
Saturday, February 27, 2021
Earth911 Podcast: Meet Dorie Morales, Publisher of Green Living Magazine Arizona
Listen to “Earth911 Podcast: Meet Dorie Morales, Publisher of Green … The post Earth911 Podcast: Meet Dorie Morales, Publisher of Green Living Magazine Arizona appeared first on Earth 911.
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Earth911 Podcast: Meet Dorie Morales, Publisher of Green Living Magazine Arizona
* This article was originally published here
DIY Power Tools Market – increasing demand with Industry Professionals: Bosch, Stanley Black & Decker, Makita – SoccerNurds - SoccerNurds
Topsoil is disappearing from Midwest farms
Almost one-third of crop-growing land in the upper Midwest is now devoid of its most fertile topsoil, says a controversial new study. Evan Thaler, a PhD student at the University of Massachusetts, Amherst who worked on the study, acknowledged that their estimates are at odds with those published by the U.S. Department of Agriculture. “I think the USDA is dramatically underestimating the amount of loss,” said Thaler . Related: SoilKit wins recognition through Lowe’s small businesses program As any home gardener knows, soil varies in color and quality. Even if you don’t garden, you’ve probably seen the different soil colors when flying over agricultural land. The darkest, richest soil is known as topsoil, the “black, organic, rich soil that’s really good for growing crops,” Thaler explained. When farmers first settled the Midwest, there was no shortage of this soil, which is full of organic carbon, made by stuff like decaying plant roots and living microorganisms. The topsoil layer is known by soil scientists as the “A-horizon.” But a century or two of plowing released this trapped carbon. Water erosion and wind scattered the topsoil. The remaining, depleted soil is much lighter in color. Thaler and his team used satellite images and the USDA’s direct measurements of soil quality in their study. They concluded that the light brown soil is so lacking in organic carbon that it can’t be considered A-horizon soil. Not all soil scientists are convinced by Thaler’s new study. Some question his methodology and say there’s not enough data to prove the extent of topsoil loss that he’s claiming. According to Michelle Wander of the University of Illinois, some topsoil might also be mixed into underlying soil layers, rather than entirely gone. However, everyone agrees that topsoil is in trouble. “To me, it’s not important whether it’s exactly a third,” said Anna Cates, Minnesota’s state soil health specialist, as reported by NPR. “Maybe it’s twenty percent, maybe it’s forty percent. There’s a lot of topsoil gone from the hills.” Unless farmers are willing to till the land less and perhaps change crops to slowly rebuild topsoil, the A-horizon will continue to recede. Via NPR Image via Pixabay
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Topsoil is disappearing from Midwest farms
* This article was originally published here
Friday, February 26, 2021
A skyscraper will purify Shenzhens air with aquaponic gardens
Zaha Hadid Architects has been crowned a competition winner for its proposed design of Tower C at Shenzhen Bay Super Headquarters Base, a planned business and financial center that will serve the Greater Bay Area of Guangdong, Hong Kong and Macau. Informed by 3D-modeling tools, the skyscraper features a futuristic, energy-efficient design with terraced levels, dramatic curves and expansive glazing. The project targets high-performance energy standards with environmentally friendly elements such as water collection and recycling as well as aquaponic gardens to help purify the air. Located within a global technology hub, the Shenzhen Bay Super Headquarters Base will accommodate 300,000 employees every day and include residential developments, a transportation center, venues for international conferences, exhibitions, cultural and art programming and a landscaping plan with native grasslands and coastal wetlands. Tower C, which will be located at the intersection of the Shenzhen’s planned north-south green axis and the east-west urban corridor, will serve as a “multidimensional vertical city” housing a mix of programming including offices, retail, dining, entertainment amenities, a hotel, convention center and a variety of cultural facilities. The building will be located above a subterranean public transport interchange served by the expanding Shenzhen Metro network. Related: ZHA unveils a low-carbon Shenzhen Science and Technology Museum Taking inspiration from the adjacent park and plazas, the architects have crafted Tower C as an extension of the landscape with a terraced podium that supports two towers with heights of nearly 400 meters. Double-insulated glazing fitted with solar shades will wrap around the building. To reduce energy use, the building will be equipped with high-efficiency equipment and automated indoor environmental controls. Solar photovoltaic panels and a water recycling system will further reduce resource consumption. For enhanced health and wellness, low-VOC materials will be installed throughout the interior while outdoor aquaponic gardens grown on every terraced level will serve as a protective biological filter against air contaminants. The architects noted, “The design of Tower C integrates the city and nature within its central green axis with the transit orientated development (TOD) of Shenzhen’s new spine, creating a ‘superscape’ that will become a tower of the future within the Super Headquarters Base.” + Zaha Hadid Architects Images via Brick Visual
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A skyscraper will purify Shenzhens air with aquaponic gardens
* This article was originally published here
The Best Fizzing & Spinning DIY Bath Bomb Recipe
Our bath bomb recipe makes bombs that fizz, color the water, and spin! Learn how to make your DIY bath bombs spin too, it’s much more fun!
I’ve made (and sold) more homemade bath bombs using this bath bomb recipe in the past six months than in the past 10 years. Everyone wants something different, but they all want the same results: fizzing and spinning.
Embeds Recipe for Spinning DIY Bath Bombs
One of the exciting parts about using a bath bomb is watching it spin and color the water. The secret to our spinning bath bomb recipe is to use embeds.
An embed is a small, colored ball. They are similar to the bath bombs, just more concentrated.
Here’s a Recipe for the Embeds:
- ½ cup citric acid (find it here)
- optional, 15 drops essential oil (find pure organic essential oils here)
- ½ cup baking soda
- ½ teaspoon lake pigment or bath bomb color (find a variety of mica pigments here)
- 91% rubbing alcohol mixed with witch hazel, equal proportions (find organic witch hazel here)
Mix the dry ingredients really well, then spritz with the rubbing alcohol/witch hazel mixture. You should make it like damp sand – firm enough to hold together without crumbling. Pack this into small molds pretty tightly and pop out. Let dry a bit before mixing together the next step.
Safety Note: be careful to not inhale the rubbing alcohol/witch hazel spritz. While Pubmed studies show inhalation toxicity is rare, it’s still a good idea to spritz away from your face.
The documented toxicity of isopropyl alcohol in man is confined for the most part to accidental ingestion (not inhalation)[1]
Bath Bomb Recipe: DIY Bath Bombs
For our basic bath bomb recipe, you use one part citric acid to two parts baking soda. This ratio will give you the best fizz possible. Other ingredients can be added like cream of tartar or kaolin clay to make the bombs harder, or Epsom salt for a muscle-soothing soak. Here’s a good basic bath bomb recipe.
Ingredients
- 1 cup citric acid
- 2 cups baking soda
- ½ cup corn starch
- ½ cup Epsom salts
- ¼ teaspoon dry color (such as bath bomb color, mica, or lake pigment)
- 20-25 drops essential oil (your favorite skin-safe oils)
- 3 tablespoons carrier oil (such as sweet almond or sunflower)
- 1 ounce isopropyl alcohol (91%)
- 1 ounce witch hazel
- DIY bath bomb molds
Instructions
Mix Ingredients and Get Proper Consistency
- Mix all the dry ingredients together. Add your color and mix well. For secret color, leave white for now. Add essential or fragrance oil and mix well. Add liquid oil and mix well again.
- At this time it's a good idea to mix with your hands rather than relying on a mixing spoon. Use gloves as the baking soda can wear on your nails. Once all the bath bomb recipe ingredients are thoroughly mixed together, spritz 1-2 times with the alcohol/witch hazel mixture. Mix quickly with your hands and check to see if it's ready. Make a snowball with the mixture and drop it into the bowl. If it holds together your bath bombs are ready to mold. If it breaks apart, spritz 1-2 more times and check again. Repeat until your snowball holds together when dropped into the bowl.
Placing Embeds Inside and Finishing Your DIY Bath Bombs
- Lightly pack a good amount in half of a bath bomb mold, then place an embed (recipe above) on top of the mixture. The secret to creating a good spin is to place the embed off-center, not in the middle. It has to be off-balance in order to spin. And of course, we want our spinning bath bombs to spin!
- Next, overfill the other half and place both sides together. Push the sides firmly so there is no gap in the center. Don't twist, as this will separate the halves. You want them to join cohesively.
- Tap each side with a spoon, then release one half. Turn over and release the other half. Set on a piece of cardboard or wax paper and continue with the rest of the mix. (The bath bombs may smell a lot like alcohol, but this will disappear in a day or two.)
- Dry for at least 24 hours, then seal in plastic wrap. The DIY bath bombs need to be sealed or they will absorb moisture from the air and won't fizz as much in the bathtub.
DIY Bath Bomb Recipe Video
Additional Tips
Foaming DIY Bath Bombs
To make your DIY bath bombs foam too, add 1 Tbsp of nonfat milk powder.
Lake Pigments and Polysorbate 80
When choosing colors, lake pigments and bath bomb colors will work the best to dissolve in the tub AND color the water. If you’re not concerned with making a completely natural bath bomb, you can add a bit of polysorbate 80 to help the color to dissolve and to keep the oils from floating on the top and making the tub slippery. Polysorbate 80 is a synthetic compound that is used as a surfactant and emulsifier.
Powdered Mica
Powdered mica can also be used to color this bath bomb recipe. Mica is a natural mineral and has usually been dyed to make colorants. Mica produces nice soft colors, but will not color the water, which some people want in their bath. It will sometimes stick to the sides of the tub and appear to stain it, but this can be alleviated by using polysorbate 80.
Essential and Fragrance Oils
Many people love a scented bath bomb. Essential oils can sometimes be too irritating for open areas of the skin. Some exceptions are lavender and rose essential oils. Fragrance oils are less irritating to the skin, although not completely natural.
Cornstarch
Finally, there is some concern with using cornstarch in the bath and the assumption that it can cause yeast infections. It would need to be used in much larger amounts to cause a problem. If you are still concerned, you can omit it from the recipe.
Tip: you can also try making a birthday cake bath bomb.
Have you ever made a spinning bath bomb recipe like this? Tell us about your experience.
*******
Sources
- National Research Council (US) Committee on Toxicology. Emergency and Continuous Exposure Limits for Selected Airborne Contaminants: Volume 2. Washington (DC): National Academies Press (US); 1984. ISOPROPYL ALCOHOL.
The Best Fizzing & Spinning DIY Bath Bomb Recipe was written by Debra Maslowski.
* This article was originally published here
Thursday, February 25, 2021
Seville’s plan to turn oranges into electricity
Spanish engineers have updated the old citrus cliché, bringing it into the eco era — when life gives you oranges, make electricity. In Seville, they’re repurposing the many tons of fruit that the city’s 48,000 orange trees drop in the streets. Instead of a sticky, pulpy wintertime hazard, the methane from these rotting oranges will soon generate clean energy . Seville’s municipal water company, Emasesa, will start this new program by using 35 tons of fruit in a facility that already turns organic matter into electricity. The methane captured from fermenting oranges will drive the generators for water purification plants. If the orange experiment is successful, old fruit could one day supply the grid with surplus power . Scientists report that early trials show that 1,000 kilograms of oranges can fuel five homes for a day. If all of Seville’s oranges were harvested, they could power 73,000 homes. Recent: Vincent Callebaut proposes a green, food-producing footbridge for Paris “We hope that soon we will be able to recycle all the city’s oranges,” said Benigno López, the head of Emasesa’s environmental department, as reported by The Guardian . “The juice is fructose made up of very short carbon chains and the energetic performance of these carbon chains during the fermentation process is very high. It’s not just about saving money. The oranges are a problem for the city and we’re producing added value from waste .” López estimated that Seville would need to invest 250,000 euros (about $300,000) to accomplish this. Oranges were introduced to Spain about 1,000 years ago. “They have taken root here, they’re resistant to pollution and have adapted well to the region,” said Fernando Mora Figueroa, head of the Seville’s parks department. “People say the city of Seville is the world’s largest orange grove.” Locals don’t eat typically eat the bitter oranges. Instead, they drop, rot and attract flies. The city employs 200 people to pick up the fallen fruit . Via The Guardian Image via Hans Braxmeier
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Seville’s plan to turn oranges into electricity
* This article was originally published here
ESG in 2021: The State of Play
ESG in 2021: The State of Play Date/Time: March 18, 2021 (1-2PM ET / 10-11AM PT) The world of environmental, social and governance metrics and ratings has entered a new and dynamic phase. Suddenly, nearly every publicly held company — and many privately held firms — are examining their policies and programs through the lens of investors’ rising interest in ESG metrics. For their part, investors are learning that corporate environmental and social activities are no longer a nice-to-do activity — they are core to well-managed and profitable companies. As a result, ESG has moved from the margins to the mainstream. What are the implications for today’s sustainability and finance professionals? How can they serve the interests of investor relations departments, risk professionals and other internal stakeholders who have become part of the ESG ecosystem inside companies? In this one-hour webcast, you’ll hear the state of play from two industry insiders. Among the things you’ll learn: What are the key ESG metrics investors are examining? What are the opportunities for sustainability professionals to play a leadership role in their company’s ESG strategy? How will the Biden administration affect the trajectory of ESG transparency and disclosure? What are the rising ESG issues that investors are considering in assessing companies? Moderator: Joel Makower, Chairman & Executive Editor, GreenBiz Speakers: Thomas Kamei, Executive Director, Investment Management, Morgan Stanley Tessie Petion, Head, ESG Engagement, Amazon If you can’t tune in live, please register and we will email you a link to access the archived webcast footage and resources, available to you on-demand after the webcast. taylor flores Thu, 02/25/2021 – 11:53 Joel Makower Chairman & Executive Editor GreenBiz Group @makower Thomas Kamei Executive Director, Investment Management Morgan Stanley Tessie Petion Head, ESG Engagement Amazon gbz_webcast_date Thu, 03/18/2021 – 10:00 – Thu, 03/18/2021 – 11:00
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ESG in 2021: The State of Play
* This article was originally published here
Wednesday, February 24, 2021
HempWood offers a sustainable wood alternative with endless applications
With an educational background in vinyl siding and wood flooring, Fibonacci owner Greg Wilson has developed HempWood, an American-produced wood material made from a fast-growing agricultural product. Hemp has long been acclaimed for its versatility, but regulations in the United States have historically hampered research and development on the material. Now, hemp may be the material surrounding you inside your home. Replacing wood with other natural materials The company’s name is Fibonacci, although it’s now mostly known as HempWood with a focus on its primary product. No trees were harmed in the making of HempWood, since it is made of all-natural, U.S.-grown hemp, and the uses are just beginning to take shape. Related: Levi’s announces product line made with Cottonized Hemp In the grand scheme of things, HempWood sees the opportunity to sit alongside the major players in the wood industry. Its current products include flooring, furniture, countertops and accent walls. Basically anything for indoor use made out of hardwoods, tropical woods, cork or other agricultural products, such as bamboo and eucalyptus , can be made using HempWood instead. Wilson originally worked in China with another plant-to-product material, bamboo. While great for many things, bamboo lacked strength as a commercial product. Wilson was part of a team that unlocked a process that turned bamboo into a more durable product. Later, he used a similar process in working with strand wood eucalyptus. As hemp availability and an interest in the possibilities for the material grew, Wilson moved back to the U.S. and opened shop in Kentucky to use his prior experiences in the advancement of hemp development. The environmental impact of hemp Even with Wilson’s prior dealings with similarly behaving materials, hemp has presented some unique challenges. Plus, launching a business in 2020 was no easy feat. Wilson told Cool Hunting in a recent interview, “It’s all based off this one algorithm that allows you to transform a plant fiber into a wood composite,” he explained. “You’ve got to modify it a little bit for the different fiber coming in, but for hemp we’ve also had to duck and weave around government regulation, COVID, wildfires and everything else 2020 has to offer.” Wilson and his team were already aware of the sustainability aspects of hemp, like the fact that plants grow quickly and are ready for harvest in only 120 days. Compared to traditional tree-based woods such as oak, hickory and maple that grow for hundreds of years, hemp can provide a renewable option for the wood industry. Plus, as a plant, hemp naturally helps create cleaner air by removing carbon and releasing oxygen. Hemp’s versatility means every part of the plant is used, leaving no waste behind. While HempWood primarily relies on the bottom part of the plant, the upper parts of thhe plant has other commercial uses, such as chicken feed. From a sustainability aspect, HempWood offers additional advantages. Harvesting trees damages the natural habitat of plants and animals . For example, removing a single large oak tree takes away a food and housing source. Plus, it eliminates protection for the plants growing underneath it. Forests are a carefully balanced ecosystem, so removing a single component can easily upset the stability within the region. As an agricultural product, hemp doesn’t have that lasting effect. As a bio-based product, HempWood avoids creating future issues with its natural ability to biodegrade . Even the non-toxic, soy-based adhesive can dissolve back into the soil. “It’s a wood-composite comprised of greater than 80% hemp fiber,” Wilson explained. “We take the whole stalk and put it through a crushing machine which breaks open the cell structure. Then we dunk it into these enormous vats of soy protein, mixed with water and with the organic acid used by the paper towel industry. It’s essentially papier-mâché.” Corporate responsibility Fibonacci chose a location within 100 miles of the hemp farms it relies on for materials. This decreases transportation costs and the carbon emissions that result from shipping materials across the country. The company is currently looking into expanding with more facilities to create a web of strategically placed hubs on each coast and around the U.S. Inside the HempWood facility, the company is committed to a small carbon footprint . In addition to basic steps like using low-consuming LED bulbs throughout the buildings, the company has installed a bio-burner. This device not only vents heat throughout the facility, but it also provides energy savings and comprehensive waste reduction by burning material off-cuts onsite. The team at HempWood has enjoyed promoting an alternative for the green building community as well as creating a base product that people can get creative with. Customers report making many types of products out of the material, including duck calls, art projects, bowls and picture frames. There is no cap on the number of applications this material can be used for in the building industry and beyond. + HempWood Images via HempWood
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HempWood offers a sustainable wood alternative with endless applications
* This article was originally published here
February 24 Green Energy News
Headline News:
- “Wind Turbine Blades Can Be Recycled” • The wind industry has one of the lowest composite waste rates. Over 85% of the turbine can be recycled, and composite blades are a small part of the overall materials. Despite how little of the negative impact the blades is, the wind industry is taking the problem on with a project called DecomBlades. [CleanTechnica]
Transporting a wind turbine blade (Acroterion, CC-BY-SA 4.0)
- “Regulators Examine Texas Energy Market After Natural Gas Prices Soared 10,000%” • Federal regulators are looking closely at the Texas energy market after natural gas prices rose by up to 10,000% during last week’s deep freeze. They warn that extreme weather will play havoc with energy sources, including natural gas, coal, nuclear, and wind. [CNN]
- “Modular Battery System From Xerotech Could Electrify The Construction Equipment Market” • Combining seven variants of modules with a choice of battery cell chemistry, a new “turnkey” modular battery system by Xerotech promises to revolutionize the construction equipment market by offering manufacturers a battery pack for just about everything! [CleanTechnica]
- “Renewable Energy Boom Could Force Coal Power To Close Early, Says New Report” • An analysis of the Australian energy market has found a number of coal-fired power stations could be financially unviable by 2025. The report was by the Institute for Energy Economics and Financial Analysis and advisory firm Green Energy Markets. [ABC News]
- “Green Hydrogen To Power First Zero Carbon Steel Plant” • A new industrial initiative, backed by EIT InnoEnergy, will build the world’s first large-scale steel production plant powered by green hydrogen, in north Sweden. The H2 Green Steel industrial initiative will mobilize €2.5 billion of investment to deliver the green steel project. [reNEWS]
For more news, please visit geoharvey – Daily News about Energy and Climate Change.
* This article was originally published here
Why Texas froze (and California fried): This disaster was 90 years in the making
The catastrophe that swept Texas last week was 90 years in the making. Its roots lie in a decision during the 1930s to escape federal regulation of power rates under the terms of Franklin D. Roosevelt’s New Deal by forcing all Texas utilities to avoid importing or exporting power across state lines, thereby pretending that Texas electricity was not actually part of the national economy.
As the biggest oil and gas producer in the world, Texas had already set itself up in the business of regulating the global price of oil through the Texas Railroad Commission, which set limits on oil and gas production to keep oil prices artificially high. So, going it alone on electricity prices seemed like a logical extension — except that in the case of electricity, Texas business wanted low prices, not high ones.
Implicit in the creation of what Texans call their “power island” was an understanding that cheap electricity was the only significant goal. Reliability came a distant second and clean air was not even on the radar screen. When Texas deregulated its electricity sector in 1999, it went further than most states. ERCOT, the Electric Reliability Council of Texas, kept prices low by refusing to pay utilities for keeping standby generation capacity in case of an extreme weather event. Since Texas also remained disconnected from other regions which might have provided backup power in the case of a shortage, the state denied itself any kind of safety net, either in-state or elsewhere.
Extreme heat waves were very much on the Texas radar, because high-demand summer days were frequent — and profitable for generators. So money was made, and summer blackouts were few, for almost 20 years. As the climate spun out of control, however, even in summer Texas barely avoided resorting to rolling blackouts to manage record demand during worsening hot spells. (In fact, in El Paso, on the state’s western border, they happened.)
Meanwhile, the pretense that it never gets cold in Texas kept obstructing efforts to make the ERCOT grid winter hardened. In 1989, federal regulators pointed out that Texas lacked simple weatherization measures common to more northern states. In 2011, winter storms triggered rolling blackouts. In 2014, the term “polar vortex” came into common use as Texas once again lost winter power. In 2018 and 2019, the polar vortex struck two years in a row.
Yet Texas business and political leaders kept insisting that the cost of winterizing the power system was simply not worth it. The state’s major industrial power users did not want to pay their share of the bill. Any conversation about providing backup by connecting the Texas grid to the rest of America remained totally off limits.
This year, of course, disaster became catastrophe. Those who doggedly opposed investments in reliability have had to find a new tune — their favorite being to blame renewable energy, despite manifest evidence that this is untrue.
Former Texas governor Rick Perry went to bat for the state’s electron isolationism: “Texans would be without electricity for longer than three days to keep the federal government out of their business.” Perry went on to blame the state’s reliance on wind power for the crisis, a richly ironic canard. It was Perry himself who led the campaign to create Texas’s innovative and wind-power targeted CREZ transmission project, which was largely responsible for the fact that 2020 was the first year in which Texas got more electricity from wind than from coal.
Perry’s scapegoating of his own wind revolution for the blackout was echoed by current Gov. Greg Abbott, who said, “Our wind and our solar got shut down, and they were collectively more than 10 percent of our power grid, and that thrust Texas into a situation where it was lacking power on a statewide basis.” That was a lie. As the chart below shows, most of the collapse in power generation came from natural gas, coal and nuclear, since even in a normal winter Texas gets relatively little of its power from wind and solar. (Although Texas wind turbines lack simple weatherizing technology used by wind farms in other states to its north.)
As the disasters cascaded — no power, shut-down oil and gas production, no water, unreliable food — voices from urban communities suffering freezing homes flooded by burst pipes began to fire back, blaming the state regulators for their refusal to invest in winter-hardy generation for the state. It was “just horrible to see,” said Dallas Mayor Eric Johnson. “The power and water outages in Texas have created a situation that’s worse than even the early days of the pandemic,” warned Rep. Joaquin Castro, a Democrat from San Antonio.
But deeply ingrained in the Texas power sector was the governor’s belief that hard freezes did not happen often enough to be worth preparing for. That misguided belief was so deeply ingrained that when the Texas Monthly asked ERCOT CEO Bill Magness if the savings from failing to build resilience were worth it to consumers, he dismissed the question: “I am not aware that we have ever conducted a real cost-benefit analysis on that topic.” That was not true. ERCOT had analyzed this, and it turned out that the agency’s eight-year-old estimate of the daily cost of such a blackout was $2.8 billion — enough to cover a lot of weatherization. The 2020 freeze brought a whole new class of costs to bear. Not only was electricity generation shut down, but as a result so were many oil fields. IHS Markit estimated that the Texas freeze had shut down at least 20% of the nation’s oil and gas production, largely in the Permian Basin, which made it harder to get gas-fired electricity back on.
As more and more voters got more and more upset, a new refrain was heard, even from Abbott: Texas needed to weatherize. The governor called for a special legislative session to get it done and was suddenly outraged. “Everyone knows how challenging the past few days have been for our fellow Texans,” Abbott said. “All of us in the state of Texas believe it is completely unacceptable that you had to endure one minute of the challenge that you faced.”
So, can we write off the Texas tragedy to Lone Star exceptionalism? A quasi-secessionist electricity island, with inadequate requirements for getting ready for winter, pays the price?
Up close it looks like it. But pull back and include the summer of 2020, and it is clear that what went wrong in Texas has a lot do with the fires that brought California to its knees six months earlier. The summers of 2017 and 2018 had made it clear that California did not have nearly enough firefighters standing by for an event like the lightning strikes that rained down in August 2020. It was also clear the state had allowed PG&E and its other utilities to invest too little in fire hardening rural power lines. Worse yet, most communities in the fire-hazard areas had failed to adopt or enforce adequate fireproofing measures on homes and businesses. But California’s politics are — in the American context — at polar opposites to Texas. (In fact, California’s problem is significantly harder to fix than the polar vortex threat to Texas.)
To understand why neither red nor blue America can reliably and safely provide electricity to its population, we need to contrast the American attitude towards natural disasters — they happen, but we recover — with the Dutch approach to flooding, which is more like: We cannot prevent the storms, but we can protect ourselves against the damages. Since the Dutch adopted this attitude as national policy 70 years ago, not a single citizen has died in a flood. Prevention has proven cheaper than rescue and repair: Even though a third of the nation lies below sea level, Holland’s annual expenditures for flood prevention, at $1.5 billion, are a fraction of American costs for flood recovery, even on a per capita basis.
If President Biden is looking for another issue on which he can unite the country, starting a conversation on the need to massively invest in fire, flood and storm resilience in a climate-stressed world offers a promising opportunity. How about “Build it back safely” as a subset of “Build it back better”?
“To learn more about Carl’s views on the environment, energy and climate, read “Climate of Hope” which he has co-authored with former NYC Mayor Mike Bloomberg and which can be purchased online or from your local book store.
A veteran leader in the environmental movement, Carl Pope is the former executive director and chairman of the Sierra Club. He’s now the principal advisor at Inside Straight Strategies, looking for the underlying economics that link sustainability and economic development and serves as a Senior Climate Advisor to former NYC Mayor Michael Bloomberg. He has served on the Boards of the California League of Conservation Voters, Public Voice, National Clean Air Coalition, California Common Cause, Public Interest Economics Inc, and Zero Population Growth.
Mr. Pope is also the author of the books: Sahib, An American Misadventure in India and Hazardous Waste In America. Carl Pope is the co-author with Michael Bloomberg of Climate of Hope: How Cities, Businesses, and Citizens Can Save the Planet. How to attack climate change as a series of manageable challenges, each with a solution that can make our society healthier and our economy stronger.
* This article was originally published here
Tuesday, February 23, 2021
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