Written by rjs, MarketWatch 666
This is a collection of interesting news articles about the environment and related topics published last week. This is usually a Tuesday evening regular post at GEI (but can be posted at other times). This week it was posted early Wednesday am.
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Note: Because of the high volume of news regarding the coronavirus outbreak, that news has been published separately:
- 21 Feb 2021 – Coronavirus Disease Weekly News 21February 2021
- 21 Feb 2021 – Coronavirus Economic Weekly News 21February 2021
The first collection includes news on the mutant strains of the virus, the vaccines, their efficacy and problems with them, and on disease demographics, whereas the 2nd collection includes related policy and politics as well as economic impacts. There is a lot on the economic stimulus package making its way through congress, and for reasons I don’t quite understand, maybe a couple dozen articles on problems encountered by school systems reopening in the middle of February.
Covid-19 infections and deaths continue to decline, and for the most part the news on it has receded from the MSM sites and now comes from the speciality websites and blogs. There were 28.7% fewer new US cases over the past week than over the prior week, and the new case count is now down 72.6% from the 2nd week of January, which now seems to be the definitive peak for this strain. US Covid deaths were down 24.5% from a week ago, and down 42.8% from the January 27th peak. the 7-day average for new cases is the lowest it’s been since October 26th, and the 7-day average of Covid deaths is at the lowest level since December 3rd. Global Covid metrics are also falling, but at a slower pace; that could be due to the impact of the vaccines, which only have significant penetration in a handful of rich countries.
The slower decline globally is important, though, because the coronavirus will not be controlled until it is controlled globally. As long as there are places on earth where the virus is replicating freely, there are places where the virus can develop additional mutations. Most mutations are fatal to the virus, but as we’ve seen, there’s at least a dozen Covid mutations circulating that are either more contagious, more deadly, or both, with at least one that is resistant to the vaccines currently in use. Even if the rich countries manage to vaccinate their entire populations, as long as the virus is spreading somewhere on earth, there continues to be the chance that a new mutation will arise that will put us all back on square one.
Some of the COVID-19 graphics presented in the articles linked at the beginning of this post have been updated below.
Summary data graphics:
Below is a copy of today’s graph of new US cases from WorldOMeters so you can get a visuallization of what the growth and decline of this thing looks like.
New cases globally have started to decrease. (See Johns Hopkins graph below.) This graphic shows the daily global new cases since the start of the pandemic up through 23 February.
Globally deaths appear to have also started to decrease, although much more slowly than new cases. (See Johns Hopkins graph below.) This graphic shows the daily global deaths since the start of the pandemic up through 23 February.
The week’s environment and energy news follows; it’s heavy on the Texas grid failure, the weather leading up to it, and then some about how it happened, although I’m sure that further investigations will be forthcoming. It’s also a little disjointed, because my normal approach of grouping environmental stories like weather separately from those about power sources and the grid didn’t work in this case, leaving a lot of stories dangling. And as usual, a bunch of stories relating to the Ohio nuclear bribery scandal are at the end.
Here’s the news:
First human case of H5N8 bird flu reported in Russia – Russia on Saturday announced that it has identified the first cases of H5N8 avian influenza in humans, according to multiple reports. Anna Popova, the country’s public health chief, said in televised comments that seven cases were detected in workers at a poultry farm in southern Russia, Bloomberg News reported. Authorities have reported information on the cases to the World Health Organization. Popova said that the workers had mild cases and were recovered. The poultry farm was the site of an outbreak among birds in December, Bloomberg noted. “It is not transmitted from person to person. But only time will tell how soon future mutations will allow it to overcome this barrier,” she said, according to the news outlet. “The discovery of this strain now gives us all, the whole world, time to prepare for possible mutations and the possibility to react in a timely way and develop test systems and vaccines.” The WHO’s European branch acknowledged in an emailed statement that Russia informed it of a case of human infection with the strain, Reuters reported. The email acknowledged the cases were “asymptomatic and no onward human to human transmission was reported.” “We are in discussion with national authorities to gather more information and assess the public health impact of this event,” the email said. WHO didn’t immediately return a request for comment from The Hill. Reuters noted that recent outbreaks of the strain have occurred in Europe, China, the Middle East, and North Africa in recent months, but only in poultry.
Guinea confirms 3 dead from Ebola, first cases since 2016 – Health officials in Guinea on Sunday confirmed that at least three people have died from Ebola there, the first cases declared since it was one of three West African nations to fight the world’s deadliest Ebola epidemic that ended five years ago. An additional four people are confirmed with Ebola, according to a statement from the ministry of health. All seven positive cases attended the funeral of a nurse in Goueke on Feb. 1 and later showed Ebola symptoms including a fever, diarrhea, vomiting, said the ministry statement. The government has declared an Ebola epidemic and started contact tracing and isolating suspected cases. It’s also sent an emergency team to support local teams in Goueke and has accelerated the procurement of Ebola vaccines from the World Health Organization. “I confirm it’s Ebola. The results prove it,” Minister of Health Remy Lamah told The Associated Press by phone. The patients were tested for Ebola after showing symptoms of hemorrhagic fever and those who came in contact with the sick are already in isolation, said officials. Guinea’s announcement comes one week after eastern Congo confirmed it also had cases. The cases are not linked. Health experts in Guinea say these latest cases could be a major setback for the impoverished nation, already battling COVID-19 and which is still recovering from the previous Ebola outbreak, which killed 2,500 in Guinea where it began. More than 11,300 people died in that outbreak which also hit the neighboring countries of Liberia and Sierra Leone between 2014 and 2016. “The resurgence of Ebola is very concerning for what it could do for the people, the economy, the health infrastructure,” “We’re still understanding the repercussions of the (last) outbreak on the population,” she said. To contain the spread, the government and international health organizations must respond quickly and educate communities about what’s going on,
Californians With Long Commutes Are Inhaling Carcinogens, Study Finds – Californians with long commutes may be inhaling chemicals that put them at risk for cancer and birth defects, a new study has found.Led by UC Riverside, a study published in Environment International found that up to 90 percent of the population with 30-minute commutes in Los Angeles, San Diego, Orange, Santa Clara and Alameda counties have at least a 10 percent exceeded risk of cancer due to inhaling unhealthy levels of chemicals stitched into the fabric of their cars.Long periods spent in cars expose commuters to unsustainable levels of two carcinogens known as benzene and formaldehyde, the study found. “These chemicals are very volatile, moving easily from plastics and textiles to the air that you breathe,” David Volz, a UCR professor of environmental toxicology, told UCR.While benzene and formaldehyde are listed under California’s Proposition 65, which requires workplaces to post warnings of exposure to chemicals that could cause cancer, birth defects or reproductive harm, how they infiltrate private spaces, like the inside of someone’s car, is less recognized and therefore less regulated, UCR reportedThe average commute time for Californians is 30 minutes, The Sacramento Bee reported. This time spent is expected to grow as cities become more crowded and expensive.”Of course, there is a range of exposure that depends on how long you’re in the car, and how much of the compounds your car is emitting,” Aalekhya Reddam, a graduate student and lead author of the study, told UCR. Keeping windows down during a long commute could allow “some air flow,” diluting “the concentration of these chemicals inside your car,” Reddam added. But chemicals inside their cars are not the only toxins harming Californians. Heavy pollution, caused by on-road sources, on average disproportionately harm African American and Latino Californians compared to white Californians, according to a report by the Union of Concerned Scientists. This exposure comes with a heavy cost, causing lung and heart ailments, asthma and premature death.
‘New Car Smell’ Is The Scent of Carcinogens, And Even Short Trips May Overexpose Us – The average American spends almost one hour each day commuting to work, a number that adds up quickly.Now, research has found that Californian car commuters can be exposed to above-acceptable levels of unhealthy chemicals during their daily work trips.Estimating commuter times from census data and using measurements of chemicals detected in previous studies, the new study found commutes of more than 20 minutes put people at risk of unacceptably high levels of two carcinogens used in car manufacturing.At first glance, it might seem like worrying news for people who spend a lot of time behind the wheel on daily commutes. But there are a lot of factors at play, so let’s unpack it a little.The distinct smell of a new car gives you a whiff of what’s happening here. Materials used to fit out cars, from hard and soft plastics to adhesives, textiles and foam, contain some chemicals that can slowly seep into the air (the technical term is ‘off-gas’) or catch a ride on dust.”These chemicals are very volatile, moving easily from plastics and textiles to the air that you breathe,” said environmental toxicologist David Volz from the University of California Riverside, who co-authored the study.Volatile compounds can build up in small spaces, such as inside a car (unless you open a window for fresh air).While much research to date has focused on outdoor air pollution and its impact on health, and indoor environments, such as workplaces or homes where people spend most of their days, this study suggests chemicals building up inside vehicles could also be a concern – to some drivers. The study aimed to estimate when a person’s exposure to known carcinogens likely tipped over safe thresholds based on the time commuters spent inside their vehicles, and on the levels of five chemicals detected inside cars in previous studies.
Pharmaceuticals Pollute the Ganges – Studies increasingly point to the presence of pharmaceutical and personal care products in urban stretches along the Ganges River, which originates pristine in the Himalayas but is heavily polluted with industrial effluents and domestic sewage when it empties into the Bay of Bengal. Researchers from Doon University, Dehra Dun, India, have reported the presence of 15 pharmaceutical and personal care products (PPCPs) in the Ganges near two Hindu pilgrimage cities. These pollutants include caffeine, anti-inflammatory drugs, common antibiotics, beta blockers, antibacterials, and insect repellents. Over three seasons, Doon scientists studied the river waters of two cities in the rapidly industrializing Himalayan state of Uttarakhand: Haridwar, where the Ganges enters India’s northern plains from the Himalayas, and Rishikesh, 21 kilometers away. Haridwar and Rishikesh, with a combined population of 400,000, attract an estimated 20 million tourists and pilgrims annually. In particular, the scientists analyzed the water at its point of entry into the two cities and at sites before its entry into a sewage treatment plant and after sewage treatment. PPCP concentrations near the cities varied, with the highest measured concentration being 1,104.84 nanograms per liter. Researchers found higher PPCP concentrations at the lower, more populated reaches of the river. The concentrations, especially of anti-inflammatory drugs and antibiotics, were also higher in winter, possibly because of decreased biodegradation associated with lower temperatures and inadequate sunlight, the report said. The study also showed that PPCPs in the region were associated with a higher risk of algal blooms and a moderate risk to the health of river fish. “The high load of PPCPs during summer and winter could be attributed to the excessive tourist visits for recreational activities and spiritual congregations during these seasons,” according to the report, to be published in Chemosphere in April.There are few studies on PPCPs in Indian rivers. “Such studies are expensive, as they require sophisticated instruments,” Suthar explained. “Sewage, treated or untreated, flowing into the rivers is the main polluter,” Sewage and effluent have long been associated with chemical pollution, as people flush medicines, cosmetics, and hygiene products down the toilet or throw them in the trash. The waste ends up in water treatment plants and landfills and then makes its way into water supplies such as the Ganges. “Aquaculture, agricultural farms, and pharma industries can be other important sources,” Balakrishna added.
Common weed killers favour antibiotic resistant bacteria, new study shows – The use of weed killers can increase the prevalence of antibiotic resistant bacteria in soil, a new study from the University of York shows. Herbicides are one of the most widely used chemicals in agriculture and while these compounds are used to target weeds, they can cause damage to soil microbes, such as bacteria and fungi, potentially changing the ecological properties of microbial communities. Scientists from China and the UK studied the effect of three widely used herbicides called glyphosate, glufosinate and dicamba on soil bacterial communities. Using soil microcosms, researchers discovered that herbicides increased the relative abundance of bacterial species that carried antibiotic resistance genes. This was because mutations that improved growth in the presence of herbicides also increased bacterial tolerance to antibiotics. Herbicide exposure also led to more frequent movement of antibiotic resistance genes between bacteria. Similar patterns were found in agricultural fields across 11 Chinese provinces where herbicide application history, and the levels of herbicide residues in soils, were linked to increased levels of antibiotic resistance genes. “Our results suggest that the use of herbicides could indirectly drive antibiotic resistance evolution in agricultural soil microbiomes, which are repeatedly exposed to herbicides during weed control. “Interestingly, antibiotic resistance genes were favoured at herbicide concentrations that were not lethal to bacteria. This shows that already very low levels of herbicides could significantly change the genetic composition of soil bacterial populations. Such effects are currently missed by ecotoxicological risk assessments, which do not consider evolutionary consequences of prolonged chemical application at the level of microbial communities.
Corn belt farmland has lost a third of its carbon-rich soil – More than one-third of the Corn Belt in the Midwest – nearly 30 million acres – has completely lost its carbon-rich topsoil, according to University of Massachusetts Amherst research that indicates the U.S. Department of Agriculture has significantly underestimated the true magnitude of farmland erosion.In a paper published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, researchers led by UMass Amherst graduate student Evan Thaler, along with professors Isaac Larsen and Qian Yu in the department of geosciences, developed a method using satellite imagery to map areas in agricultural fields in the Corn Belt of the Midwestern U.S. that have no remaining A-horizon soil. The A-horizon is the upper portion of the soil that is rich in organic matter, which is critical for plant growth because of its water and nutrient retention properties. The researchers then used high-resolution elevation data to extrapolate the satellite measurements across the Corn Belt and the true magnitude of erosion.Productive agricultural soils are vital for producing food for a growing global population and for sustaining rural economies. However, degradation of soil quality by erosion reduces crop yields. Thaler and his colleagues estimate that erosion of the A-horizon has reduced corn and soybean yields by about 6%, leading to nearly $3 billion in annual economic losses for farmers across the Midwest. The A-horizon has primarily been lost on hilltops and ridgelines, which indicates that tillage erosion – downslope movement of soil by repeated plowing – is a major driver of soil loss in the Midwest. Notably, tillage erosion is not included in national assessments of soil loss and the research highlights the urgent need to include tillage erosion in the soil erosion models that are used in the U.S. and to incentivize adoption of no-till farming methods. Further, their research suggests erosion has removed nearly 1.5 petagrams of carbon from hillslopes. Restoration of organic carbon to the degraded soils by switching from intensive conventional agricultural practices to soil-regenerative practices, has potential to sequester carbon dioxide from the atmosphere while restoring soil productivity.
A Bleak Future for Water — IN OUR MOMENT OF RABID FOR SALE-ISM, it would be easy to react to the announcement that even the future of water in California is for sale with a glib of course it is. As of December 7, the availability of water in the state can be bet on or against by way of what’s called a futures contract, which allows investors to make a claim on the future price of water. These are tied to the Nasdaq Veles California Water Index, which measures the volume-weighted average price of water, meaning that investors, farmers (read: agribusiness owners), and climate change onlookers can profit off of growing water scarcity. As droughts worsen, investors will be able reap the benefits of the realities of climate change. Those titillated by the prospect of making climate change profitable call this move an innovation – water is the only substance on earth to exist in a liquid, solid, and gaseous state; now, with its rebranding as a commodity, it will exist as all four: magic! (Yes, water was subject to speculation and market forces before the establishment of a futures index, but this is a marked change, making water a peer to gold and crude oil.) This, though, is not why investors and market rubberneckers are gleeful about the so-called solution of water futures. They claim that the revolution of water trading is a way to hedge price risks – not the risks produced by the very ability to make money off of the loss and degradation of water, but those posed by a warming atmosphere. A water futures index proposes that climate change is a self-made and ineluctable eventuality, while sidestepping the correct accusation that climate change is, in part, caused by the same forces that give rise to a water futures index. Corn, soybeans, milk, cattle, and wheat have all already been subject to futures trading; they are also components of a nation-wide agricultural operation that’s responsible for approximately 80 percent of the country’s consumptive water use. Over half of the grain grown in the United States goes toward feeding the livestock that we eat (and all of it is making us sick), yet 30 percent of that meat product goes uneaten while, at the same time, Feeding American estimates that in 2020, over fifty million people were what the federal government considers to be “food-insecure.” Trading water is not an aberration, but the logical endpoint of our for-sale system. But gambling on the future of our water supply is not something that we as a human species, nor the planet we’re briefly occupying, can withstand.
Hundreds of Fish Species, Including Many That Humans Eat, Are Consuming Plastic -Trillions of barely visible pieces of plastic are floating in the world’s oceans, from surface waters to the deep seas. These particles, known as microplastics, typically form when larger plastic objects such as shopping bags and food containers break down. Researchers are concerned about microplastics because they are minuscule, widely distributed and easy for wildlife to consume, accidentally or intentionally. We study marine science and animal behavior, and wanted to understand the scale of this problem. In a newly published study that we conducted with ecologist Elliott Hazen, we examined how marine fish – including species consumed by humans – are ingesting synthetic particles of all sizes.In the broadest review on this topic that has been carried out to date, we found that, so far, 386 marine fish species are known to have ingested plastic debris, including 210 species that are commercially important. But findings of fish consuming plastic are on the rise. are improving and because ocean plastic pollution continues to increase.To see the problem more clearly, we had to put those pieces together. We did this by creating the largest existing database on plastic ingestion by marine fish, drawing on every scientific study of the problem published from 1972 to 2019. We collected a range of information from each study, including what fish species it examined, the number of fish that had eaten plastic and when those fish were caught. Because some regions of the ocean have more plastic pollution than others, we also examined where the fish were found. Our research revealed that marine fish are ingesting plastic around the globe. According to the 129 scientific papers in our database, researchers have studied this problem in 555 fish species worldwide. We were alarmed to find that more than two-thirds of those species had ingested plastic. One important caveat is that not all of these studies looked for microplastics. This is likely because finding microplastics requires specialized equipment, like microscopes, or use of more complex techniques. But when researchers did look for microplastics, they found five times more plastic per individual fish than when they only looked for larger pieces. Studies that were able to detect this previously invisible threat revealed that plastic ingestion was higher than we had originally anticipated. Our review of four decades of research indicates that fish consumption of plastic is increasing. Just since an international assessment conducted for the United Nations in 2016, the number of marine fish species found with plastic has quadrupled. Similarly, in the last decade alone, the proportion of fish consuming plastic has doubled across all species. Studies published from 2010-2013 found that an average of 15% of the fish sampled contained plastic; in studies published from 2017-2019, that share rose to 33%.
Plastic recycling results in rare metals being found in children’s toys and food packaging – Some of the planet’s rarest metals – used in the manufacture of smartphones and other electrical equipment – are increasingly being found in everyday consumer plastics, according to new research. Scientists from the University of Plymouth and University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign tested a range of new and used products including children’s toys, office equipment and cosmetic containers. Through a number of detailed assessments, they examined levels of rare earth elements (REEs) but also quantities of bromine and antimony, used as flame retardants in electrical equipment and a sign of the presence of recycled electronic plastic. The results showed one or more REEs were found in 24 of the 31 products tested, including items where unregulated recycling is prohibited such as single-use food packaging. They were most commonly observed in samples containing bromine and antimony at levels insufficient to effect flame retardancy, but also found in plastics where those chemicals weren’t present. Having also been found in beached marine plastics, the study’s authors have suggested there is evidence that REEs are ubiquitous and pervasive contaminants of both contemporary and historical consumer and environmental plastics. The study, published in Science of the Total Environment, is the first to systematically investigate the full suite of REEs in a broad range of consumer plastics.
Waste Watch: News from the U.S. and the Maldives –Jerri-Lynn Scofield– A depressing email popped into my in-box last week, containing a photograph of a rubbish-choked Maafushi harbor. I know the place well, having visited at least four times and completed months of diving training there. Maafushi is an island in the Maldives, where ‘local tourism’ is allowed… tourists can interact with ordinary Maldivians, sample local culture, and enjoy the balmy climate, pristine beaches, and access to marine life for which the archipelago is justly celebrated – at a fraction of the cost of luxury resorts.I found the picture of the garbage-strewn harbor depressing, as I’d previously written about my friend Renee Sorensen’s successful efforts to clean up Maafushi in Dengue on My Mind: Spending on ‘Diseases of Poverty’ Not Enough to Create Effective Vaccines. Renee was an ex-pat Norwegian, who moved to Maafushi to dive, and eventually launched two businesses there. I include a short, inspiring video, in Norwegian with English sub-titles, for those readers who might be interested in how one woman, along with friends, the community, colleagues, and visitors, has worked to institute better waste management practices to deal with the spike in garbage that has accompanied the spread of local tourism on Maafushi and surrounding islands. Much of this waste was either being burnt or dumped into the lagoon.But to Renee, “the thing is that this is very easy to fix.” She knew that “In Norway we are managing the garbage well, and we are very lucky to have sorting facilities and recycling.”Rather than despairing at the threats to the island she had made her home – waste, plastic, and reef destruction caused by global warming and a tsunami – Renee focused instead on solutions, enlisting locals and visitors alike to fix these problems. In the spring of 2018, she caught dengue fever and despite being fit, healthy, and only in her forties, died. So that picture of a rubbish-choked harbor hit me hard. The last time I was in Maafushi, in July 2019, the harbor was relatively free of trash, the reefs I dived were clear of debris, and the walls outside of the local schoolhouse were decorated with anti-plastic murals.Yet it seems that Renee’s clean-up initiative is yet another causualty of the COVID-19 pandemic. With about a third of Maldivean GDP comes from tourism, and decline in tourism due to the pandemic has hit these atolls particularly hard. Yet the Maldives are far from unique in seeing a COVID-19 impact on its waste disposal systems, and a consequent buildup of plastic waste. Bali has also suffered, as Raw Story reports in Bali’s ‘trash heroes’ are cleaning up paradise, one beach at a time. And these problems are not just confined to tourist meccas. Heading west from the Maldives, past the mid-east, through the Mediterranean, and eventually across the Atlantic, we find the US confronting its own rubbish problems, with many U.S. towns and cities seeing strain on their waste disposal systems, including cancellation or curtailment of recycling operations.
Stray dogs with bright blue fur found in Russia -Reuters (photos) – A dog with blue fur is pictured inside a cage at a veterinary hospital where it was taken for examination in Nizhny Novgorod, Russia February 16, 2021. The pack of stray dogs with blue fur was found earlier this month near an abandoned chemical plant in the city of Dzerzhinsk.
Wisconsin Approves February Wolf Hunt –As the former and current administration’s endangered species policies battle for prominence, Wisconsin’swolves are caught in the crosshairs, literally.When the Trump administration delisted gray wolves from the Endangered Species Act, it triggered a Wisconsin law requiring the Wisconsin Department of Natural Resources (DNR) to hold a wolf hunt from mid-October through February, Wisconsin Public Radio reported. The DNR originally said it would wait until November 2021 to prepare a hunt, but hunting advocates sued to speed up the process, and last week a judge ordered the board to prepare a February hunt. This prompted the DNR to set a quota on Monday of 200 gray wolves that can be killed before the end of the month.Wildlife advocates oppose the move, pointing out that the rushed hunt will take place during the wolves’ breeding season.”You remove one, you’re essentially destabilizing and killing the entire pack,” Friends of the Wisconsin Wolf and Wildlife Executive Director Melissa Smith told Public News Service. “So, we expect this to be pretty detrimental to our wolf population.”The federal delisting of wolves officially went into effect in January. In December, the DNR said it would wait until November to set a hunting quota, arguing that it needed more time to make a scientifically sound plan and consult with tribes and the public, according to Wisconsin Public Radio. In late January, the state’s Natural Resources Board rejected a push from Republican lawmakers to speed up the quota, Wisconsin Public Radio reported at the time.However, Kansas-based group Hunter Nation sued the state to start the hunt this winter. It argued that delaying the hunt violated hunters’ constitutional rights, according to the Wisconsin State Journal. Circuit Judge Bennett Brantmeier ruled in the group’s favor. While Wisconsin is appealing this decision, the Natural Resources Board still voted Monday to authorize a February hunt.
Pattaya elephants starving, falling ill amid pandemic — Pattaya-area elephants are going hungry and falling ill as the coronavirus pandemic deprives owners and mahouts of money to feed them. Veterinarian Phadet Siridamrong, owner of Nernplubwan Animal Hospital, responded to the Krating Lai Elephant Garden Feb. 12 after 50-year-old Khunpan became unable to stand. He said the elephant has not been getting enough to eat and has become too weak. 50-year-old Khunpan became unable to stand after becoming too weak from not getting enough to eat. He treated the elephant with 50 bottles of intravenous fluids and medicine for skin sores from lying in the same position too long. Pa Petchkla, the brother of the elephant’s owner, said the camp has five elephants under its care, but no income from tourists. The 43-year-old said his older brother has resorted to driving a songthaew to earn a living, but the money is not enough to feed the animals their usual 1,000-2,000 baht of food a day. This beautiful old pachyderm has suffered terribly from the economic downturn brought on by Covid-19. Phadet said mahouts and camp staff also have left to find other jobs, meaning many elephants are not getting their required walking and exercising. The animals are becoming malnourished, weak and sick. Pa said he has contacted the Thai Elephant Alliance Association for help. The vet is removing the sick pachyderm from the camp and sending it to a specialized elephant hospital in Surin with help from the elephant alliance. Mgid
500+ Scientists Demand Stop to Tree Burning as Climate Solution – A group of more than 500 international scientists on Thursday urged world leaders to end policies that prop up the burning of trees for energy because it poses “a double climate problem” that threatens forests’ biodiversity and efforts to stem the planet’s ecological emergency. The demand came in a letter addressed to European Commission President Urusla Von der Leyen, European Council President Charles Michel, U.S. President Joe Biden, Japanese Prime Minister Yoshihide Suga, and South Korean President Moon Jae-in. The signatories – including renowned botanist Dr. Peter Raven, president emeritus of the Missouri Botanical Garden – reject the assertion that burning biomass is carbon neutral. Referring to forest “preservation and restoration” as key in meeting the nations’ declared goals of carbon neutrality by 2050, the letter frames the slashing of trees for bioenergy as “misguided.” “We urge you not to undermine both climate goals and the world’s biodiversity by shifting from burning fossil fuels to burning trees to generate energy,” the group wrote. The destruction of forests, which are a carbon sink, creates a “carbon debt.” And though regrowing “trees and displacement of fossil fuels may eventually pay off this carbon debt,” the signatories say that “regrowth takes time the world does not have to solve climate change.” What’s more, burning trees is “carbon-inefficient,” they say. “Overall, for each kilowatt hour of heat or electricity produced, using wood initially is likely to add two to three times as much carbon to the air as using fossil fuels.” Another issue is that efforts using taxpayer money to sustain biomass burning stymies what are truly renewable energy policies. “Government subsidies for burning wood create a double climate problem because this false solution is replacing real carbon reductions,” the letter states. “Companies are shifting fossil energy use to wood, which increases warming, as a substitute for shifting to solar and wind, which would truly decrease warming.” Merely making countries responsible for the emissions that stem from land use changes is insufficient, the scientists write, because that would “not alter the incentives created by [national] laws for power plants and factories to burn wood.”
Scientists Make Unexpected Find Beneath Antarctic Ice — Scientists recently made an unexpected discovery while drilling for sediment on an Antarctic ice shelf. The researchers were drilling on the Filchner-Ronne Ice Shelf, about 160 miles from the open ocean, and hit almost 3,000 feet when they caught surprising camera footage of sponges and other stationary animals on a sea floor boulder, according to a British Antarctic Survey (BAS) press release. “It’s slightly bonkers,” Dr. Huw Griffiths, a BAS marine biogeographer and lead author on the paper announcing the find, told The Guardian. “Never in a million years would we have thought about looking for this kind of life, because we didn’t think it would be there.” The discovery, published Monday in Frontiers in Marine Science, challenges previously held ideas about what types of life could survive beneath the ice. Previous expeditions observed mobile scavengers and predators such as fish and jellyfish, but scientists predicted life would become less frequent the further beneath the ice sheet one traveled from sunlight and open water, BAS explained. Discovering sedentary filter-feeders is especially surprising, because these types of animals depend on food reaching them from the surface. At the same time, little is known about the world beneath these ice sheets. They cover more than 0.6 million square miles, but scientists have only explored a tennis court-sized area.
Thousands of ‘cold-stunned’ sea turtles rescued off Texas coast – Volunteers have been rescuing thousands of cold-stunned sea turtles from the shores of the US state of Texas as a deadly cold wave in the region continues to cause power outages and water shortages. About 4,700 sea turtles have been brought to a convention centre on South Padre Island since Monday, after the creatures, unaccustomed to the dramatic drop in temperature, washed ashore. Wendy Knight, the executive director of research and conservation centre Sea Turtle Inc called the volume of distressed turtles “an unprecedented event”. People bring rescued turtles stunned by the cold to an evacuation centre on South Padre Island, Texas [Ed Caum/City of South Padre Island Convention and Visitors Bureau] She told Reuters news agency that a normal winter season sees only between 100 and 500 sea turtles wash up on shore. Ed Caum, executive director of the South Padre Island Convention and Visitors Bureau, told the Associated Press it was unclear how long the turtles would need to stay at the convention centre, as another approaching cold front means it could be days before temperatures are warm enough to return them. “We’re trying to do the best we can to save as many turtles as possible,” he said, adding that power had been restored to the convention centre on Wednesday. Video posted by Caum showed volunteers unloading turtles from trucks onto trolleys, and thousands of turtles filling nearly all of the floor space in the convention centre. Volunteers on South Padre weren’t the only ones rescuing turtles from the cold. On Wednesday, the Texas Game Warden’s office tweeted that it had rescued 141 turtles from the Brownsville Ship Channel and “surrounding bays” in the state’s southern tip of Cameron County. Winter storms across the Midwest, Texas and parts of the south left nearly 3.4 million residents across the US without electricity on Wednesday. In Texas, about 7 million people, a quarter of the state’s population, have been told to boil their water or stop using it entirely as homeowners, hospitals, and businesses grappled with broken water mains and burst pipes. Critics have decried the widespread loss of electricity in Texas, attributing it to rampant deregulation that has allowed power companies to get away with not adequately preparing for cold weather events.
Persistent flooding damages thousands of homes and wide swaths of land in southern Mozambique – Persistent flooding in southern Mozambique has caused damage to around 4 200 homes and more than 54 000 ha (133 400 acres) of agricultural land. Heavy rains have been affecting the southern areas of the country, falling on grounds already saturated by downpours brought by Tropical Cyclone “Eloise” in late January.Severe flooding has been affecting the country’s southern region after heavy rains fell over the past days. The inundations caused by Eloise, which made landfall in Beira on January 23, were further worsened.As of February 15, around 3 000 houses were flooded in Maputo Provine, while 1 200 homes were damaged in Matola District.Parts of Maputo City and Marracuene District were impacted after the Incomati River overflowed. Boane District was also hit by inundations after the Umbeluzi River broke its banks.The districts of Magude, Moamba, and Matutine were cut off as roads were swamped. Further north, high water levels of the Limpopo River send floodwaters in parts of Gaza Province, damaging crops and houses. According to local media, more than 54 000 (133 400 acres) of agricultural land were ravaged in the province. The worst-hit crops were corn, beans, rice, and vegetables.
Weeks of heavy rains leave more than 30 fatalities in South Africa (videos) Heavy rains affecting parts of South Africa since January 23 when Tropical Cyclone “Eloise” swept over the region has claimed more than 30 lives in the provinces of Mpumalanga, Northern Cape, Limpopo, and KwaZulu-Natal. Eloise made landfall north of Beira, Mozambique, on Saturday, January 23, but heavy rains continued through the rest of the month and into February, leading to further flooding. Water levels on dams also continued to rise, prompting authorities to start releasing water from the Vaal Dam as of February 11. Among the worst-hit provinces was Mpumalanga, where 10 fatalities have been confirmed by the government. The victims died during the heavy rains that followed Eloise, which reached the province by the end of January. Most of the casualties were a result of drowning in flooded rivers. Roads and bridges were washed away in Mbombela, Bushbuckridge, and Nkomazi, among other areas, according to the province’s Cooperative Governance Department (COGTA). Downpours continued in the province in recent days, with Komatidraai recording about 130 mm (5 inches) of rain in a 24 hour period to February 13.Heavy rains brought by Eloise reached as far as Northern Cape from around January 27. According to the provincial government, about three people lost their lives in the storm’s onslaught. Flooding ravaged farms, damaged hundreds of homes, and washed away roads, particularly in the John Taolo Gaetsewe District. As of February 12, many roads were still flooded, prompting authorities to deliver relief supplies via helicopter. About 600 million ZAR or 40 million dollars is needed for repairs of infrastructure, humanitarian relief, as well as homes and agricultural aid, the government said. In Limpopo, at least 10 fatalities were reported by the provincial government, while seven others remain missing. Search and rescue operations are ongoing, involving the South African Police Service In KwaZulu-Natal, eight people lost their lives as a result of severe weather following the landfall of Eloise. Dozens of buildings were damaged, affecting around 400 people.
New Study Confirms Dangerous Sea Level Rise Projections Are Accurate –A new study from Australian and Chinese researchers adds weight to scientists’ warnings from recent United Nations reports about how sea levels are expected to rise dangerously in the coming decades because of human activity that’s driving global heating.The research, published Friday in the journal Nature Communications, found that sea level rise projections for this century “are on the money when tested against satellite and tide-gauge observations,” as a statement from the University of New South Wales (UNSW) summarized.The researchers looked at projections from the Fifth Assessment Report (AR5) of the U.N. Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) as well as the body’s Special Report on the Ocean and Cryosphere in a Changing Climate (SROCC), which include multiple representative concentration pathway (RCP) scenarios for how much humanity reins in greenhouse gas emissions.Based on global and coastal sea level data from satellites and 177 tide-gauges, the researchers found that those two reports’ projections under three different RCP scenarios “agree well with satellite and tide-gauge observations over the common period 2007 – 2018, within the 90% confidence level.”In other words, “our analysis implies that the models are close to observations and builds confidence in the current projections for the next several decades,” said John Church, who is part of UNSW’s Climate Change Research Center. The professor noted projections were accurate not only globally but also at the regional and local level.However, because of the limited 11-year comparison period, Church added, “there remains a potential for larger sea level rises, particularly beyond 2100 for high emission scenarios. Therefore, it is urgent that we still try to meet the commitments of the Paris agreement by significantly reducing emissions.”
Powerful blizzard causes whiteout conditions in Northern Ireland – A severe blizzard hit Northern Ireland on Saturday, February 13, 2021, causing whiteout conditions in most areas. The harsh weather conditions came after the UK experienced its deepest “extreme freeze” in a decade, which brought record cold temperatures.Strong winds and snow battered Northern Ireland on Saturday, resulting in whiteout conditions on roads and streets. “[It was] some of the most dramatic scenes I have witnessed here,” a local said after she filmed the powerful snowstorm blowing away bushes and tree branches.The severe weather came after the UK saw its deepest “extreme freeze” for a decade.On February 11, the country recorded its coldest night in more than 25 years as temperatures pummeled to nearly -23 °C (-9.4 °F) in northern Scotland.While temperatures are set to get warmer from Monday, February 15, Met Eireann forecasts more snow to come this week.On Wednesday, February 17, a low-pressure system is set to move up from the south, bringing widespread rain with a risk of flooding.
Widespread disruption after heaviest snowfall in 12 years hits Greece – Heavy snowfall has caused widespread disruption in many parts of Greece, including the capital — Athens, on Monday, February 15, 2021, resulting in delayed transport, power outages, and suspended services. According to the National Meteorological Service, this was the country’s ‘fiercest’ snowfall in terms of intensity and volume in 12 years. The snow, which is common in the north but rare in the capital, put many services across the country to a standstill. Most public transport services were delayed, while toppled trees caused power outages in several mountainside suburbs. Parts of the nation’s main highway were closed, most ferry services to the islands were canceled, and flights from regional airports disrupted. The fire service said they received more than 600 calls for assistance in greater Athens alone. “The calls mainly concerned downed trees and transporting people stuck in their vehicles to a safe place, but also to transport kidney dialysis patients to receive treatment,” fire service spokesman Vassilis Vatharakoyiannis told the state TV.”Vaccinations have been postponed but we have helped transport doctors and medical staff where they are needed and we helped power technicians get to damaged electricity pylons in areas where access was difficult,” he added. Theodoros Kolydas, head of the meteorological service, said this was the fiercest snowfall, in terms of intensity and volume, in 12 years.
Saudi Arabia hit by a rare blizzard as region sees snow fall — These camels are taking their lumps in Saudi Arabia, which was hit by a blizzard Thursday, according to a report.The dreary dromedaries – with their humps resembling snowy mountains – were captured on video gazing around their surroundings during the surreal storm.Meanwhile, residents of Tabuk and the adjoining mountainous region enjoyed the winter wonderland as the popular holiday destination was socked with snow, the Khaleej Times reported.Residents and tourists, including some who drove from the UAE, flocked to the area to enjoy the weather, which is an annual phenomenon, according to Al Arabiya.The winter season in the kingdom is called Kashta, or season for camping. Thursday’s highs in Saudi Arabia were 56 degrees Fahrenheit, with a low of about 36 degrees in the Tabuk area. On Wednesday, snow also blanketed parts of Syria, Lebanon, Jordan, Libya and Israel, covering areas it has not reached in years.
Libya sees first snow in 15 years as cold snap hits parts of northern Africa and Middle East –The Green Mountain in northeastern Libya saw its first snowfall in 15 years this week as a cold wave swept through parts of the southern Mediterranean region, northern Africa, and the Middle East, including Egypt, Syria, Lebanon, and Israel.The rare snow started falling on Monday, February 15, which brought delight to residents as they enjoyed the wintry scenery.Mohammed Saleh, a resident from Bayda, believes that the snowfall is an omen for peace in Libya. “We hope the snowfall will be a good sign for our homeland by unifying our institutions and unifying our country and for people to return to one another and love each other.”He continued, “As we see now, the children, people, and families that came to this area, the area of Sidi Mohamed Al-Hamri.”Ali Al-Shairi, another Bayda Resident, captured the winter wonderland and said he was “surprised by the number of families who came here to take pictures in the snow.”According to the Libyan National Meteorological Center, temperatures below freezing point were recorded in several cities on Monday, including Al-Bayda, Yefren, Nalut, Al-Marj, Green Mountain, and the Nafusa Mountain.In neighboring Egypt, the cold snap brought freezing rain, strong winds, and mist. While the spell had no remarkable impact on road traffic, officials closed a number of ports in Hurghada and Sharm El-Sheik. Fishing activities were also suspended, as a precautionary measure.Ice pellets were reported in Alexandria, Beheira, and Port Said, with some parts slicked with snow, according to the Egyptian Meteorological Authority (EMA). Heavy snow was experienced as well over parts of the Middle East, including Syria, Lebanon, and Israel since Tuesday, February 16, paralyzing citizens’ daily lives.
Severe snowstorm hits northern Japan, JMA warns it could become the strongest in years (videos) A severe snowstorm started affecting northern Japan on Tuesday, February 16, 2021, causing flooding and transport disruptions. The Japan Meteorological Agency (JMA) warned it could become the most powerful blizzard in years and cause whiteout conditions through Wednesday, February 17.A rapidly developed low pressure system is advancing westward over the Sea of Okhotsk, bringing extremely strong winds and causing storm surge that already flooded many homes in western parts of Hokkaido.Wind gusts of up to 162 km/h (101 mph) were recorded at Cape Erimo, Hokkaido, 135 km/h (84 mph) in Sakata city, Yamagata Prefecture, and 111 km/h (69 mph) in Akita City, Tohoku.The blizzard triggered the closure of nearly 600 schools, the cancelation of about 70 flights, and the disruption of more than 200 train services, according to the Kyodo News.The JMA warned of “the most powerful blizzard in years,” and advised people to refrain from going outside as the storm may produce whiteout conditions through Wednesday.Heavy snow, high waves, and strong winds may also cause further disruptions in the northeast and areas along the coast of the Sea of Japan. Up to 60 cm (24 inches) of snow is forecast in the Hokuriku region and the northeast, while up to 50 cm (20 inches) is expected across Hokkaido in 24 hours to Wednesday morning.
Large landslide hits East Java, leaving 18 people dead or missing, Indonesia — A large landslide caused by heavy rains hit Ngetos village of Nganjuk Regency in East Java, Indonesia on February 14, 2021, leaving at least 2 people dead and 16 others missing. According to BNPB, the landslide took place at 18:30 LT (11:30 UTC), severely damaging as many as 8 homes. Initially, 21 residents were reportedly affected by the slide. Of these, 2 were found dead and 3 others injured. Search and rescue operations are in progress for 16 people who remain missing as of February 15. BNPB said rescuers had to use makeshift tools to search for missing people as heavy machinery has not been able to reach the location due to the narrow path to the location. In addition, flooding was reported in Pasuruan Regency on the same day after heavy rain caused the overflow of the Kedunglarangan River in Bangli District, and the Rejoso River in Winongan and Grati districts. Some 300 homes were damaged, officials said.
Forced evacuation of communities near Taal volcano, Philippines —Philippine disaster response officials have ordered the evacuation of residents living near Taal volcano on February 16, 2021, after continued increased activity at the volcano. Taal erupted in January 2020 for the first time in decades, ejecting volcanic ash up to 16.7 km (55 000 feet) above sea level and affecting the lives of at least 500 000 people.According to NDRRMC, evacuation orders are in effect for people living within the volcano island, particularly those in two rural communities in the Talisay municipality.The order was issued after PHIVOLCS recorded 98 tremor episodes with durations of 5 to 12 minutes in 24 hours to 00:00 UTC (08:00 LT) on February 16.During the same period, activity in the Main Crater consisted of weak emission of white steam-laden plumes from fumaroles that rose 5 m (16 feet) high.Temperature highs of 77.1 °C (170.8 °F) and pH of 1.59 were last measured from the Main Crater Lake on February 12, 2021.Ground deformation parameters from continuous electronic tilt on Volcano Island record a slight deflation around the Main Crater since October 2020 but overall, very slow and steady inflation of the Taal region has been recorded by continuous GPS data after the eruption.The Alert Level remains at 1 (Abnormal). PHIVOLCS reminds the public that at this level, sudden steam-driven or phreatic explosions, volcanic earthquakes, minor ashfall, and lethal accumulations or expulsions of volcanic gas can occur and threaten areas within the Taal Volcano Island (TVI).
Unusual ‘lava’ flow spotted in Himachal Pradesh, India – (video) An unusual “volcanic eruption” took place in the Kullu District in Himachal Pradesh, India, where a lava-like substance was spotted downhill, making rounds on social media on Tuesday, February 16, 2021. According to local reports, there is no history of volcanic activity in the state. The lava flow occurred in the Lafali panchayat of Anni subdivision in Kullu, which melted the snow and scorched the grass before turning solid. The footage shows a group of officials inspecting the roadside and a burnt and bent pole. Chet Singh, a subdivisional magistrate in Anni, told Times of India that he had seen the video, which seemed to have been taken a few days ago. “The pole has been removed,” said Singh. “The tehsildar will lead a team into the area on Wednesday (February 17) and only then can we say anything.” S.S. Randhawa, principal scientific officer of the Himachal Pradesh State Center on Climate Change, ruled out a volcanic activity and noted that the uncommon event might be due to either the burning of a carbon shell or tectonic activity as there is no history of volcanic activity in the state. In 2014, the Kangra District reported a similar event wherein flames and lava steam were emitted out of a hill. State geologists confirmed that it was a small magmatic activity. While volcanic activity is rare, magmatic flow is not unusual to the state. Hot sulfur springs in Manikaran, Kalath, Vashishth, and Kalath prove that there is magma underneath.
Intense explosive activity at Etna volcano, Aviation Color Code raised to Red, Italy –Explosive activity intensified at Etna’s Southeast Crater (SEC) on Monday, February 15, 2021, and continued into Tuesday. The activity further intensified at 16:10 UTC on February 16 with lava fountaining and strong ash emissions reaching a height of about 10 km (33 000 feet) a.s.l. The Aviation Color Code was raised to Red. Activity at the crater started intensifying in the early hours (UTC) of February 15, INGV reported. The average size of the volcanic tremor had already shown an increasing trend in the early hours and further intensified around 16:00 UTC, with the amplitude reaching high values. The tremors were located below the SE crater, at a depth of about 2.9 km (1.8 miles) above sea level. The infrasonic activity was also high, but deformation data from GPS and clinometric networks showed no significant changes. Starting at 16:10 UTC on February 16, explosive activity at the SE crater evolved into lava fountaining with the formation of a growing ash cloud, drifting southward. From a seismic point of view, the average magnitude of volcanic tremor in the last few hours remained at high levels and then significantly increased from 16:00 UTC. The tremors remained confined below the SE crater in the depth range between 2.9 and 3 km (1.8 miles) above sea level. The increasing tremor was accompanied by violent infrasonic activity with high amplitude signals.According to data provided by Toulouse VAAC, the activity produced very strong ash emission with an estimated volcanic cloud height around 10 km (33 000 feet) above sea level. The Aviation Color Code was raised to Red at 16:31 UTC.
Third paroxysm with very strong ash emission to 10 km (33 000 feet) a.s.l. at Etna volcano, Italy The third paroxysm in just several days started at Etna volcano early Friday morning (UTC), February 19, 2021. The Aviation Color Code was raised to Red at 08:53 UTC. Lava fountaining was observed at summit craters with very strong ash emission and ashfall in villages on the ESE flank of the volcano. The estimated volcanic cloud height was 10 km (33 000 feet) above sea level at 10:00 UTC today. A new lava overflow of the Southeast Crater started shortly before 07:55 UTC. The lava flow is descending the eastern side of the cone, heading towards the Valle del Bove.The following videos were captured on February 18:
Storm knocks out power for more than 3.8 million in Texas, suspected tornado kills 3 in North Carolina —A deadly winter storm pummeling the country’s South and mid-section left millions without power in Texas early Tuesday and spawned a possible tornado that killed three in North Carolina.The suspected tornado hit North Carolina’s Brunswick County around midnight and left at least three people dead and 10 injured, Brunswick County Emergency Services said Tuesday, ripping homes from their foundations and snapping trees in half.In Texas, two people, one a child, died from carbon monoxide poisoning after a car was used to generate power for heat, Houston Police said.More than 4.1 million people are waking up without power in Texas, according to poweroutage.us., as record low temperatures bring a demand for power that the state’s electric grid cannot keep up with.The areas hardest hit by outages were around Galveston and Houston, according to poweroutage.us.The storm that dropped snow and ice from Arkansas to Indiana – and brought record-low temperatures from Oklahoma City to Minnesota’s Iron Range, where thermometers dipped to minus 38 – was expected to move into the northeast Tuesday, the National Weather Service said. Snow, freezing rain and ice are expected from the Ohio Valley to Pennsylvania and Maine, the forecaster added.Texas officials pleaded with residents to stay off the roads, conserve power and seal up drafty windows and doors.At least 25 people have died in weather-related fatalities so far since Thursday, most of them in Texas, as the storm continues to blanket large swathes of the country.In North Carolina’s Brunswick County, there were reports of people trapped in homes or feared missing as rescue operations got underway after the possible tornado, Brunswick County emergency management officials said. An estimated 50 homes were affected and a temporary shelter had been set-up for the displaced.
Powerful EF-3 tornado rips through Brunswick County, North Carolina (video, photos) A high-end EF-3 tornado with estimated winds of 255 km/h (160 mph) ripped through the south end of Brunswick County, North Carolina at 23:30 LT on February 15, 2021 (04:30 UTC, February 16), leaving at least 3 people dead and injuring at least 10 others. The Brunswick County Sheriff’s Office said the tornado caused devastating damage to many homes, especially in the Ocean Ridge Plantation area. More than 50 homes were damaged and multiple completely destroyed, with a number of people trapped, Brunswick County Emergency Management said. More than 37 000 customers were left without power after the twister downed multiple power lines. The hardest-hit locations are the tows of Ocean Isle Beach, Sunset Beach, and Carolina Shores. A high-end EF-3 tornado with estimated winds of 255 km/h (160 mph) ripped through the south end of Brunswick County, North Carolina at 23:30 LT on February 15, 2021 (04:30 UTC, February 16), leaving at least 3 people dead and injuring at least 10 others. The Brunswick County Sheriff’s Office said the tornado caused devastating damage to many homes, especially in the Ocean Ridge Plantation area. More than 50 homes were damaged and multiple completely destroyed, with a number of people trapped, Brunswick County Emergency Management said. More than 37 000 customers were left without power after the twister downed multiple power lines. The hardest-hit locations are the tows of Ocean Isle Beach, Sunset Beach, and Carolina Shores. Another tornado made landfall near Damascus, Georgia, around 17:00 LT on Monday, February 15. Preliminary damage assessments from the NWS confirmed it to have inflicted EF-2 damage. The tornado damaged several homes and left one person injured.
Historic cold temps and snow in Wichita, Kansas (video)The incredibly historic winter storm continued its assault in southern Kansas on the morning of February 15, 2021, adding another 25 mm (1 inch) or more of snow during the Monday morning commute.Traffic was lighter than normal thanks to the holiday, but icy conditions and low visibility lead to a few issues.Temperatures on February 14 shattered record lows with Wichita recording -21 °C (-7 °F), beating the 1936 record of -20 °C (-4 °F) for the date. The record low for February 15 was already shattered at midnight, but not officially recorded as of late Monday morning.The previous record was -20.5 °C (-5 °F) in 1936, so far Wichita was -22.2 °C (-8 °F) with wind chill values around -34 °C (-30 °F). Wichita has not been above the freezing mark in over 8 days and counting, Storm Chasing Video reports.
More than 1.4 million homes without power as unprecedented winter storm hits Texas – (videos) More than 1.4 million homes are experiencing power outages across Texas after extremely cold temperatures and frozen precipitation blanketed the entire state, crippling transportation and infrastructure. Governor Gregg Abbot issued a statewide disaster declaration on February 12, warning all residents the state faces an unprecedented winter storm.All 254 Texas counties were placed under Winter Storm Warning on Saturday, February 13, the same as in Oklahoma and Arkansas on Sunday. As of Monday morning, February 15, more than 150 million Americans are under Winter Storm Warnings, Ice Storm Warnings, Winter Storm Watches, or Winter Weather Advisories as impactful winter weather continues from coast-to-coast. One day after record-breaking energy use across Texas on Sunday, February 14, 2021, the Electric Reliability Council of Texas (ERCOT) declared an ‘energy emergency alert three’ — EEA 3 — the third of three alert phases.In the first phase, ERCOT looks to get electricity from other grids; in the second stage, large industrial users who’ve agreed to cut power in emergency situations are shut down; and in the third phase, the operator starts running rotating outages to reduce demand on the electric system.Rolling blackouts, typically lasting from 15 to 60 minutes, could repeat all the way through Tuesday morning.”We urge Texans to put safety first during this time. Traffic lights and other infrastructure may be temporary without power,” ERCOT officials said.The supply of natural gas to power plants was limited on Sunday, and half of the system’s wind turbines had frozen hours before the state set a new winter peak demand, reaching 69 150 MW between 18:00 and 19:00 LT. This is more than 3 200 MW higher than the previous winter peak set back in January 2018.The last time the state implemented rolling outages was in 2011 — also due to cold, ice, and snow — but this time cold temperatures are expected to last for a longer period of time.As of 10:13 UTC on February 15, 1 482 866 customers across the state are without power. “An unprecedented and expansive area of hazardous winter weather continues into Presidents Day as disruptive snow and ice accumulations transpire across the South Central U.S. early this morning,” NWS forecaster Mullinax said. “This impressive onslaught of wicked wintry weather across much of the Lower 48 is due to the combination of strong Arctic high pressure supplying sub-freezing temperatures and an active storm track escorting waves of precipitation from coast-to-coast,” Mullinax explained. While the current areas of snow and wintry mix over parts of the Southern Plains will conclude later this morning, bitterly cold temperatures will limit the amount of melting today, and thus treacherous travel conditions are likely to persist. .
South slammed by winter storm, millions left without power in Texas – The South is being slammed by a rare winter storm, leaving millions in Texas without power on Monday as officials scramble to respond to snow and low temperatures in states that typically deal with neither. Much of the U.S. – more than 150 million people across 25 states – are facing a winter storm warning, winter weather advisory or ice storm warning, according to the National Weather Service and USA Today. The storms and low temperatures are extending further south than usual, with single-digit temperatures recorded as far south as San Antonio, according to The Associated Press. Southern states dealt with widespread power outages, with Texas seeing the most with more than 2.8 million homes losing electricity as temperatures dropped, according to poweroutage.us. The Electric Reliability Council of Texas (ERCOT) moved to rotating outages on Monday morning, cutting off power to thousands of homes at a time to manage the high demand. “Every grid operator and every electric company is fighting to restore power right now,” ERCOT President and CEO Bill Magness said in a release. The weather disrupted 400,000 COVID-19 vaccine shipments expected in the state this week, delaying their arrival until at least Wednesday, the Texas Department of State Health Services told the AP. Travel was also impacted, as officials warned drivers to stay off roads due to several weather-related crashes in at least Texas, Oklahoma, Louisiana and Kentucky. More than 3,000 flights were delayed, according to FlightAware, with more than 1,700 involving Dallas-fort Worth International and Bush Intercontinental Airports. Texas Gov. Greg Abbott (R) issued a statewide disaster declaration ahead of the weekend in preparation for the weather event, and other states, including Oklahoma, had declared states of emergency. The National Guard was activated to respond to the weather in Texas, Oklahoma and Arkansas. President Biden approved an emergency disaster declaration for all 254 counties in Texas on Sunday night, activating the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) to respond.
Severe winter weather leaves millions without electricity during record cold temperatures across the US – Severe winter weather across the United States has ground traffic to a halt and cut power to millions of people. Temperatures in areas as far south as New Orleans have fallen below freezing with many parts of the country facing subzero temperatures. Nearly 800 temperature records have been shattered in the past week under severe polar vortex conditions which have become more frequent in recent years, with human-induced climate change destabilizing the jet stream allowing for Arctic air to descend deep into the southern parts of the country. Texas, Louisiana, Oklahoma and Arkansas, all states which experience little average snowfall, received several inches of snow with some areas recording up to a foot of snowfall in the past couple of days. While the snow and ice have been dangerous, the threat posed by the bitter cold is even greater. Predicted low temperatures for today in Little Rock, Arkansas will reach -1 degree Fahrenheit, with Oklahoma City potentially dropping to -9 degrees F. Freezing temperatures are even reaching as far south as the eastern coast of Mexico. The homeless, particularly in typically warmer regions of the country, are the most at risk of freezing to death or suffering severe injuries during sudden cold snaps. Those who are able to take shelter in warming centers, which have been opened across northern Texas, confront the additional danger posed by the COVID-19 pandemic. The dangerously low temperatures, the lowest below average anywhere in the Northern Hemisphere at the moment, are made even more concerning by the rampant power outages that have affected several states. Four million households and businesses have so far experienced power outages during this winter storm, with 3.5 million left without power in Texas alone. More than 100,000 people lost power in Louisiana, 66,000 lost power in Mississippi and tens of thousands lost power in neighboring states. The Southwest Power Pool (SPP), which manages the power grids for 14 states in Central and Southern United States, has warned that the drop in temperatures has drastically increased demand for electricity beyond the ability of the power system to provide for everyone. “After exhausting usage of available reserve energy, SPP has now subsequently directed its member utilities to implement controlled interruptions of service to prevent further, more widespread and uncontrolled outages,” the utility said in a statement. SPP moved to direct regional and local power systems to conduct controlled outages, called “rolling blackouts,” of up to an hour. These bursts of power outages are intended to relax the pressure on electricity generators with the hope of averting a broader blackout and to ensure that essential facilities, such as hospitals, are able to receive the power they need. However, several grid systems experienced systemwide failures that resulted in many areas facing full blackouts that lasted hours or are continuing.
Texas deep freeze leaves millions without power, 21 dead (Reuters) – A historic winter storm has killed at least 21 people, left millions of Texans without power and spun killer tornadoes into the U.S. Southeast on Tuesday. The brutal cold has engulfed vast swaths of the United States, shuttering COVID-19 inoculation centers and hindering vaccine supplies. It is not expected to relent until the weekend. Officials in Texas drew criticism as the state energy grid repeatedly failed, forcing rolling blackouts. Freezing weather stilled giant wind turbines that dot the West Texas landscape, making it impossible for energy companies to meet escalating demand. University student Corbin Antu found a way to snowboard in the flat West Texas plains town of Lubbock. He clung to a tow rope as friends in a pickup truck pulled him up and down silent white streets. “This is my first time snowboarding out in Lubbock. Trust me, it’s not disappointing,” Antu said. “There is so much powder out on the ground it feels like it’s Colorado almost.” At least 21 people have died in Texas, Louisiana, Kentucky and Missouri including four killed in a house fire in Sugar Land, Texas, where the power was out, according to police and local media. President Joe Biden assured the governors of hard-hit states that the federal government stands ready to offer any emergency resources needed, the White House said in a statement. Houston Mayor Sylvester Turner said at a midday news conference that 1.3 million people in his city remain without power. The city is looking for businesses that still have power to open their doors as warming centers. “It’s critically, critically important to get the power restored as quickly as possible. It’s priority number one!” Turner said. Officials in south Texas warned citizens to not bring grills or propane heaters indoors. Hospitals have treated people for carbon monoxide poisoning as they tried to heat icy homes using those items. Turner said vaccination centers in Houston would remain closed on Wednesday and probably Thursday. The Texas Department of State Health Services said vaccine shipments around the state would be delayed. “No one wants to put vaccine at risk by attempting to deliver it in dangerous conditions,” department spokesman Douglas Loveday said by email, adding “it is not safe for people to be out across much of Texas.”
100 million Americans brace for more cold, ice and snow (AP) – Winter weather that has overwhelmed power grids unprepared for climate change and left millions without electricity in record-breaking cold kept its grip on the nation’s midsection Wednesday.At least 20 people have died, some while struggling to find warmth inside their homes. In the Houston area, one family succumbed to carbon monoxide from car exhaust in their garage; another perished as they used a fireplace to keep warm.Blame the polar vortex, a weather pattern that usually keeps to the Arctic, but is increasingly visiting lower latitudes and staying beyond its welcome. Scientists say global warming caused by humans is partly responsible for making the polar vortex’s southward escapes longer and more frequent.More than 100 million people live in areas covered Wednesday by some type of winter weather warning, watch or advisory, as yet another winter storm hits Texas and other parts of the southern Plains, the National Weather Service said. Utilities from Minnesota to Texas and Mississippi have implemented rolling blackouts to ease the burden on power grids straining to meet extreme demand for heat and electricity as record low temperatures were reported in city after city. In Mexico, rolling blackouts Tuesday covered more than one-third of the country after the storms in Texas cut the supply of imported natural gas. Nearly 3 million customers remained without power early Wednesday in Texas, Louisiana and Mississippi, more than 200,000 more in four Appalachian states, and nearly that many in the Pacific Northwest, according to poweroutage.us, which tracks utility outage reports. The latest storm front was predicted to bring snow and ice to East Texas, Arkansas and the Lower Mississippi Valley before moving to the northeast on Thursday. Winter storm watches were in effect from Baltimore to Boston, and Texas braced for more icy rain and possibly more snow. “There’s really no letup to some of the misery people are feeling across that area,” said Bob Oravec, lead forecaster with the National Weather Service.
Storm plasters Mississippi to Massachusetts snow, ice — As South Central states deal with the fallout of an unprecedented winter storm, the same system that left millions without power crept toward the Northeast on Wednesday night, delivering another round of snowfall through Thursday.“Yet another area of low pressure had lifted northeastward, into the mid-Atlantic [Wednesday] night and brought deep Gulf moisture northward with it,” AccuWeather Meteorologist Brett Rossio said. “This moisture interacted with an Arctic airmass that is firmly entrenched over the region and significant snow and ice broke out.”Winter weather advisories stretched from eastern Kentucky to Massachusetts by Friday morning with a handful of winter storm warnings splattered across North Carolina into Maryland.At least 58 deaths have been blamed on the extreme weather across the country over the past week, according to The Associated Press.Before the storm departed into the Northeast, it left behind enough snow in Little Rock, Arkansas, to tie a record. The snow depth at Little Rock Adams Field at 6 a.m. CST Thursday measured 15 inches, tying the all-time record snow depth for Little Rock set back on Jan. 21, 1918.Across the northern portion of Alabama, over 100 cars became stuck and abandoned in snow-covered roads around Florence, Alabama, on Thursday morning.While the storm hasn’t sent much snow toward areas like North Carolina, freezing rain — often a factor in power outages — brought ice accumulation to some areas of the state. The highest ice reports in central North Carolina were about .15 inches in Forsyth, Guilford and Person counties late Thursday morning. By Thursday evening, parts of North Carolina had seen up to .4 inches of freezing rain.Between midnight to 2 p.m. EST on Thursday, the Virginia State Police aided 224 stuck vehicles and responded to 358 traffic crashes. Near Roanoke, Virginia, I-81 Southbound was shut down after a van collided with another truck on Thursday amid icy conditions. About a quarter of an inch of ice accumulation had built up in the area. By 3:15 p.m. EST on Thursday, snowfall totals across the Northeast were quickly rising with some places seeing up to 10 inches of snowfall.
Thousands still without power in Central Virginia after ice storm, restoration could take days – It’s been over 48 hours since ice and freezing rain knocked out power for hundreds of thousands of Virginians Saturday, and power restoration efforts are still underway across Central Virginia. As of 6 a.m. Monday morning, more than 70,000 Dominion Energy customers were without power. Dominion Energy says restoration efforts are in full swing, and the vast majority of customers can expect to be back online between now and Tuesday. Dominion Energy posted on Facebook Sunday saying there were over 5,200 workers and 500 bucket trucks out in the commonwealth to help restore power. “This is the most damaging and widespread ice storm we have seen in Virginia since January of 2000,” said Charlene Whitfield, senior vice president of Power Delivery for Dominion Energy. “Fortunately, our storm restoration plan brings together resources from across our system and beyond to allow us to safely respond to our customers – even in the most difficult conditions.” The company says they have identified damage in 3,500 places and addressed issues at 1,100 of those places. Crews will restore power first to public health and safety facilities like hospitals and fire departments. Next, they will work to get the largest number of customers in the shortest amount of time back online. Restoration efforts will then focus on homes and businesses
Power crews don’t know when they’ll be cleared to head home: ‘This is the worst ice storm I’ve seen’ — As the cold rain came down Thursday morning in Dinwiddie County, linemen with Dominion Energy continued working to restore power to those who lost electricity during last weekend’s ice storm. “I’ve worked a lot of ice storms. I’ve worked a few hurricanes. This is probably the worst ice storm I have seen in my career,” Tim Luettel, who has worked as a lineman for 40 years, said.“Right now, we have a grove of trees that have laid over because of the ice,” lineman Sean Jones said. “We got to get some tree crews in there to help us cut the limbs, so we can try to get the wire back up, to a customer on the other end.” Members of the Virginia Beach-based Dominion Energy crew were not sure when they would get the job done and head home. “We were told to pack for three days when we came here the first time,” Luettel said. “We’re beyond our three days.” Jones said during their 15-hour workdays, they stayed focused on figuring out how to get the lights back on. Nearly 5,000 Southside Electric Cooperative customers in Dinwiddie remain in the dark.
At least 2 400 cold temperature records broken or tied in the U.S. from February 12 to 16, 2021 –At least 2 400 preliminary daily cold temperature records, including cold maximums and minimums, were broken or tied at longer-term sites (75+ years of data) in the United States from February 12 to 16, 2021. The cold snap peaked from February 14 to 16. Another winter storm will affect a large area from Friday, February 19 — from the Lower Mississippi Valley into the Mid-Atlantic and Northeast. Over just the past week, much of the Lower 48 has been punished with record-breaking cold and unusually heavy snow and ice, NWS Weather Prediction Center said. From the Pacific Northwest across the Rockies and into the Southern Plains and Midwest, the snowfall has been measured in feet. Ice and snow continue to plague Texas and the Northeast. In the NCEI database, approximately 30% of available U.S. sites set cold maximum records, and about 20% set minimum records. Analyzed temperatures were 22 to 28 °C (40 – 50 °F) below average over a large portion of the central and southern Plains. At the peak of the cold, more than 5 million homes were without power, most of them in Texas (4.3+ million). More than 30 people have lost their lives.
Cold outbreak will play key role in spring tornado threat – AccuWeather meteorologists are calling for a slow start to the peak of the severe weather season across the United States this spring, and they are warning of the possibility that severe weather and tornado activity could abruptly fire up and rival one of the most notorious severe weather seasons ever, due to some atmospheric similarities current weather patterns bear to that devastating season. In addition, one area of the country that accounts for only a small fraction of tornado activity could be at risk for more severe weather than usual this year. All of those factors and much more are covered in AccuWeather’s annual U.S. tornado forecast, a comprehensive look at what the long-range forecast team expects in terms of the number of tornadoes predicted to occur throughout the year and places that are at risk of getting the most action. In recent years, the severe weather and tornado season has kicked off earlier than usual. Severe weather can occur during any month of the year, but the peak activity usually falls during the months of March, April and May. Storm chasers tracked robust thunderstorms across the Plains during the middle of winter and into the beginning of spring in 2020. “The last couple years, it was an early start to tornado season,” Extreme Meteorologist Reed Timmer said in AccuWeather’s spring preview. “We were already chasing during parts of January last year. That’s because there were El Niño conditions in the tropical Pacific, so we had a very energized southern stream to the jet that was pumping moisture, bringing with it disturbances as well, early on in the year. And that’s why we were chasing in January, February and then again in March.” However, this spring is forecast to play out differently with a La Niña pattern that is expected to continue and influence weather patterns across the globe. La Niña patterns are characterized by strong northern branches of the jet stream. Some noteworthy historical seasons for severe weather have been shaped by such patterns, but not all La Niña years are exactly alike, and other factors need to be taken into account, AccuWeather meteorologists explain.
Authorities suspect hypothermia after 11-year-old Texas boy dies in bed amid power outages – Authorities believe 11-year-old Cristian Pavon died in his bed from hypothermia on Tuesday after his family’s home lost power amid the unfolding winter disaster taking place in Texas. Pavon was found unresponsive in his family’s unheated mobile home in Conroe, Texas, according to The Washington Post.“It was very cold and the stepdad said even the mom was shivering that night,” Jaliza Yera, Pavon’s aunt, told a local ABC News station 13. A winter storm brought plunging temperatures to the Lone Star State this week, creating a power and clean water crisis as millions lost heat and electricity. Freezing pipes have left many without potable water. Authorities said that they are investigating whether Pavon died from hypothermia due to the low temperatures, the Post reported. An autopsy was performed on Thursday, and it could be several weeks before a cause of death is confirmed, Conroe Police Sgt. Jeff Smith told the Houston Chronicle. Pavon is one of the youngest fatalities in Texas as a result of the unprecedented winter storms that have killed dozens of people. The family reportedly thought Pavon was sleeping in, which was not unusual for the 11-year-old, when they went to check on him around 2:30 p.m. on Tuesday morning. Upon finding him they proceeded to perform CPR and immediately called 911. “We still did CPR until the fire department came and they took over and within a minute they told us it was too late. It was hard because I have kids myself,” Yera said.
Floyd and Franklin counties hit hard by power outages in wake of ice storm – Thousands of Southwest Virginians remained without power Sunday afternoon after weekend ice storms damaged tree limbs and felled power lines.Appalachian Power Co. said it could take until late Wednesday for some customers in Virginia to get electricity back after a double-punch of freezing rain that began Thursday.East of the Blue Ridge Mountains the situation was even worse, particularly southwest of the Richmond metro area. In Virginia as a whole, 189,219 customers were without power as of 6 p.m. Sunday, according toPowerOutage.us. That includes customers of Appalachian Power, Dominion Energy and many electric cooperatives serving rural communities in Southside.Closer to Roanoke, residents in Floyd County and Franklin County were hardest hit among Appalachian Power’s customers in the state.In Floyd County, 43% of customers, down from 70% earlier in the day, were without power as of 6 p.m. Sunday. About 4,157 customers were experiencing outages. Franklin County had 7,289 homes and businesses without electricity, 22% of customers, according to the company’s outage map. 30,000+ in NC still without power after ice storm hits counties north of Raleigh and Greensboro area – More than 30,000 customers in North Carolina were still without power Monday morning after an ice storm hit the north-central area of the state over the weekend. Freezing rain fell in areas around and north of Greensboro and north of Raleigh along the Virginia border. At the height of the storm Saturday, North Carolina authorities reported more than 190,000 utility customers without power, mostly in the central part of the state. RELATED: Power outages affect thousands across NC during freezing weather in northern areas Late Saturday night Person County had about 11,000 outages with Granville County reporting 5,000 and Vance County with just under 8,000, according to the North Carolina Department of Public Safety. Those outage numbers have improved, but there are still a total of about 10,000 outages spread across those three counties as of Monday morning. Some spots are estimated to be without power until Tuesday.
Power out for an unprecedented 300k Oregonians after weekend storm. Still unclear when full power will return. – In the pantheon of Portland area weather events, this weekend’s snow and ice storm wasn’t the biggest, longest or coldest. But by one important yardstick – the number of people who lost power, and potentially the duration of those outages – this weekend’s storm appears to be an unprecedented doozy. At their peak, Oregon’s two largest electric utilities, Portland General Electric and PacifiCorp, had well over 300,000 combined customers without power, a significant driver of Gov. Kate Brown’s decision to declare a state of emergency on Saturday.For perspective, consider the Columbus Day windstorm of 1962. The “big blow,” as it is known, knocked out power to 262,000 PGE customers, a number easily surpassed this weekend. Past ice storms, by contrast, have typically involved outages numbered in the tens of thousands. As of Monday afternoon, PGE reported that 32% of its customers — or about 284,000 — were without power, including 105,000 in Clackamas County, 89,000 in Multnomah County, 70,000 in Marion County, 10,000 in Washington County, and 9,300 in Polk and Yamhill counties. The company had turned off the feature on its website where customers can look to see an estimate of when power will be restored. “Right now, there’s just too much,” Corson said. “Crews are still in process of assessing damage. We can’t realistically give an estimate. What we’re saying at this point is that it could be many days.” PGE is re-routing power where possible to get around outages, though that doesn’t help customers at the end of rural feeders. PacifiCorp, meanwhile, had some 35,000 customers without service Monday afternoon, including 23,000 in Northeast Portland and another 12,000 scattered in communities surrounding Salem.
Brutal cold forces generation outages across US, especially ERCOT, MISO, SPP – Grid operators across the US shed loads amid a bitter cold snap that triggered widespread power outages and emergency measures to limit and prevent them. As of midday Feb. 15, more than 4 million customer accounts were without power across the US as frigid Arctic air blanketed the nation, according to poweroutage.us, which aggregates US utility outage data. Most of those accounts, 3.4 million, were in Texas. Meanwhile, some 325,000 customers in Oregon, 117,800 customers in Louisiana and 108,000 in Virginia were left in the dark. (Customer accounts can include more than one person). The Electric Reliability Council Of Texas Inc., which operates the grid for most of Texas, was hit particularly hard, with state officials, grid operators and regulators pleading with residents to reduce consumption after more than 30 GW was forced offline, the worst blackouts in the state in decades. ERCOT issued an emergency alert as reserve margins, the difference between total power supply and demand, dropped below 1,000 MW. At its highest point, the grid shed about 10.5 GW of customer load, enough to power 2 million homes. “Every grid operator and every electric company is fighting to restore power right now,” ERCOT President and CEO Bill Magness said in a statement. In the early hours of Feb. 15, generators began tripping offline in ERCOT. Natural gas generators faced low gas supplies, while ice froze wind turbines, grid officials said in a Feb. 15 call. In turn, transmission providers faced difficulties balancing supply and demand. The majority of plants that went offline overnight were thermal generators, officials said. Texas by far leads the nation in wind generation capacity and is experiencing a solar power boom that could bring hundreds of megawatts of new capacity online in the next few years. The culprit in the current shortfalls is not a surfeit of variable renewables, though, but the inability of conventional fossil fuel generation to keep up. “Total wind output is slightly below expectations, but the main supply issue is lack of available thermal generation (both gas and coal) due to freezing conditions” in Texas, said ICF International Inc., a consulting firm. Gas production dropped at least 16% because of well freeze-offs and shutdowns of processing plants, ICF said. ERCOT’s extreme peak load scenario anticipated wintertime demand of up to 67.5 GW, but the day-ahead forecast for 8 am Central Time (1400 GMT) Feb. 15 was 74.5 GW. The “magnitude of the forecast error was massive,” ICF said. “While ERCOT’s forecasts are largely indicative since they lack a capacity market mechanism, nevertheless many observers reference ERCOT’s forecasts for their own planning purposes.”
Historic winter storm freezes Texas wind turbines — Nearly half of Texas’ installed wind power generation capacity has been offline because of frozen wind turbines in West Texas, according to Texas grid operators. Wind farms across the state generate up to a combined 25,100 megawatts of energy. But unusually moist winter conditions in West Texas brought on by the weekend’s freezing rain and historically low temperatures have iced many of those wind turbines to a halt. As of Sunday morning, those iced turbines comprise 12,000 megawatts of Texas’ installed wind generation capacity, although those West Texas turbines don’t typically spin to their full generation capacity this time of year. Fortunately for the Electric Reliability Council of Texas, which manages the state’s electric grid, the storm’s gusty winds are spinning the state’s unfrozen coastal turbines at a higher rate than expected, helping to offset some of the power generation losses because of the icy conditions. “This is a unique winter storm that’s more widespread with lots of moisture in West Texas, where there’s a lot of times not a lot of moisture,” said Dan Woodfin, Senior Director of System Operations for the Electric Reliability Council of Texas. “It’s certainly more than what we would typically assume.” c Wind power has been the fastest-growing source of energy in Texas’ power grid. In 2015 winder power generation supplied 11% of Texas’ energy grid. Last year it supplied 23% and overtook coal as the system’s second-largest source of energy after natural gas. In Austin, wind power supplies roughly 19% of the city’s energy demands, all of which is passed from producers to consumers across the state grid. The city began adding several megawatts of wind energy capacity to its renewable energy portfolio in the 1990s from both West Texas and Gulf Coast wind farms. The frozen turbines come as low temperatures strain the state’s power grid and force operators to call for immediate statewide conservation efforts, like unplugging non-essential appliances, turning down residential heaters and minimize use of electric lighting.
Severe Cold Is Messing with Texas – As I repeatedly remind people, you don’t build an electric power grid to handle routine weather conditions, you build them to survive rare but extreme weather events. Texas, which became enamored with wind power – wind accounted for between 22% of the state’s electricity in the first half of 2019 – has learned this lesson the hard way. In the midst of a bitter cold snap expected to last several days, ice storms knocked out nearly half the state’s wind-power generating supply. The spot price of electricity has surged to $9,000 per megawatt hour, compared to $100 per megawatt hour during periods of high summer demand. The Electric Reliability Council of Texas called on consumers and businesses to reduce electricity use as much as possible Feb. 14, through Feb. 16. Just imagine how bad the situation would be if Texas derived 100% of its electricity from renewable energy.Meanwhile, the question Virginians need to be asking in anticipation of the commonwealth deriving much of its electricity from offshore wind power within a few years is this: What’s the freezing temperature for salt water? Answer: 28.4° Fahrenheit.Renewable-energy advocates say that one day Virginia’s electric grid can bank plenty of energy reserves in electric batteries. The second question Virginians should ask is this: What’s the freezing temperature for electric batteries? According to UFO Battery, lithium-ion batteries can be discharged over a range of temperatures from -20°C to 60°C. 20°C. (-20°C equals -4° F.). But there’s a catch. The lower the temperature, the lower the rate of safe charge and discharge. Says UFO Battery: “Don’t charge them when the temperature falls below freezing (0°C or 32°F) without reducing the charge current.” So, lithium-iron batteries still might work in extreme cold, but their capacity will be severely reduced. Update: From today’s Wall Street Journal… Freezing temperatures also forced natural-gas an coal-fired power plants offline. The bitter cold also pushed oil and gas prices higher. In other words, the power shortages were not exclusively the result of wind turbines freezing up, as I strongly implied in my post. The article does not say, however, what percentage of wind power has been lost versus the percentage of coal and gas power.
Rolling Texas blackouts: 2 million without power statewide –About 2 million homes statewide were without power Monday as theTexas electric grid grappled with a diminished supply of energy in the face of the lowest temperatures the state has seen in three decades.Energy demand reached a record high Sunday between 7 and 8 p.m. and didn’t taper off as electricity usage typically does during overnight hours. The issue became critical about 11 p.m. when several of the grid’s energy generation units began “tripping offline in a somewhat rapid progression due to the severe cold weather,” said Dan Woodfin, senior director of system operations for the Electric Reliability Council of Texas, which operates the state’s main power grid.The state’s grid had already lost a small portion of its energy production over the weekend as wind turbines froze to a halt and natural gas supplies available to electrical plants became scarce. But by Sunday evening, all types of energy sources were falling off the grid: nuclear plants, coal plants and thermal energy generators, Woodfin told reporters Monday morning.“We don’t know exactly why they tripped offline yet,” he said. “We’re certainly going to be doing an event analysis. We’ll certainly go through and figure out why those things have happened.”Facing record-level usage, the grid was short 34,000 megawatts of energy. The decreased supply and heightened demand forced ERCOT to implement Emergency Energy Alert protocols. After midnight Sunday, the grid enacted Level 1 of the protocol, drawing from an emergency energy supply. But the rapid succession of failing energy generators, which are privately owned, accelerated the emergency alerts to Level 3, which requires local electric providers to enact rotating blackouts and is treated as a last resort.“This even was well beyond the design parameters for a typical or even an extreme Texas winter, which is what you would normally plan for,” Woodfin said. By Monday afternoon, amid continued widespread outages, Gov. Greg Abbott tweeted: “The Texas power grid has not been compromised. The ability of some companies that generate the power has been frozen. This includes the natural gas & coal generators. They are working to get generation back on line. ERCOT & PUC are prioritizing residential consumers.” And at 3 p.m., Abbott announced that about 200,000 residential customers were coming back online. “More are expected in the coming hours,” he said on Twitter.
ELECTRICITY: Bitter cold overwhelms grid, leaves millions in dark — Bitterly cold temperatures and icy conditions left millions of people across Texas and several other states without power yesterday as grid operators took unprecedented steps to protect the electric system from a wider failure. More than 4 million Texas homes and businesses lacked electricity as of early this morning, according to PowerOutage.US, and President Biden declared a state of emergency in the state over the weekend. A blast of frigid air in Texas and the central U.S. caused a spike in electricity and natural gas use as people huddled at home to stay warm. Though the cold snap was expected, power producers struggled under the extreme winter conditions and, in certain cases, lacked the gas to fuel power plants. Some wind turbines weren’t able to operate. “It’s such a black swan event,” said Joshua Rhodes, a research associate at the Webber Energy Group at the University of Texas, Austin. “It is taxing every single piece of the system at the same time.” The Electric Reliability Council of Texas, the state’s main grid operator, drew much of the attention given the extent and duration of outages in its region. ERCOT said it was dealing with limited gas supplies and frozen wind turbines Sunday when more generating units tripped offline overnight amid deteriorating weather conditions. It had already seen new record winter peak demand Sunday. ERCOT entered its highest level of emergency operations around 1:25 a.m. local time yesterday, leading to controlled outages that often lasted many hours instead of an hour or less. The grid operator said outages likely would persist into today as it seeks to return to normal operations. Dan Woodfin, ERCOT’s senior director of system operations, told reporters yesterday that a majority of the generators that went offline during the night before the controlled outages or yesterday morning were “thermal” units that were fueled by gas, coal or nuclear. Of the 34,000 megawatts of generation forced off during the winter event, the grid operator said about 20,000 MW was thermal, with about 14,500 MW of wind.
Texas wholesale electric prices spike more than 10,000% amid outages (Reuters) – The spot price of wholesale electricity on the Texas power grid spiked more than 10,000% on Monday amid a deep freeze across the state and rolling outages among power producers, according to data on the grid operator’s website. Real-time wholesale market prices on the power grid operated by the Electric Reliability Council of Texas (ERCOT) were more than $9,000 per megawatt hour late Monday morning, compared with pre-storm prices of less than $50 per megawatt hour, according to ERCOT data. The surge reflects the real-time megawatt hour price of electricity and the cost of congestion and losses at different points across the grid. Early on Monday, ERCOT said extreme weather conditions forced many power generating units off the grid, upending the supply of electricity. ERCOT did not respond to an email message about the spike in wholesale electricity prices. On Feb. 10, well before inclement weather hit Texas, spot wholesale prices on ERCOT settled around $30 per megawatt hour at the end of the day, ERCOT data show. But on Sunday, the price per megawatt hour surged past $9,000 on the grid. ERCOT can be more susceptible to wholesale price spikes because it does not have a capacity market, which pays power plants to be on standby during peak demand and weather emergencies, for example. ERCOT’s model means consumers are not paying for generation that may never be called into action. But early on Monday, ERCOT said extreme weather conditions caused many generating units – across all fuel types – to trip offline and become unavailable. That forced more than 30,000 megawatts of power generation off the grid, ERCOT said in a news release.
Texas Deploys National Guard As ‘Grid Chaos’ Leaves Millions Freezing In Darkness – While millions of Texans are without power heading into Monday evening, the power grid may be strained once more as temperatures could reach “dangerous levels,” according to The Weather Channel. More record lows are expected for Tuesday morning across Texas. If ERCOT doesn’t secure additional power generation – more blackouts may occur. The Southwest Power Pool (SSP), which manages the electric grid and wholesale power market for the central US, including Kansas, Oklahoma, portions of New Mexico, Texas, Arkansas, Louisiana, South Dakota, North Dakota, Montana, Missouri, Minnesota, Iowa, Wyoming, and Nebraska, released an update Monday afternoon saying 17 states have “curtailed energy usage to balance supply and demand.” Frigid air continues to pour into the central US, overwhelming power grids, forcing operators to implement rolling blackouts like a third world country. America’s power grid is in shambles. CBS Austin’s Melanie Torre reports Gov. Greg Abbott has called up the Texas Army National Guard “to conduct welfare checks and to assist local authorities in transitioning Texans in need to one of the 135 local warming centers across Texas.” While Abbott said earlier the “Texas power grid has not been compromised,” we find that hard to believe as the number of customers without power has significantly jumped 3.368 million. Texans had to figure out how to stay warm with record cold temperatures and rolling blackouts due to power grid failures. Internet search trends in the Lone Star State for firewood exploded throughout Monday. Internet searches for “where to buy firewood” erupted on Monday. These search trends suggest that many were not prepared for the frigid weather and rolling blackouts.
Texas utility commission emergency order requires power generation, sales – The Public Utility Commission of Texas approved an emergency order Monday evening requiring power generators to continue selling electricity on the state’s main electricity grid, despite mandated rolling blackouts for utilities that have reduced the number of customers.The order is needed “to ensure that the electricity market provides clear signals to generators of the value of generation when customer loads must be shed to protect the (the electricity grid overall) and to ensure that the citizens of Texas have sufficient electricity to meet their needs during this weather event,” according to the utility commission.The commission, which approved the order in an emergency meeting over telephone, oversees the state’s main grid operator – the Electric Reliability Council of Texas, commonly known as ERCOT. ERCOT’s wholesale electricity market is competitive, meaning generators and retailers compete for customers in many areas of the state. Austin’s municipal electric utility, Austin Energy, and Pedernales Electric Cooperative are ERCOT members, although neither participate in ERCOT’s competitive retail market.As demand increased amid the ongoing freezing temperatures, ice and snow, ERCOT on Monday began requiring electric utilities to reduce usage through rolling power outages. That prompted the Public Utility Commission to act to ensure generators continue supplying electricity amid the mandated outages, which have caused price distortions and affected power generation.”The absence of these generation units has resulted in millions of citizens of Texas losing electricity at a time when this energy is most needed to protect life and property,” the utility commission said. The order is needed “to require the sale of electricity to meet the demands of the people in Texas.””Without such decisions, the continuing lack of electricity for some of the citizens of Texas could result in loss of life or damage to property that otherwise could be prevented,” the commission said.
Energy prices jump as millions left without power in Texas -Energy prices jumped Tuesday as a deep freeze in the South boosted demand for fuel and hampered production. More than 4 million people were without power across Texas on Tuesday morning, according to poweroutage.us, as the electric grid couldn’t keep up with heightened demand, forcing utilities to implement rolling blackouts in some cases. “The majority of heating needs are met via electrical baseboard or heat pumps in the southern region,” said John Kilduff, founding partner at Again Capital. “The demand for electricity over the weekend rivaled peak summer heat-wave levels.” Henry Hub natural gas futures jumped 7.5% to trade at $3.13 per million British thermal units. Gasoline futures advanced more than 4%. “The storm that has crippled the Midwest and Northeast was much worse than expected,” said Jeff Kilburg, CEO at KKM Financial. “Frigid temps and speculators caught short are dramatically moving futures prices higher.” The storm knocked out about 30 gigawatts of generation capacity, according to estimates from ClearView Energy Partners, just as consumers were driving up demand to heat their homes. Ultimately, there just wasn’t enough supply, forcing power companies to turn to the open market to buy electricity. “Weather is severe enough to curtail supply when demand is near all-time high levels,” RBC analysts said in a note. “Certain regional natural gas spot prices have shot up 10- to 100-fold in a matter of days.” West Texas Intermediate crude futures, the U.S. oil benchmark, broke above $60 for the first time in more than a year on Monday, and held that level during Tuesday morning trading. Brent crude, the international oil benchmark, slid 21 cents to $63.09 per barrel. Generating units across fuel types have been forced offline – including some wind production – and pipeline freezes are impeding the flow of natural gas and crude oil. Texas is the largest crude oil and natural gas producer in the U.S. and has 30 refineries, according to data from the U.S. Energy Information Administration. Andy Lipow, president of Texas-based Lipow Oil Associates, said that of the 2.6 million people in Texas without power on Monday, only 70,000 were impacted by downed power lines or trees. He estimates that a million barrels per day of crude oil production has been taken offline, roughly 40% to 50% of natural gas production in the Permian Basin has been shut in, and about 50% of wind power production is down thanks to frozen blades. The energy sector gained more than 3% during early trading on Tuesday. Marathon Oil spiked 9%, while Occidental Petroleum and Apache were up more than 5%. Exxon, Devon Energy and ConocoPhillips were all up more than 3%. On Sunday, President Joe Biden declared a state of emergency in Texas as the storm brought snow and ice from Arkansas to Indiana. The storm is forecast to move from the Ohio Valley through Pennsylvania and into Maine, according to the National Weather Service. “It’s unprecedented in terms of what we’re seeing both on the demand side, and in terms of the supply side,” said Helima Croft, global head of commodity strategy at RBC.
Power outages linger for millions as another icy storm looms (AP) – Millions of Americans endured another frigid day without electricity or heat in the aftermath of a deadly winter storm as utility crews raced to restore power before another blast of snow and ice sowed more chaos in places least equipped to deal with it. Nearly 3.4 million customers around the U.S. were still without electricity, and some also lost water service. Texas officials ordered 7 million people – a quarter of the population of the nation’s second-largest state – to boil tap water before drinking it following days of record low temperatures that damaged infrastructure and froze pipes. The latest storm front was certain to complicate recovery efforts, especially in states that are unaccustomed to such weather – parts of Texas, Arkansas and the Lower Mississippi Valley. “There’s really no letup to some of the misery people are feeling across that area,” said Bob Oravec, lead forecaster with the National Weather Service, referring to Texas. The system was forecast to move into the Northeast on Thursday. More than 100 million people live in areas covered by some type of winter weather warning, watch or advisory, the weather service said.
3 Million Texans Without Power As Grid Chaos Continues Ahead Of Imminent Ice Storm — Rolling blackouts and power outages have hit 15 states on Tuesday as a polar vortex dumps Arctic air into much of the country. According to PowerOutage.US, 15 states are experiencing rolling blackouts or outages because of extreme weather. Most of the outages are seen in Texas, with over 4 million customers without power (as of this update). The cold snap in Texas has forced the shutdown of “refineries, oil wells, and meat plants, disrupted shipments of soybeans and corn, and is still leaving more than 3 million customers without electricity could continue to keep parts of Texas in the dark for several days,” according to Bloomberg. With more than 3 million customers without power, there is no way ERCOT will restore power tonight. It could be a couple of days before full power is restored. Bloomberg also said fuel storages are developing in the western half of the state. Gov. Greg Abbott told ABC13 Houston that ERCOT had provided him with zero answers about the ongoing power grid collapse across Texas. ABC13’s Gina Gaston asked Abbott if ERCOT leadership should resign. He immediately responded with “yes.” The local media outlet also said residents should prepare for the next round of wintery weather, expected to hit the state on Tuesday night. Winter weather watches and warnings have been posted for most of the state. As evening sets in Texas, power prices in Austin are exploding higher. In the last 145 minutes, prices have jumped 1,346% to $1,600 per MWh. More than 3 million customers remain without power in Texas. CenterPoint Energy, the utility that delivers electricity to Houston-area homes and distributes natural gas, provided an update on the ongoing grid chaos in Texas with some bad news Tuesday evening. CenterPoint said power shortages could last “several more days” and warned customers “to take precautions for their personal safety.” Oncor Electric Delivery, Texas’ largest transmission and electric distribution utility, warns customers to “be prepared for additional outages and stay weather aware due to an active Winter Storm Warning.”
Texas officials didn’t sound alarm about dayslong power outage, Texans say –As temperatures began to plummet across Texas on Sunday night, residents were warned that they could face short-term, rotating power outages to prevent the entire electricity grid from going down. Instead, significant swaths of the state’s largest cities were left cold and in the dark without power for more than a day – with no end in sight for many people.And as people continued scrambling to find a safe, warm place – often by traversing already dangerous roads – more bad weather is bearing down on regions across the state. Counties in and around North Texas could get up to six additional inches of snow accumulation, while the Houston area braces for freezing rain. Oncor, the largest electricity provider in the state, tweeted Tuesday night that the state’s power grid operator had directed more reductions in the electric load, and residents should “please be prepared for additional outages.”Energy experts, local leaders and residents said energy and state officials failed to properly prepare people for the mass outages coinciding with dangerous weather that’s already led to at least 10 deaths.“Were we blindsided by the storm? No. Blindsided by the power outages and total lack of planning? Absolutely,” said Shannon Bentle, whose parents have gone without power in Sugar Land since Monday morning.Michael Webber, an energy resources professor with the University of Texas at Austin, said state officials “dropped the ball” by not giving people useful advice on what they would soon face.“What should have been said for several days is this is going to be rough, make sure your car is filled with gasoline, make sure you charge your cellphones … get firewood,” Webber said. “The governor’s office didn’t say that, [the Electric Reliability Council of Texas] didn’t say that.”
Frozen wind turbines are one culprit in Texas’s power outages — Don’t point too many fingers at Texas wind turbines, because they’re not the main reason broad swaths of the state have been plunged into darkness.While ice has forced some turbines to shut down just as a brutal cold wave drives record electricity demand, wind only comprises 25% of the state’s energy mix this time of year. The majority of outages overnight were plants fueled by natural gas, coal and nuclear, which together make up more than two-thirds of power generation during winter.“The wind is not solely to blame,” said Wade Schauer, research director of Americas power and renewables at Wood Mackenzie. He estimates that about 27 gigawatts of coal, nuclear and gas capacity is unavailable, in part because the cold has driven up demand for natural gas for heating. “That’s the bigger problem.”The blackouts, which are spreading from Texas across the Great Plains, have reignited the debate about the reliability of intermittent wind and solar power as the U.S. seeks to accelerate the shift to carbon-free renewable energy. Rolling outages in California last summer were blamed in part on the retirement of gas plants as the state pursued an aggressive clean-energy agenda.In Texas, where 25 gigawatts of wind capacity feeds into the state’s main power grid, wind can sometimes produce as much as 60% of total electricity. But because wind power tends to ebb in the winter, the grid operator typically assumes that the turbines will generate only about 19% to 43% of their maximum output.Even so, wind generation has actually exceeded the grid operator’s daily forecast through the weekend. Solar power has been slightly below forecast Monday.“The performance of wind and solar is way down the list among the smaller factors in the disaster that we’re facing,” Daniel Cohan, associate professor of environmental engineering at Rice University, said in an interview. Blaming renewables for the blackouts “is really a red herring.”That doesn’t mean that frozen turbines are playing no role in the energy crisis, which the grid operator has highlighted. Cody Moore, head of gas and power trading at Mercuria Energy America, noted that wind generation this week is down markedly this week from last week, possibly indicating that turbines are automatically shutting down due to ice. “We are seeing wind generation down 60% week-over-week,” said Matt Hoza, manager of energy analysis at BTU Analytics. But wind and solar that are operating “are in a very advantageous position” as power prices have topped $1,000 a megawatt-hour. The situation raises questions about the grid’s preparedness. “Grid demand is so much higher than we’ve really built the system for in the wintertime,”
Winter Storm Leaves Texans in the Cold and Dark, Sparking Political Debate on Renewable Energy — While Texans suffer from freezing temperatures and extensive power outages, frozen wind turbines are being used as a ploy to spread skepticism on the reliability of renewable energy. This week, a relentless winter storm pummeled through parts of the southern and central U.S., causing people to crank their electric heating systems. In Texas, the energy demand became too high for its electric grid, forcing the state to begin rolling blackouts on Monday, leaving more than four million Texans in the cold and dark, The New York Times reported.So far, analysts say the grid system failed due to high electricity demand, pushing grid operators into worst-case scenarios, The New York Times reported. Other causes for the failed grid included fuel shortages as gas-fired power plants went offline while demand increased, and frozen wind turbines. Yet while some experts used the dire conditions to urge the state to adopt more climate-resilient energy systems, a few conservative commentators used the example of frozen wind turbines to encourage distrust of renewable energy systems in a state largely dependent on natural gas.”Texas is frozen solid as folks are left w/ no power to stay safe & warm,” Steve Daines, a Republican U.S. Senator from Montana, tweeted Tuesday. “This is a perfect example of the need for reliable energy sources like natural gas & coal.” The Montana senator’s tweet included a viral image of a helicopter spraying liquid to defrost a frozen wind turbine. According to the image’s caption, fossil fuels powered the helicopter while the liquid it sprayed contained them. “Keep that in mind when thinking how ‘green’ windmills are,” Rep. Lauren Boebert from Colorado tweeted, gaining thousands of retweets, Earther reported. This same image has been shared by Luke Legate, a prominent oil and gas consultant, Earther added, although it is misleading. While helicopters are used to defrost wind turbines, the image is from Sweden in 2014, not present-day Texas, said Brian Kahn, managing editor of Earther. The photo is originally from a Swedish study on de-icing wind turbines using hot water. Now the image is being used “to argue against clean energy in the U.S,” Kahn wrote. Wind turbines in Texas did indeed fail during the frigid winter temperatures, losing about 4.5 gigawatts of capacity according to The New York Times. But as of Monday afternoon, 26 of the 34 gigawatts of ERCOT’s grid that went offline were from thermal sources such as gas and coal, The New Republic reported.
No, frozen wind turbines aren’t to blame for Texas’ power outages | The Texas Tribune – Frozen wind turbines in Texas caused some conservative state politicians to declare Tuesday that the state was relying too much on renewable energy. But in reality, the lost wind power makes up only a fraction of the reduction in power-generating capacity that has brought outages to millions of Texans across the state during a major winter storm.An official with the Electric Reliability Council of Texas said Tuesday afternoon that 16 gigawatts of renewable energy generation, mostly wind generation, were offline. Nearly double that, 30 gigawatts, had been lost from thermal sources, which includes gas, coal and nuclear energy.“Texas is a gas state,” said Michael Webber, an energy resources professor at the University of Texas at Austin.While Webber said all of Texas’ energy sources share blame for the power crisis, the natural gas industry is most notably producing significantly less power than normal.“Gas is failing in the most spectacular fashion right now,” Webber said.Dan Woodfin, a senior director at ERCOT, echoed that sentiment Tuesday.“It appears that a lot of the generation that has gone offline today has been primarily due to issues on the natural gas system,” he said during a Tuesday call with reporters.
Texas blackouts fuel false claims about renewable energy – With millions of Texas residents still without power amid frigid temperatures, conservative commentators have falsely claimed that wind turbines and solar energy were primarily to blame.“We should never build another wind turbine in Texas,” read a Tuesday Facebook post from Texas Agriculture Commissioner Sid Miller. “The experiment failed big time.”“This is a perfect example of the need for reliable energy sources like natural gas & coal,” tweeted U.S. Sen. Steve Daines, a Republican from Montana, on Tuesday.In reality, failures in natural gas, coal and nuclear energy systems were responsible for nearly twice as many outages as frozen wind turbines and solar panels, the Electric Reliability Council of Texas, which operates the state’s power grid, said in a press conference Tuesday.Still a variety of misleading claims spread on social media around renewable energy, with wind turbines and the Green New Deal getting much of the attention.A viral photo of a helicopter de-icing a wind turbine was shared with claims it showed a “chemical” solution being applied to one of the massive wind generators in Texas. The only problem? The photo was taken in Sweden years ago, not in the U.S. in 2021. The helicopter sprayed hot water onto the wind turbine, not chemicals.Other social media users, including Republican U.S. Rep. Lauren Boebert of Colorado, puzzlingly labeled the Green New Deal as the culprit. Boebert tweeted on Monday that the proposal was “proven unsustainable as renewables are clearly unreliable.” But the Green New Deal is irrelevant, as no version of it exists in Texas or nationwide, said Mark Jacobson, director of the Atmosphere/Energy Program and professor of civil and environmental engineering at Stanford University. “It’s really natural gas and coal and nuclear that are providing the bulk of the electricity and that’s the bulk of the cause of the blackouts,” Jacobson told The Associated Press.
PolitiFact | Natural gas, not wind turbines, main driver of Texas power shortage – When a rare blast of Arctic air and ice hit Texas and resulted in a massive power outage, the critics of wind power were quick to focus on the wind turbines that came offline. Supporters of wind power argued back that frozen turbines played a minor role in the outage.Texas does have a bodacious amount of wind power. In winter, it supplies about 25% of the state’s electricity. And nearly half of that capacity shut down when ice coated the turbine blades. As residents tried to heat their homes, demand surged and the agency that manages the state’s power grid, the Electric Reliability Council of Texas, imposed rolling blackouts.The question is, was the state’s reliance on wind power its Achilles’ heel? Did it fail to have enough gas and coal capacity to meet people’s needs during extreme conditions?The numbers show that natural gas plants were the biggest cause of the power shortfall, not wind.The state’s grid operator said Feb. 15 that about 34 gigawatts of power were offline. But of that, about 4 gigawatts was due to problems with wind turbines. The rest came mainly from the state’s primary sources, natural gas and coal. Dan Woodfin, a senior director for the Electric Reliability Council of Texas, told Bloomberg that frozen gauges and instruments at natural gas, coal and nuclear plants cut into operations. Natural gas-fired plants also had to deal with low gas pressure in their supply lines. “Those of you who have heard that frozen wind turbines are to blame for this, think again,” tweeted Jesse Jenkins, engineering professor at Princeton University. “The extreme demand and thermal power plant outages are the principal cause.”It’s not as though the grid operators didn’t plan for winter troubles. But they hadn’t planned for an event as severe as this.In their annual forecast, they predicted that demand would peak at about 67.2 gigawatts. On Sunday night, demand hit 69.1 gigawatts. Meanwhile, outages from coal and natural gas plants were at least 10,000 megawatts larger than they expected in their most extreme scenario. To a certain extent, the wind turbines exceeded expectations. The grid operators predict a day in advance how much power the turbines will produce. At many hours of the day on Feb. 15 andFeb.16, wind delivered more power than the engineers at the Electric Reliability Council of Texas had expected. Woodfin told the Austin American-Statesman that for the turbines that remained operational, strong winds were spinning the blades faster than usual. Cold weather doesn’t have to curtail wind turbines. In northern states and Canada, turbines are more likely to be designed to shrug off cold and ice, because cold weather is a regular occurrence. “You can use anti-icing methods,” said Christopher Niezrecki, engineering professor at UMASS-Lowell. “It can be as simple as heaters built inside the blades.” “It’s alway about money and the capital expenditure,” he said. “You build it for whatever events are likely. Why would you pay a lot more for a rare storm?”
Texas Rolling Blackouts Are Due To Economics, Not Renewables – Frozen wind turbines in Texas are causing a huge dip in the state’s power generation capability, reducing available power by almost half. This comes during a record blast of arctic air, which is causing record electrical demand, resulting in rolling blackouts. People opposed to renewables are sharing this on social media, claiming that it’s proof that wind energy and other renewables are a bad idea.In reality, though, the rolling blackouts were caused by economics and not renewables. An example of these economics is snow tires in Phoenix, Arizona. Sure, there is some rare snow and ice in a city that’s comparable to Baghdad in climate, but it’s so rare that you wouldn’t go spend $600-1000 for snow tires. The economics of buying snow tires just doesn’t add up in Phoenix. In emergency management, there’s the concept of the “X-year event.” A 50-year flood is expected to happen, on average, every 50 years. You can get two years in a row with 50-year floods, but then go decades before one happens again. In other words, it’s just an average and not a rule. The more years, the more rare an event is, so a 100-year snowstorm is twice as rare as a 50-year storm.Climate change is upending these statistics in many areas, and that may be the case here, but the idea for this article is to introduce the concept of the “X-year event,” so I’m not going to get into that here. When planning building codes, infrastructure, flood insurance, and power grids (among many other things), the rarity of natural disasters are factored in. For example, in Florida, homes have to be built to withstand hurricanes better than in other parts of the country. In some parts of California, building codes require earthquake resistance. In other words, standards reflect the rarity of events in a given area so that the enhancements will be made in places where they’re actually needed and money won’t be wasted in places where the problems are far less common.The power grid in Texas is no exception.In Texas, a southern state that generally doesn’t get these sorts of storms, it doesn’t make a lot of sense to spend millions or billions of dollars extra for grids to be prepared for them. People in Dallas and San Antonio don’t buy snow tires the way that people in Denver or Anchorage do, so it wouldn’t make sense to expect the equivalent of snow tires on the power grid.
Texas Blackouts Hit Minority Neighborhoods Especially Hard – The New York Times – When the lights went out Monday night in the Alazfln-Apache housing project in San Antonio – which stands in one of the city’s poorest ZIP codes – the traffic signals in the neighborhood flickered off and storekeepers pulled down their shutters. For residents, there was little left to do but huddle under blankets and hope that their children wouldn’t fall ill. “I need to take my kids somewhere to keep them warm. I don’t know where,” said Ricardo Cruz, 42, who lives at the Alazfln-Apache Courts with his wife and five children, between 5 and 13 years old, and who has been without electricity since 7 p.m. Monday. While the rolling blackouts in Texas have left some 4 million residents without power in brutally cold weather, experts and community groups say that many marginalized communities were the first to be hit with power outages, and if history serves as a guide, could be among the last to be reconnected. This is particularly perilous, they say, given that low-income households can lack the financial resources to flee to safety or to rebound after the disruption. Experts worry, in particular, that rising energy prices amid surging demand will leave many families in the lurch, unable to pay their utility bills next month and triggering utility cutoffs at a time when they are at their most vulnerable. In Texas’ deregulated electricity market, prices can fluctuate with demand, leading to a potential jump in electric bills for poorer households that already spend a disproportionate amount of income on utilities. “Whether it’s flooding from severe weather events like hurricanes or it’s something like this severe cold, the history of our response to disasters is that these communities are hit first and have to suffer the longest,” said Robert Bullard, a professor at Texas Southern University and an expert on wealth and racial disparities related to the environment. “These are communities that have already been hit hardest with Covid,” he said. “They’re the households working two minimum wage jobs, the essential workers who don’t get paid if they don’t go to work.” In Houston, local environmental groups said that neighborhoods like Acres Homes, a predominantly Black and Latino neighborhood in the northwest of the city, were among the first to lose power. “The pipes are freezing. They’re out of water and electricity,” said Ana Parras, co-executive director of Texas Environmental Justice Advocacy Services, or Tejas, a community group that serves local communities of color. Many of the city’s hardest-hit communities already have poor infrastructure. “The houses there don’t have much insulation,” she said. Research has also shown that in Houston and elsewhere, lower-income, minority communities tend to live closer to industrial sites and be more exposed to pollution, a concern as the freezing weather shut down large refineries and other industrial sites. Large industrial complexes tend to release bursts of pollutants into the air when they shut down and again when they restart. In the days before and after Hurricane Harvey in 2017, Houston’s network of petrochemical plants and refineries released millions of pounds of pollutants, raising health concerns in nearby communities. And electricity outages mean that many air-monitoring stations are likely to be down.
Texas blackouts show how vulnerable power grid is to climate change – The major winter storm that’s swept across the South this week and knocked out power for more than 3 million people in Texas has raised concerns over the vulnerability of the country’s power grid to extreme weather events made worse by climate change. More winter weather is expected to hit the southern and eastern U.S. in upcoming days. Utilities in Arkansas, Louisiana, Mississippi and Southeast Texas have imposed rolling blackouts to ease pressure on strained power systems and to meet high demand for heat and electricity during frigid conditions. The major outages from the storm reveal a broader crisis: Climate change is fueling more frequent and destructive hurricanes, heatwaves, droughts and other disasters that are overwhelming existing infrastructure across the country. Extreme weather events caused 67% more major power outages in the U.S. since 2000, according to an analysis of national power outage data by research group Climate Central. In the U.S. West, record-setting wildfires triggered by dry and hot conditions have also forced blackouts when demand for air conditioning surged and pushed the electric grid beyond its limit. And in Michigan last year, two aging dams collapsed and caused catastrophic flooding following heavy rainfall. “We need to plan better for the increased variability we expect to see under climate change,” said Michael Craig, a professor at the University of Michigan’s School for Environment and Sustainability. “States and system planners and regulators need to make sure they are accounting for what weather will look like in the future.” Though global temperatures are rising due to the burning of fossil fuels, more scientific evidence finds that the type of extreme cold event happening in the U.S. this week is linked to rapid warming in the Arctic. Disruptions to the polar vortex, a low-pressure expanse of cold air that sits in polar regions, then sends cold air from the Arctic to parts of North America, Europe and Asia. As result, tens of thousands of people in Oregon, Kentucky, West Virginia and Louisiana were without power as of Wednesday morning, according to PowerOutage.us, struggling without heat and electricity in cold and in some cases dangerous conditions.
Utilities in 14 States are Told to Start Rolling Blackouts Because of Storm Strains – The Southwest Power Pool has ordered member electric utilities in 14 states to start controlled rolling cutoffs of electric service because the demand for power in the region, driven upward by the bitter cold, is overwhelming the available generation, hampered by the storm. “This is an unprecedented event and marks the first time S.P.P. has ever had to call for controlled interruptions of service,” Lanny Nickell, the power pool’s chief operating officer, said in a statement. “It’s a last resort that we understand puts a burden on our member utilities and the customers they serve, but it’s a step we’re consciously taking to prevent circumstances from getting worse.” Most of the outages will last about an hour and will cut power to a few thousand customers at a time. They are necessary to limit demand and “safeguard the reliability of the regional grid,” Mr. Nickell said. An outage in Oklahoma that began shortly after noon affected about 6,000 customers. The power pool, based in Little Rock, Ark., manages the electric grid that links utilities in all of Oklahoma and Kansas and parts of Texas, Louisiana, Arkansas, Missouri, Iowa, Minnesota, North and South Dakota, Montana, Wyoming, Nebraska and New Mexico. Most of that region has been affected by the winter storm or by the frigid Arctic air mass that has driven the storm south. The statement said the power pool was forced to begin relying on reserve energy sources at 10:08 a.m. Central Time on Monday, and it issued the controlled outage order when the reserves were exhausted a few hours later. It said it had been steadily stepping up warnings to conserve power since Feb. 9. Each member utility would decide for itself how, where and when to cut off power to customers to achieve the necessary reductions, the statement said. Utilities belonging to the main grid operating authority in Texas, which connects with the Southwest Power Pool, began imposing rolling outages overnight because of the storm.
Texas Power Outages to Drag Into Third Day as Deep Freeze Persists – WSJ – Millions of homes in Texas were without power for a second straight day after historically cold winter weather caused a failure of the state’s electricity grid, triggering a public health emergency in the nation’s second most populous state. Across Texas, temporary shelters filled up and fears rose that there could be an untold number of deaths from the historic cold. The grid operator said it continued to try to restart power plants hobbled by the weather, but it warned that full restoration could take days longer. Gov. Greg Abbott called for an investigation into what caused a failure of the state’s power supplies, as between two million and three million Texans remained without electricity on Tuesday evening. The power crisis came as a far-reaching winter storm brought snow, ice and record low temperatures to swaths of the U.S., with dangerously cold wind chills from Arctic air expected to linger over the Great Plains and Mississippi Valley through midweek, the National Weather Service said. At least 15 people had died nationwide as of late Tuesday, according to the Associated Press.
Texas power prices spike as deadly cold wave overwhelms grid –(Reuters) – Electricity prices in Texas soared this week, with spot prices breaking above $10,000 per megawatt hour (MWh), as utilities scrambled for power supplies to meet surging heating demand amid a brutal cold wave over the state. Millions of Texans are without power after grid operator The Electric Reliability Council of Texas (ERCOT) instituted rolling blackouts as electric heating demand caused by the historic winter storm overwhelmed generation, some of which was knocked offline by the extreme weather. The electricity shortfall caused prices to spike as utilities seek any power they can find. Next-day power for Wednesday at the ERCOT North hub, which includes the cities of Dallas and Fort Worth, spiked to a record of $8,800 per MWh, a nearly six-fold jump from $1,489.75 on the previous day.
Austin first responders seeing more carbon monoxide poisoning cases during power outages – As the power outages continue in Austin, families are doing all they can to stay warm. But it’s leading some to resort to unsafe practices. In Houston, carbon monoxide poisoning has already claimed two lives. A woman and an eight-year-old girl died after a car was left running in a garage. Authorities said they were trying to stay warm. In Austin, Selena Xie, president of the Austin EMS Association, said Texans aren’t used to being this cold for this long. And she had a somber prediction for Wednesday morning. “My partner and I were talking about how we would not be surprised if in the morning, around 7, 8 a.m., that we started seeing a lot of deaths,” she said. Thousands of Austinites are waiting for the heat to return. Xie recounted one of her colleague’s 911 calls. “I know of a medic who tried to help a father and his daughter possibly go to the hospital. She had frost in her hair. It was so cold inside,” Xie said. Xie said Austin-Travis County EMS has never responded to so many calls before in the history of the agency. Nine of them were for carbon monoxide poisoning on Tuesday. Three people are in serious condition. Thirteen calls were for carbon monoxide poisoning on Monday. And the Austin Fire Department also responded to four calls for toxic fumes. St. David’s Healthcare started seeing more patients with carbon monoxide poisoning two days ago. Kim Barker, the director of emergency services for St. David’s North Austin Medical Center and a registered nurse, warned that people shouldn’t ignore one of the most common symptoms. “They just think I have a slight headache, but they’re actually getting poisoned. So, one thing is, you know, never use the gas range or oven to heat, never burn charcoal indorse. Never used portable gas stoves and doors and never use a generator inside your house,” Barker said.
“Disasters Within Disaster” – Death Toll Rises To 30 As Texas Energy Crisis Hits Sixth Day – Millions of Texans woke up for the sixth day on Thursday, as one of the nation’s wealthiest states can barely supply electricity to its residents. The power crisis has spread well among its borders crippling Northern Mexico. According to NYPost, at least 2.7 million Texas households were without heat, electricity, or water on Thursday morning as a polar vortex air mass continues to linger in the Lone Star State. The death toll from the historic cold snap and multiple winter storms has increased to at least 30. Besides power plants, the deep freeze has crippled critical infrastructure systems across the state, such as water treatment plants and cellular networks. “This is in many ways disasters within the disaster,” said Judge Lina Hidalgo, the top elected official in Harris County, which encompasses Houston. “The cascading effects are not going to go away.”In a note Wednesday, we asked if “Is Texas Facing A Humanitarian Crisis?” Come to find out, the answer is yes. The cascading effects of days without power have effectively transformed some parts of Texas into a third-world country. The local economy is in tatters as one-fifth of the nation’s refining capacity has come to a screeching halt. Readers in other states should prepare for a surge in crude product prices, such as gasoline and diesel. Also, the state’s oil and natural gas production has ground to a halt. Gov. Greg Abbott announced Wednesday that he has forbidden gas producers from selling to power producers outside its borders through Feb. 21. The disruption has also spilled over into Mexico, where the US has curbed natural gas exports, resulting in power stations grinding to a halt. ERCOT officials said Thursday morning that “significant progress” was made on Wednesday night in restoring customer power, though outages remained. “We’re to the point in the load restoration where we are allowing transmission owners to bring back any load they can related to this load shed event,” said ERCOT Senior Director of System Operations Dan Woodfin in a statement. “We will keep working around the clock until every single customer has their power back on.” ERCOT officials said rotating outages might need to be implemented for the next couple of days to keep the grid stable. ERCOT officials assured customers Thursday that various fuel types of power generation would come back online.
AccuWeather estimates economic impact of winter storms to approach $50 billion —The United States economy, already unstable from the coronavirus pandemic and restrictions, is now taking another hit from an unprecedented coast-to-coast winter storm. Since last week, at least 38 people have died and the winter storms have and left behind immense damage. The total damage and economic loss caused by the historic storm could be between $45 and $50 billion, AccuWeather Founder and CEO Dr. Joel N. Myers estimates. To put the economic toll of the storm into context, AccuWeather’s estimate for the entire 2020 hurricane season, the most active hurricane season on record, was $60-65 billion. “We have been experiencing one of the stormiest patterns seen in decades,” said Myers, who has been studying the economic impact of severe weather for over 50 years. “The damage has been exacerbated by the record cold temperatures that have pushed all the way to the Gulf Coast this week.” Myers’ expert analysis helps emphasize the magnitude of the life-threatening crisis’s impact and the U.S. financial ramifications.The estimate is based on an analysis incorporating independent methods to evaluate all direct and indirect impacts of the storm and is based on a variety of sources, statistics and unique techniques AccuWeather uses to estimate the damage.Myers said that AccuWeather’s estimate includes damage to homes and businesses as well as their contents and cars, job and wage losses, infrastructure damage, auxiliary business losses, medical expenses and closures. The estimates also account for the costs of power outages to businesses and individuals, for economic losses because of highway closures and evacuations and the extraordinary government expenses for cleanup operations.As temperatures plummeted to extreme levels in the U.S., temperatures in Siberia, the vast region in eastern Russia notorious for some of the lowest temperature readings on Earth, were at times higher than some of the lowest readings in the United States.
Deep freeze keeps 2.8 million Texas power customers in the cold; prices remain high – Texas had about 2.8 million electric utility customers without power due to the winter storm shutting down generation capacity around 4 pm CT Feb. 17, and real-time wholesale prices reflected that scarcity, as utilities and the grid operator struggled to restore and maintain service to customers. Stay up to date with the latest commodity content. Sign up for our free daily Commodities Bulletin. Sign Up Customer outages in the Electric Reliability Council of Texas footprint made up the vast majority of that 2.8 million total, which is from the PowerOutage.us website. During an 11 am Feb. 17 media call, ERCOT said it was continuing rotating outages to shed about 14 GW of load across the state to cope with about 46 GW of generation that was unavailable, most of it forced offline by cold weather conditions.Of the 46 GW offline, 28 GW was thermal and 18 GW was renewable – wind and solar. Natural gas freeze-offs were a big factor in much of the thermal generation outage, said Dan Woodfin, ERCOT senior director of system operations. Texas Gov. Greg Abbott on Wednesday ordered that natural gas produced in state remain in Texas until Feb. 21, according to the Dallas Morning News. Icing on wind turbines in West Texas has also been a contributing factor, Woodfin said. A Feb. 17 S&P Global Platts Analytics webinar presentation showed wind output near Abilene, Texas, substantially below normal, given the wind speed – in the range of 4 GW to 7.5 GW during the winter storm, when on other days, those outputs would range from 7.5 GW to as much as 18 GW. As the rotating power outages continue, ERCOT has administratively set real-time locational marginal prices at $9,000/MWh, the systemwide offer cap, in response to a Public Utility Commission of Texas order that scarcity pricing should reflect the value of lost load, which has been determined as $9,000/MWh, as long as rotating outages persist.Real-time prices have also been high in the Southwest Power Pool footprint, which has members in Texas and nearby areas. As of about 4:30 pm CT Feb. 17, the SPP South Hub real-time price was about $698/MWh.
Texas Tesla Owners Are Drawing Power From Their Cars During Blackouts –As Texans gradually regain power after days of catastrophic outages amid freezing temperatures, some Tesla customers are grateful for their electric cars which provided critical emergency power.For example, one Reddit user posted in the r/Teslamotors subreddit that, after running out of firewood, the family including an infant slept in their Model 3 with the heat on while it was parked in the garage. This can be safely done in an electric vehicle because it produces no emissions, but it would be fatal with a gas-powered car that emits toxic carbon monoxide. Carbon monoxide poisonings have skyrocketed in Texas this week, and two people in Houston died from carbon monoxide poisoning while sleeping in the family car in the garage while it was running.Tesla also sells solar panels and a home battery called a PowerWall, andanother Reddit user posted that he was “very grateful” to have one during the rolling blackouts. The non-emergency value proposition for solar installations with batteries is to power the home with stored electricity from the battery during peak usage hours with higher rates, but the battery can also serve as emergency backup. Widespread outages and grid emergencies such as the current situation in Texas and the wildfire-related outages in California demonstrate both the promises and current shortcomings of the energy transition. On the one hand, microgrids with energy stored in local batteries and solar installations are obviously more resilient and resistant to widespread catastrophes. On the other hand, home batteries will only get you so far, and while vehicle-to-grid connections that could turn your electric car into a home battery look promising for evening out grid demand during normal times, it also raises concerns for emergency situations where people need their cars to evacuate on short notice. It’s easy to ensure you have a quarter tank of gas at all times, but trickier to ensure the grid doesn’t draw down vehicle charges below a certain amount (see, for example, this thread about the mysterious workings between a PowerWall and solar panelsduring the Texas outages).
Power outages dropping, but Texans still wrestling with water shortages –Power outages are declining in Texas, but water shortages continue to pose problems due to damage caused to pipes and water mains by the subfreezing cold this week. Austin Water, which serves over 1 million in the Austin metro area, said Friday that it had about 32 million gallons of water stored, well below the required amount for an effective system. “For a healthy system, we need to maintain a minimum of 100 million gallons in storage,” the utility said on Twitter. “As we work to repair and restore our water system, we need everyone to conserve water as much as possible. Using as little water as possible will allow us to put excess water produced into storage, which is critical for the health of the entire system.” Austin Water said water pressure was restored on Thursday to the major pipelines that are “the backbone” of the city’s water distribution system. The agency said a top priority remains getting hospitals back in service, although three major hospitals in the region did have their water restored on Thursday. At one point this week, 7 million Texans were ordered to boil water, The Associated Press reported. Cities including Houston remained under a boil water notice on Friday. Houston Mayor Sylvester Turner said Houston Public Works has received 4,900 calls regarding burst pipes around the city. A mass distribution of bottled water began on Friday morning in Houston for residents who can’t boil water. Leovardo Perez, right, fills a water jug using a hose from a public park water spigot Thursday, Feb. 18, 2021, in Houston. Houston and several surrounding cities are under a boil water notice as many residents are still without running water in their homes. (AP Photo/David J. Phillip) The San Antonio Water Supply said it opened seven water distribution locations around the city to provide affected customers with water. A citywide boil water notice remained in place on Friday. One of the stormiest weather patterns in decades triggered rounds of snow and ice all the way to the Gulf Coast this week, as Arctic air displaced by the polar vortex sent many locations into a deep freeze. The Associated Press reported at least 59 deaths have been linked to the intense cold and damaging storms. Several of the deaths in Texas were linked to carbon monoxide poisoning or house fires in areas where power was out and people were struggling to keep warm. Power outages statewide dropped below 200,000 on Friday morning, according to PowerOutage.us.
Nearly half of all Texans without water even as ‘fragile’ power grid returns to life (Reuters) – A “fragile” energy grid has returned to life for frigid Texans after five days of blackouts caused by a historic winter storm, but challenges in finding drinking water and dealing with downed power lines loomed on Friday. All power plants in the state were once again functioning, but more than 190,000 homes were still without electricity on Friday morning while 13 million people – nearly half of all Texans – have experienced disruptions in water service. Jennifer Jordan, a 54-year old resident of Midlothian, Texas, said she and her husband were still without power on Friday, even though their online account with their provider indicated their issues had been “resolved.” “I have no power at my house. Not one drop of power,” the high school special-education teacher said in an interview. “It’s really hard. You are really longing to get a hot shower, eat a hot meal.” Ice that downed power lines during the week and other issues have utility workers scrambling to reconnect homes to power, while Texas’ powerful oil and gas sector has looked for ways to renew production. Hospitals in some hard-hit areas ran out of water and transferred patients elsewhere, while millions of people were ordered to boil water to make it safe for drinking. Water-treatment plants were knocked offline this week, potentially allowing harmful bacteria to proliferate. In Houston, a mass distribution of bottled water was planned at Delmar Stadium on Friday for residents needing drinkable water, the city’s Office of Emergency Management said. “The grid is still fragile,” she said, noting that cold weather would remain in the area for a few days, which would “put pressure on these power plants that have just come back on.”
Millions of Texans without water, hospitals closed as power outages continue – Millions across Texas are continuing to suffer the effects of a historic blackout resulting from the criminal negligence of the state government, working hand in glove with the private utility companies. These corporations, in pursuit of higher profits, have refused to upgrade their plants so as to withstand the type of severe cold that hit the state last weekend. The power outages, which started on Sunday, were both foreseeable and preventable, with a winter storm in 2011 resulting in a similar collapse of the power grid. The Republican state government has faced backlash for its role in the deregulation of the energy grid and its failure to address any of the issues made clear a decade ago. The sole reason for keeping most of the state off the national grid is to enable private energy companies to reap larger profits, in part by not spending money on expensive upgrades, such as winterizing power plants, providing extra capacity and carrying out other measures that are required under federal regulation. This is illustrated by the misnamed Electric Reliability Council of Texas (ERCOT) grid suffering blackouts, while the El Paso region of the state, which is connected to the federally regulated Western International Grid, did not lose power. Power remained out for 340,000 Texas customers as of Thursday, down from over three million at its peak, according to Poweroutage.us. Many in Texas were left freezing and in the dark for multiple days, with many areas recording temperatures in the single digits. This massive blackout has caused millions of people to lose water, heat, lights and internet. Most of Houston woke up on Wednesday to find that there was little or no water, with more than 1.37 million in the city having no energy on the same day. In addition to Houston, there have been major disruptions to water systems across Texas, including the cities of Dallas, Fort Worth, San Antonio, Austin, Galveston, Corpus Christi and many more. All of these cities have issued boil water notices and have had water run out, with 13.5 million people lacking access to clean water in their homes. At least 47 people have died due to the winter storm, according to tracking by the Washington Post. In Abilene, a 60-year-old man was found frozen to death in his recliner after losing electricity to his home, with his wife recovering, nearly dead, next to him. A homeless Abilene resident was found dead on the street early Monday morning. Many people have desperately attempted to heat their homes by running cars, grills and propane stoves indoors or in garages, causing a spike in carbon monoxide poisonings. Harris County, which includes Houston, recorded over 300 carbon monoxide cases as of Tuesday.
Beleaguered Texas hospitals with no water evacuate patients amid winter storm power outages:- After a deadly blast of winter weather overwhelmed the electrical grid and left millions of Texans without power, hospitals in the state are also facing the additional stress of water shortages, crowded emergency rooms and even being forced to evacuate patients….In Austin, hospitals dealt with a loss in water pressure and heat.St. David’s South Austin Medical Center said Wednesday night that it had lost water pressure from the City of Austin. Since water feeds the facility’s boiler, the hospital was also losing heat.Hospital officials were working to evacuate some patients to other area facilities and said they were distributing bottles and jugs of water to patients and employees. Officials added that they were working with the city to secure portable toilets…In southwest Austin, officials with Ascension Seton Southwest Hospital said they too were facing intermittent issues with water pressure, the Austin American-Statesman reported. The hospital was rescheduling elective surgeries to preserve bed capacity and personnel as a result.At Houston Methodist, two of its community hospitals did not have running water but still treated patients, with most non-emergency surgeries and procedures canceled for Thursday and possibly Friday, spokeswoman Gale Smith told the Associated Press.Emergency rooms were crowded “due to patients being unable to meet their medical needs at home without electricity,” Smith said. She added that pipes had burst in Methodist’s hospitals but were being repaired as they happened….FEMA sent generators to support water treatment plants, hospitals and nursing homes in Texas, along with thousands of blankets and ready-to-eat meals, officials said.In an “urgent call to action,” the Texas Restaurant Association said hospitals in the state were “in serious need of food for their staff and patients” and said it was working to coordinate food donations.
Texas Was Warned a Decade Ago Its Grid Was Unprepared for Cold – Federal regulators warned Texas that its power plants couldn’t be counted on to reliably churn out electricity in bitterly cold conditions a decade ago, when the last deep freeze plunged 4 million people into the dark. They recommended that utilities use more insulation, heat pipes and take other steps to winterize plants — strategies commonly observed in cooler climates but not in normally balmy Texas. “Where did those recommendations go, and how were they implemented?” said Jeff Dennis, managing director of Advanced Energy Economy, an association of clean energy businesses. “Those are going to be some pretty key questions.” As investigators probe the current power crisis in Texas, which has left millions of people without power or a promise of when it will be restored, questions are sure to be raised about how the state responded to the urgings from the 2011 analysis, issued by the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission and the North America Electric Reliability Corporation, which sets reliability standards. The February 2011 incident occurred when an Arctic cold front descended on the Southwest, sending temperatures below freezing for four days in a row. The result was disastrous. Equipment and instruments froze, forcing the shutdown of power plants and rolling blackouts, according to the report. Representatives of Ercot did not respond to emailed questions asking specifically about why key recommendations from 2011 went unheeded. But asked about the need for more weatherization in news conferences Tuesday and Wednesday, Ercot officials said that while it has called for companies to harden their facilities, it can’t force them to do so. Power generators have voluntary guidelines to follow and already have a financial incentive to keep plants running during cold snaps when prices spike, Dan Woodfin, Ercot senior director of system operations, told reporters Tuesday. “There aren’t regulatory penalties at the current time” for not complying with the weatherization guidelines, Woodfin said.
Texas grid fails to weatherize, repeats mistake feds cited 10 years ago – Ten years ago, plunging temperatures forced rolling blackouts across Texas, leaving more than 3 million people without power as the Super Bowl was played outside Dallas. Now, with a near identical scenario following another Texas cold snap, Texas power regulators are being forced to answer how the unusually cold temperatures forced so much of the state’s power generation offline when Texans were trying to keep warm. To start, experts say, power generators and regulators failed to heed the lessons of 2011 – or for that matter, 1989. In the aftermath of the Super Bowl Sunday blackout a decade ago, federal energy officials warned the grid manager, the Electric Reliability Council of Texas or ERCOT, that Texas power plants had failed to adequately weatherize facilities to protect against cold weather. A federal report that summer recommended steps including installing heating elements around pipes and increasing the amount of reserve power available before storms, noting many of those same warnings were issued after similar blackouts 22 years earlier and had gone unheeded. “We need better insulation and weatherization at facilities and in homes,” said Michael Webber, an energy professor at the University of Texas. “There’s weaknesses in the system we haven’t dealt with.” A spokesman for the Association of Electric Companies of Texas declined to comment on that criticism and said state power plants submit weatherization plans to both the Public Utility Commission, which oversees the power industry, and ERCOT. In a conference call Monday, Dan Woodfin, ERCOT’s senior director of system operations, said generators followed best practices for winterization, but the severity of the weather went “well beyond the design parameters of an extreme Texas winter.”
Texas Could Have Kept the Lights On – The New York Times — A cold, sharp dagger has slashed through Texas, America’s largest and proudest producer of fossil fuels, while stranding millions without heat or light. The frigid disaster has also laid bare the fallacy, still prominent in the Lone Star State, that oil and gas are more important than impending climate catastrophe, embarrassing a political class that just weeks ago pledged to defend the oil and gas industry – its own Alamo – from the Biden administration.The fallacy is hard to unwind even as people are dying. But some Texans are also furious about how their state’s ruinous laissez-faire governance led to a cascade of human-caused disasters of epic proportions. Indeed, this was no act of God. Last week, 29 million Texans learned that the weather would turn unseasonably cold. It would be no ordinary blue norther: As the planet warms, so does the Arctic, disrupting the jet stream, which usually keeps the polar vortex of frigid air in place there. Now there is an emerging, if not unanimous, view among climatologiststhat the vortex is wobbling and dipping south, paralyzing Madrid, freezing the American Midwest and blanketing the Sierra Nevada, all since the start of this year.Yet the folks over at the Texas power grid appear to have been caught flat-footed by spiking demand in energy to keep houses warm and phones charged. In general, there’s a storage problem in Texas when it comes to natural gas. Utility companies often don’t bother to buy gas reserves: It’s easier, cheaper and more profitable to tap the gas in the field with a pipeline – usually.But the moment to invest in resilience has passed. The spot pricein early February was under $3 per million British thermal units; this week those spot prices have soared to all-time highs. After a cold snap in 2011, the power companies were supposed to betterwinterize their plants. Ten years later, they hadn’t done it.As the cold froze Oklahoma and sent temperatures in Dallas to lows not seen in over a century, the natural gas industry proved unable to deliver more gas even if it was purchased. Wellheads in the Permian Basin froze solid. Pipelines leaked water, which, in turn, turned metal and gas into useless, immovable ice.The crisis dates back to the 1930s, when the Federal Power Commission gained the authority to regulate interstate transmission of electric power. But politicians in Texas, with their slavish devotion to the fossil fuel industry, didn’t want Washington regulating the electricity business and chipping away at those hefty profits.So the business went entirely unregulated until the formation of the Electric Reliability Council of Texas in the 1970s. But ERCOT has been anything but reliable. While it is technically overseen by the state, its board is really just an industry club. Several of its members don’t even live in Texas.
From FedEx to GM, firms halt operations as freeze grips parts of United States (Reuters) – Many U.S companies, including FedEx and General Motors, were forced to temporarily shut operations on Tuesday as a bone-chilling winter storm caused power outages and gas shortages in parts of the country. The rare deep freeze swept the southern North America over the three-day Presidents Day holiday weekend, leaving millions without power and sending front-month gas futures to an over three-month high. General Motors canceled the first shift at its plants in Spring Hill, Tennessee, Bowling Green in Kentucky, Fort Wayne in Indiana and Arlington in Texas, factories that make some of its most profitable pickup trucks and sport utility vehicles including Chevrolet Silverado and Escalade. “We will be making decisions at the respective plants later this morning regarding their production status for 2nd shift today,” a GM spokesman said. Japan’s Toyota Motor and Nissan Motor also scrapped the first shift at some of their U.S. plants. Jeep maker Stellantis said it suspended production on the day shift at its Toledo assembly complex in Ohio. GM’s smaller rival Ford Motor said it had stopped production of best-selling F-150 pickup trucks at its Kansas City assembly plant until Feb. 21 to conserve its supply of natural gas. Some other Ford facilities that suspended operations included Hermosillo assembly plant in Mexico, Flat Rock factory in Michigan and Ohio assembly plant in Avon Lake, Ohio. Package delivery company United Parcel Service said operations at its Dallas hub in Texas and Worldport air hub at Louisville International Airport were back to normal. The company said it did not have any coronavirus vaccine shipments in its network on Monday night.
Power outages hit North Dakota’s rural co-ops as cold air woes persist in southern US – The frigid weather in the south-central U.S. continues to plague North Dakota’s electric cooperatives, many of whom were dealing with power outages Tuesday ordered by a regional grid operator. Capital Electric Cooperative, which serves parts of Burleigh and Sheridan counties, said at least one-third of its 21,000 members were without power at one point Tuesday morning from Bismarck to Wilton. The co-op said the outages were rolling and seemed to last about 45 minutes before the lights came back on for affected members. “We had no warning of this at all,” spokesman Wes Engbrecht said. Nor does Capital Electric have control over who loses power and when, as that’s managed through one of its power suppliers, the Western Area Power Administration. The rolling outages could last through Thursday, according to WAPA. WAPA is a member of the grid operator known as the Southwest Power Pool, which said Tuesday that it’s requiring “controlled interruptions” of electric service throughout its 14-state region that spans the middle of the country from North Dakota to Texas. “This is done as a last resort to preserve the reliability of the electric system as a whole,” the power pool said in a Facebook post. “Individuals in the SPP service territory should take steps to conserve energy use and follow their local utilities’ instructions regarding conservation, local conditions and the potential for outages to their homes and businesses.”
US FERC, NERC to launch inquiry into extreme winter weather power outages – As millions of customers are experiencing power outages, the US Federal Energy Regulatory Commission and North American Electric Reliability Corp. said Feb. 16 that they would open a joint inquiry into the bulk power system’s operations during the extreme winter weather conditions battering the Midwest and South-Central states. Stay up to date with the latest commodity content. Sign up for our free daily Commodities Bulletin. Sign Up The joint inquiry, slated to begin in the coming days, will see FERC and NERC team “with other federal agencies, states, regional entities and utilities to identify problems with the performance of the bulk-power system and, where appropriate, solutions for addressing those issues,” the commissions said in a single statement. As of late afternoon Feb. 16, nearly 4.7 million utility customer accounts were without power across the US, with just over 3.8 million of those in Texas, according to poweroutage.us, which aggregates US utility outage data. The Electric Reliability Council of Texas, which operates the grid for most of Texas, was hit particularly hard, with more than 30 GW forced offline, the worst blackouts in the state in decades as electricity supply could not keep pace with record-high demand and record-low temperatures. According to S&P Global Platts Analytics, nearly 12 Bcf/d or about 13% of US gas production is offline because of cold weather impacts. The brutal cold snap that continues to blanket much of the US has shown no signs of letting up. The National Weather Service reported a second major winter storm will hit the Southern US with heavy snow and icing starting Feb. 16 before moving east. FERC Chairman Richard Glick said the commission was “closely monitoring” the extreme weather across the country and its impact on electric reliability, and was in contact with ERCOT, Southwest Power Pool and Midcontinent Independent System Operator. “I have directed FERC staff to coordinate closely with the RTOs/ISOs, utilities, NERC, and regional reliability entities to do what we can to help,” Glick said in a Feb. 15 statement. “In the days ahead, we will be examining the root causes of these reliability events, but, for now, the focus must remain on restoring power as quickly as possible and keeping people safe during this incredibly challenging situation.”
The Texas grid got crushed because its operators didn’t see the need to prepare for cold weather –When it gets really cold, it can be hard to produce electricity, but it’s not impossible. Operators in Alaska, Canada, Maine, Norway and Siberia do it all the time.What has sent Texas reeling is not an engineering problem, nor is it the frozen wind turbines blamed by prominent Republicans. It is a financial structure for power generation that offers no incentives to power plant operators to prepare for winter. In the name of deregulation and free markets, critics say, Texas has created an electric grid that puts an emphasis on cheap prices over reliable service.It’s a “Wild West market design based only on short-run prices,” said Matt Breidert, a portfolio manager at a firm called Ecofin.And yet the temporary train wreck of that market Monday and Tuesday has seen the wholesale price of electricity in Houston go from $22 a megawatt-hour to about $9,000. Meanwhile, 4 million Texas households have been without power.One utility company, Griddy, which sells power at wholesale rates to retail customers without locking in a price in advance, told its patrons Tuesday to find another provider before they get socked with tremendous bills.The widespread failure in Texas and, to a lesser extent, Oklahoma and Louisiana in the face of a winter cold snap shines a light on what some see as the derelict state of America’s power infrastructure, a mirror reflection of the chaos that struck California last summer. The immediate question facing the Texas power sector is whether its participants are willing to pay for the sort of winterization measures that are common farther north, even for a once-in-a-decade spell of weather. The Republican speaker of the Texas House, Dade Phelan, announced immediate hearings into “what went wrong.”Fossil fuel groups and their Republican allies blamed the power failures on frozen wind turbines and warned against the supposed dangers of alternative power sources. Some turbines did in fact freeze – though Greenland and other northern outposts are able to keep theirs going through the winter.
Texas was minutes away from months long power outages, officials say –Texas’ power grid was “seconds and minutes” away from a catastrophic failure that could have left Texans in the dark for months, officials with the entity that operates the grid said Thursday. As millions of customers throughout the state begin to have power restored after days of massive blackouts, officials with the Electric Reliability Council of Texas, or ERCOT, which operates the power grid that covers most of the state, said Texas was dangerously close to a worst-case scenario: uncontrolled blackouts across the state. The quick decision that grid operators made in the early hours of Monday morning to begin what was intended to be rolling blackouts – but lasted days for millions of Texans – occurred because operators were seeing warning signs that massive amounts of energy supply was dropping off the grid. As natural gas fired plants, utility scale wind power and coal plants tripped offline due to the extreme cold brought by the winter storm, the amount of power supplied to the grid to be distributed across the state fell rapidly. At the same time, demand was increasing as consumers and businesses turned up the heat and stayed inside to avoid the weather.“It needed to be addressed immediately,” said Bill Magness, president of ERCOT. “It was seconds and minutes [from possible failure] given the amount of generation that was coming off the system.” Grid operators had to act quickly to cut the amount of power distributed, Magness said, because if they had waited, “then what happens in that next minute might be that three more [power generation] units come offline, and then you’re sunk.” Magness said on Wednesday that if operators had not acted in that moment, the state could have suffered blackouts that “could have occurred for months,” and left Texas in an “indeterminately long” crisis.
Texas power consumers to pay the price of winter storm (Reuters) – Texas residents suffering a winter storm that has left millions without power are set to face a future challenge in higher utility bills, after the days-long cold snap put an unprecedented strain on the state’s power network. Some 2.7 million households in Texas, the largest electricity consuming state in the United States, were without heat on Wednesday as freezing temperatures in a normally temperate part of the country overwhelmed demand, causing blackouts and widespread anger. Wholesale power prices soared more than 300-fold, stirring memories of the price spikes that accompanied California’s energy crisis of 2000-2001, when Enron and others artificially increased prices. Consumers won’t be forced to fork over thousands of dollars when their next utility bill comes due, say analysts, but state utilities will likely hike bills after this year, both to pay for the record price spikes and to fund updates to Texas’s grid to make it more resilient. Texas operates an independent grid closed off from the rest of the country. On Wednesday, power prices in Dallas and Fort Worth hit $8,800 per megawatt-hour (MWh), compared with the more typical average of roughly $26 per MWh. Over time, the state’s grid operator, the Electric Reliability Council of Texas (ERCOT), could impose higher costs to consumers to prepare for subsequent, similar events. “The wholesale market is allowing record high prices, and those record high prices are eventually going to be paid for by end-consumers,”
As Texas deep freeze subsides, some households now face electricity bills as high as $10,000 — As the Texas power grid collapsed under a historic winter storm,Jose Del Rio of Haltom City, in the Dallas-Fort Worth area, saw the electricity bill on a vacant two-bedroom home he is trying to sell slowly creep up over the past two weeks. Typically, the bill is around $125 to $150 a month, he said. But his account has already been charged about $630 this month – and he still owes another $2,600. “If worse comes to worst, I have the ability to put it on a credit card or figure something out,” Del Rio said. “There is no one living in that house. All the lights are off. But I have the air at 60 because I don’t want the pipes to freeze.” When he contacted Griddy, his electric company, they advised him to switch providers, Del Rio said. Griddy’s prices are controlled by the market, and are therefore vulnerable to sudden swings in demand. With the extreme weather, energy usage has soared, pushing up wholesale power prices to more than $9,000 per megawatt hour – compared to the seasonal average of $50 per megawatt hour.In the face of the soaring costs, Griddy has been directing consumers to consider temporarily switching electricity providers to save on their bills.Griddy did not respond to NBC News’ request for comment.The Electric Reliability Council of Texas, or ERCOT, which manages power for about 90 percent of the state’s electric load, was unprepared for the frigid conditions of the past two weeks: The primary electric grid was hit with off-the-charts demand for poweras Texans tried to heat their homes – demand that outpacedutility officials’ highest estimates for an extreme peak load. “I’m taking responsibility for the current status of ERCOT,” Gov. Greg Abbott told reporters on Thursday.Customers outside the ERCOT service area have also been hit with sticker shock. Veronica Garcia, a Reliant Energy customer in Mansfield, Texas, told NBC News her bill is projected to be twice as much as she typically pays a month for electricity. She last paid $63 on Feb. 11 to power her one-bedroom apartment, but her bill is projected to be between $114 and $133 in March, according to documents reviewed by NBC News.
Texas households face massive electricity bills, some as high as $17K, after winter storm.— Some Texans say they’re getting massive electric bills following the winter storm that caused chaos throughout the state this past week. NBC News reports that some Texans are getting bills as high as $10,000, while local ABC News affiliate WFAA in Dallas says one man’s bill shows him owing more than $17,000. Jose Del Rio told NBC News that the bill for his two-bedroom home is usually between $125 to $150 a month, but this month his bill exceeded $3,000. Rio claims the house, which is empty and for sale, only ran the heater at 60 degrees to prevent pipes from freezing, but that lights and other utilities remained turned off. Another woman told NBC that her one-bedroom apartment usually uses enough electricity to result in a $63 bill, but her next bill is projected to be as much as $133. A Willow Park family that says they were fortunate enough not to lose their power told NBC News that the bill for their three-bedroom home has climbed by nearly $10,000 in the last few days. Ty Williams told WFAA in Dallas that he normally spends $660 for his home, guest house and office electric bills each month. His new bill after the rate spike exceeded $17,000. He told the outlet that he ultimately managed to switch to another provider and was hoping to work out a way to pay his massive bill. But Williams described the situation as “being held hostage and there isn’t anything you can do about it.” Some groups, such as Reliant Energy, say they are willing to work with customers and offer flexible bill payment options following the storm. The spike in people’s bills was due to the skyrocketing demand for power during the freezing conditions, which overloaded the unprepared Electric Reliability Council of Texas, which manages power for around 90 percent of the state. That demand increased the price of power, but only those on variable rates directly saw their bills impacted.
Cold Truth: The Texas Freeze is a Catastrophe of the Free Market –Yves here. The collateral damage of the Texas power grid power failures is getting worse and worse. Extensive burst pipes now mean that 14 million (no typo) are without potable water. From the Wall Street Journal:More than 14 million people in Texas are without safe drinking water, as the fallout of a severe winter storm exacts a historic toll.Cities including Austin, Houston and San Antonio are under boil-water notices until Monday. Some residents are bringing in shovelfuls of snow to flush their toilets.The harsh weather has crippled Texas’s energy grid, leaving more than four millions residents without electricity during the peak of the blackouts, many of them remaining without heat in subfreezing conditions for days on end. The cold snap has also caused a wave of burst water pipes, which led to a loss of water pressure and a shortage….Huge swaths of residents without clean water don’t have the electricity needed to boil it amid the continuing outages. Many others have pipes that are dry.Jamie Galbraith explains why this mess was a predictable result of unwarranted faith in free market ideology. Safety and redundancy are costs that profit-maximizers seek to avoid.
Rick Perry: ‘Texans would be without electricity for longer’ to ‘keep the federal government out’ – Former Texas Gov. Rick Perry (R) on Wednesday suggested that the people of the Lone Star State would rather spend more time without electricity than see increased federal involvement in their state. “Texans would be without electricity for longer than three days to keep the federal government out of their business,” a blog post on House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy’s website quoted Perry as saying, though the post says Perry’s remark was made “partly rhetorically.“ The remark from the former U.S. Energy Secretary comes as many parts of Texas remain without electricity amid a record-setting winter storm. More than a dozen deaths have been linked to the crisis. The post on McCarthy’s website warns that observers on the left might see the situation as an “opportunity to expand their top-down, radical proposals.” Texas’s power grid isn’t subject to regulations from the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission, because it doesn’t cross state lines. In recent days, the grid’s isolation has come under some scrutiny amid the power outages. The state’s power sources, including nuclear, coal, natural gas and wind have had difficulties performing in the lower temperatures. A senior director at the Electric Reliability Council of Texas told Bloomberg that wind shutdowns were responsible for between 3.6 and 4.5 gigawatts of the total 30 to 35 gigawatts worth of outages.
Freak cold in Texas has scientists discussing whether climate change is to blame —Scientists say global warming – specifically the rapid warming of the Arctic – is a possible, if not likely, culprit in the extreme weather. Historically, frigid temperatures have typically been contained within the Arctic by a jet stream circling the polar region. In fact, along with the spinning of the planet, it’s the contrast in temperatures and atmospheric pressures between the Arctic and lower latitudes that results in the winds. But as the Arctic has warmed more than twice as fast as the global average over the last three decades, that contrast can be less pronounced, said Paul Beckwith, a climate system scientist in Ottawa. That could cause the polar jet stream to slow down and meander, so that it carries more warmer air toward the pole and frigid air further south, he said. “What we’re seeing this year is an extreme example of what happens when the jet stream trough goes really deep southward,” Beckwith said. This polar vortex theory, first proposed in 2012, has some researchers like Beckwith worried about what future warming might mean for traditionally temperate lands further south. Others caution that it’s still too early to draw conclusions. The theory “remains speculative, and it is the reporting of it as fact that is not justified,” climate scientist Geoffrey Vallis at the University of Exeter tweeted on Tuesday. “It may be true, but perhaps more likely not.” Cold weather is something to expect in winter, after all, and extreme cold could be a result of natural variability, some say.
UK Climate Activists Are Locked in a Self-Dug Tunnel Underneath a London Station -Beneath London’s Euston Station, climate protester Blue Sandford is chained by the ankle in an illegally dug tunnel. The tunnel, 12-feet deep and 100ft long, is wet and muddy. It is propped up by wooden frames: in places wide enough only for them to lie flat on their stomachs.The 18-year-old is resisting UK authorities as they try remove her and other protesters.Under the cover of a tent, the “Stop HS2″ activists spent two months secretly digging the tunnel with shovels and buckets before going public and locking themselves inside on January 27.They’re protesting Britain’s High-Speed 2 railway project (HS2), which involves clearing ancient woodland to make way for tracks and other rail infrastructure. It will also mean redeveloping Euston Square Gardens, a park in front of the station, they say.”We’re in serious debt here, the whole world, in terms of carbon and gas and methane. We need to start planting trees, not cutting them down,” said Sandford, speaking on the phone to DW from the tunnel.Four of the tunnelers, including Sandford’s brother Lazer, have been either forcibly removed, or left voluntarily. Lazer had encased his arm in a steel tube that was surrounded by concrete and had to be drilled out. At least three more remain, despite fears the makeshift passage could collapse. For the protesters, the stakes are high, because this represents the larger fight to halt climate change.”I’m here because we’re facing societal collapse, and wars and famine and drought on a scale that we’ve never seen before and I’m really terrified for my future,” said Sandford, who has also taken part in theExtinction Rebellion protests, in a recorded message before the authorities arrived.HS2 is the UK Government’s major new railway project linking the capital, London, to northern cities like Manchester. After years of delays, construction finally began in September 2020. The railway will allow high-speed trains to travel along their own tracks, freeing up the existing rail network for more local services with the aim of reducing cars on the road. HS2 says its trains will offer cross-country travel with seven times lower emissions than cars and will carry freight to reduce high-polluting truck journeys.
The Internet’s Big Carbon Footprint Need Not Doom the Climate – Demand for internet services was already rising before the COVID-19 pandemic, and growth will continue once people are able to gather safely in person again. That’s raising concerns about the electricity needed to power servers, networks, and devices – and the resulting consequences for the climate.Eric Masanet, a professor in sustainability science for emerging technologies at UC Santa Barbara, says the internet sector accounts for 2 to 4% of global energy use. Data centers alone are estimated to account for 1% of global energy demand, more than many countries use. Power-hungry data centers are buildings or spaces housing the computers and communications hardware that store, process and transmit the data that run the internet. Everything you do on the internet is connected to data centers.“Data centers are the backbone of the applications, really the backbone of the cloud, of enterprise computing, so everything that is fundamental to an organization runs through a data center,” Netflix, for example, uses Amazon Web Services to run its application. So when you are streaming a Netflix movie or series, it is delivered via an Amazon data center somewhere in the world – maybe in northern Virginia, a major hub for hyperscale data centers.As internet use increases, the hyperscale data center business is booming. According to a report by Synergy Research Group, by the end of 2019, there were 504 large data centers in operation – triple the number in 2013 – and another 151 were being planned or built. In 2019, Amazon and Microsoft together accounted for half of the new data centers in development. Data centers consume a lot of energy. The servers and other devices need constant, reliable power, and the electronic equipment needs constant cooling. Understanding the energy and emissions use is difficult because many technology companies are not transparent. Renee Obringer, an environmental engineer with the National Socio-Environmental Synthesis Center, said the lack of data was a concern to a team she worked with to analyze the carbon footprint of the internet.“We keep seeing studies that say, ‘Netflix is destroying the climate’ or your emails are, or zooming is bad,” Masanet said. “It’s kind of an alarming view of the internet’s footprint and that narrative is false. These systems are really complicated. The technology improves really rapidly. It gets more efficient not every year [but] every month when the technology upgrades.”
NAACP: Carbon Tax Resolution Ignores Harm To Low-Income, Black, Brown Communities – The Indiana NAACP is speaking out against a state Senate resolution that urges Indiana to support a carbon tax plan. The Baker-Shultz Carbon Dividends Plan proposes taxing companies that emit greenhouse gases and returning that money to U.S. households. Denise Abdul-Rahman is the environmental and climate justice chair for the Indiana State Conference of the NAACP. She said carbon taxes and geotechnology – like carbon capture and storage – don’t address the root causes of climate change and could prop up the dying coal industry.“Unless you get to the tax loopholes or fossil fuel subsidies, they will always continue to find a way to support their profit-making model which will continue to pollute in low-income and Black and Brown communities,” Abdul-Rahman said.She said pollution has affected the health of these communities, shortened their lives and lowered their property values. A small amount of cash can’t undo that harm.“It’s just degrading, I guess, is the best word that I can come with,” Abdul-Rahman said.
Could Rolling Blackouts Happen In New England? | New Hampshire Public Radio – This week in Texas, millions of people lost power in rolling blackouts after a historic winter storm. But could this happen in New England? And what are the tradeoffs of being prepared to keep the lights on as climate change drives more extreme weather?NHPR’s energy reporter Annie Ropeik talked about this with Dan Dolan, the head of the New England Power Generators Association, as part of NHPR’s climate change reporting project By Degrees. This transcript of an extended version of the broadcast conversation has been lightly edited for clarity.
Why the power is out in Texas … and why other states are vulnerable too » Many – including some prominent climate change contrarians – were quick to pin the “electric emergency” on the massive turbines that make Texas the leading U.S. state for wind energy. While the deep freeze did knock some turbines offline, practically every mode of energy supply was hobbled by the intense cold, snow, and ice.The main cause of the massive disruption, by far, were the frozen components leading to the outage of thermal plants that heat water and convert the steam to electricity. The vast bulk of those thermal plants are powered by natural gas. In addition, the South Texas Nuclear Plant was thrown out of service Monday as a result of frozen pipes, which cut even further into the Houston area’s electricity supply.Also feeding the crisis were several factors unique to Texas. Most of the Lone Star State is on a power grid that’s separate from the western and eastern U.S. grids, a decades-old bid to avoid interstate regulation but one that reduces the Texas grid’s flexibility. The state’s deregulated, just-in-time energy marketplace is also a factor, as it leans on production versus storage – a risk when natural gas lines freeze up – and it allows for massive price spikes during weather outages.Investigations after similar but less-extensive Texas freeze disasters in 1989 and 2011 pinned much of the blame on equipment that was insufficiently protected against extreme cold, a threat that’s infrequent in Texas but notoriously brutal when it does arrive. “Many of the generators that experienced outages in 1989 failed again in 2011,” according to a reportfrom the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission and the North American Electric Reliability Commission.“I think the Texas freeze will become the new poster child for compound weather and energy disasters,” said atmospheric scientist Daniel Cohan of Rice University, who’s working on a book about energy and climate change. “The challenges faced this week will likely be studied for years to come, and they show how tough it is to achieve resilience in a changing climate during an energy transition.”
N.J. offshore wind turbines bring worries of impacted views, tourism, fishing – – A half-dozen people stood on an oceanfront deck with a million-dollar view, asking a hundred questions about what’s on the horizon. On this clear, winter afternoon, it was the Atlantic as far as the eye can see. By 2024, nearly 100 of the world’s largest, most powerful wind turbines could be spinning 15 miles off the coast. With blades attached, the windmills could reach as high and wide as 850 feet, and simulations created by Orsted, the Danish-based power company behind the Ocean Wind project, show the turbines are visible, faintly, from beaches in Brigantine, Avalon, Stone Harbor, and Joe and Tricia Conte’s deck in Ocean City. “Some of those pictures are deceptive, though, because they were taken on a cloudy day,” Joe Conte said. “The pictures they have of a clear day give you a much more vivid view of what it’s really going to look like.” The project will power a half-million homes in New Jersey and, according to Orsted, create thousands of jobs, both offshore and on during the initial construction process, which could begin this year. It has the support of both Gov. Phil Murphy, who has actively pushed for alternative energy in the state, and President Joe Biden. Murphy’s office did not return a request for comment for this story, but Jeff Tittel, director of the Sierra Club’s New Jersey chapter, said there was talk of offshore oil wells under past administrations. “The alternative is more pollution,” Tittel said.
Biden gets his first energy crisis – and an opening – The extreme weather that forced power outages from North Dakota to Texas on Tuesday triggered a bout of the usual finger-pointing about the causes. But it could also deliver a boost to President Joe Biden’s efforts to upgrade infrastructure, counter climate change and expand the reach of renewable energy. As millions of Texans shivered in the dark, supporters of the fossil fuel industries turned their ire on the state’s massive – and frozen – wind farms, even as Republican Gov. Greg Abbott acknowledged that the extreme cold had shut down all types of power plants, including those that burn coal. Data showed that the freeze hit the state’s natural gas power plants the hardest. What most experts saw was the Texas grid’s vulnerability to harsh weather – and a warning that climate change-induced disasters could devastate the nation’s leading energy producer. The resulting crisis could be a boon to Biden’s proposal to spend huge sums of money to harden the nation’s electric grid as it connects giant wind and solar power plants to cities and states thousands of miles away. That’s an essential step if the U.S. is to make a major turn toward relying on solar, wind and other renewable energy to keep the lights on. “When supply doesn’t show up, legislative or regulatory intervention begins,” said Kevin Book, managing director at the consulting firm ClearView Energy Partners. “The reactivity to a supply shock is one of the few things you can rely on.” Freezing temperatures sent energy demand soaring in Texas to levels that eclipsed even the hottest summer days. Grid operators there and across the Midwest implemented rolling blackouts to prevent further damage to the grid, but in Texas alone 4 million customers have been without power since Monday. Investigations of the causes are just beginning, but data from the Electric Reliability Council of Texas, which operates the state’s electric grid, showed that at least 30 gigawatts of power fueled by natural gas, coal and nuclear went off line Monday, along with 16 gigawatts of renewable power. National Republicans – and those with national aspirations – seized on pictures of frozen wind turbines to hammer Washington’s green energy agenda, even though Texas operates a grid outside of federal oversight and has spent decades making its own energy decisions. “If the last few days have proven anything, it’s that we need oil & gas, “tweeted George P. Bush, who as Texas Land Commissioner oversees much of the state’s oil and gas production. “Relying solely on renewable energy would be catastrophic. Many of these sources have proven to be unreliable.”
Biden’s Plea to Remake Grid Gets a Boost on Texas Power Crisis – The icy weather that left millions without power in Texas has critics of the Biden administration’s fight against climate change blaming renewable energy, but the failures have more to do with an ill-prepared power grid and shortfalls in traditional electricity sources. Energy analysts and experts said the blackouts in Texas underscore the U.S. electric system’s need for more of almost everything, from additional power lines criss-crossing the country to large-scale storage systems that can supply electricity when demand spikes or renewable generation declines. That could give at least a rhetorical boost to President Joe Biden’s plans for a “historic investment” in the nation’s electric grid, including better transmission systems and battery storage that would make the system more resilient amid extreme weather spurred by climate change. The investments broadly touted by Biden could help satisfy his 2035 goal of an emissions-free power system and help meet increased demand nationwide as more electric vehicles hit the roads and more buildings rely on power instead of natural gas for heat. The administration is set to unveil a blueprint for infrastructure spending, including investments in the nation’s electrical grid, within weeks. “There are parts of the country right now that have excess power, that have low prices, that are not struggling, where it’s a normal Tuesday, and yet in Texas, 4 million people are without power,” said Joshua Rhodes, a research associate at the University of Texas at Austin’s Webber Energy Group. “This should reignite a debate about some kind of connection between our disparate grids where we can move energy to places like Texas that are desperate for it right now.” The nation’s grid evolved from a patchwork of local power systems that weren’t meant to serve distant customers. “So cities and even some times neighborhoods have their own systems,” Rhodes said. The downside of that approach became became apparent in Texas as temperatures plunged into single digits. Regional power sources weren’t able to meet the demand as residents cranked up thermostats, straining supplies of electricity in the state known as the energy capital of the U.S. Grid operators were forced to implement rolling blackouts as wind turbines in West Texas froze up and natural gas, coal and nuclear power plants went offline.
Biden’s War on Coal @ World Bank — There’s an interesting article on Politico about how the Biden administration’s pledge to limit emissions from fossil fuels will be implemented on the global stage. Sure, reducing subsidies for fossil fuel extraction and consumption at home to set an example for the rest of the world is one thing. However, there are also things the United States can do internationally to help ensure fossil fuels are kept in the ground. In an executive order issued last month, Biden tasked the United States’ agencies involved in foreign assistance and development financing–the International Development Finance Corporation (formed in 2019 by combining the Overseas Private Investment Corporation and the Development Credit Authority), Treasury, USAID, and the Millennium Challenge Corporation among others–with devising emissions-reducing financing. This executive order also extends to the multilateral organizations the US is a member of, including the World Bank. It states: [The Treasury Secretary shall] develop a strategy for how the voice and vote of the United States can be used in international financial institutions, including the World Bank Group and the International Monetary Fund, to promote financing programs, economic stimulus packages, and debt relief initiatives that are aligned with and support the goals of the Paris Agreement. In doing so, the Biden administration wants to contrast clean, green American with dirty energy China. However, there is a danger that developing countries not as green-minded as Biden may instead be pushed to deal more with China: President Joe Biden’s plan to halt U.S. funding for overseas fossil fuel projects will turn the global spotlight on China for bankrolling coal projects around the globe. But it could also push poor countries closer to Beijing – and risk ceding the United States’ position as a leading financier for developing economies… Biden’s directive last month to move toward withholding money from international institutions like the World Bank that help poor nations build fossil fuel power plants stands in stark contrast to Beijing’s flow of cash under its Belt and Road Initiative, which supplies 70 percent of the financing for the world’s new coal-fired plants. The White House is betting its move will paint China as hypocritical as that country – the world’s top greenhouse gas emitter – aims to take a leading role in international climate change efforts.
WVa gov’s family settles suit over mine selenium discharges (AP) – A coal company controlled by the family of West Virginia Gov. Jim Justice must pay $270,000 to a nonprofit land protection group and comply with selenium discharge limits under a settlement approved by a federal judge. U.S. District Judge David Faber approved the settlement Wednesday, two months after environmental groups filed the proposed agreement with Bluestone Coal Corp., the Charleston Gazette-Mail reported. Last year Faber found the company liable for selenium discharges into waters near a McDowell County mine. High selenium concentrations can be toxic to humans and animals. Under the agreement, Bluestone must provide quarterly progress reports on pollutant discharge monitoring to several environmental groups, which had sued under the federal Clean Water and Surface Mining Control and Reclamation acts. The company also must pay a $30,000 federal fine and $270,000 to the West Virginia Land Trust to help finance development of a trail along the Tug Fork of the Big Sandy River. Bluestone already has paid $414,500 for selenium violations from June 2018 to June 2020. Bluestone had unsuccessfully sought to dismiss the lawsuit, arguing that a 2016 agreement between Southern Coal Corp. – another company owned by the Justice family – and the federal Environmental Protection Agency precluded environmental groups from filing the selenium lawsuit. The five-year-old agreement required Southern to undertake pollution control measures at mines in West Virginia, Virginia, Kentucky, Tennessee and Alabama.
Ford invests $1 billion in German plant, targets move to ‘all-electric’ passenger vehicles in Europe by 2030 Ford is investing $1 billion in an electric vehicle production facility in Cologne, Germany, with the European arm of the automotive giant committing to go “all-in” on electric vehicles in the years ahead. In plans announced Wednesday morning, Ford said its entire passenger vehicle range in Europe would be “zero-emissions capable, all-electric or plug-in hybrid” by the middle of 2026, with a “completely all-electric” offering by 2030. The investment in Cologne will see the company update an existing assembly plant, converting it into a facility focused on the production of electric vehicles. “Our announcement today to transform our Cologne facility, the home of our operations in Germany for 90 years, is one of the most significant Ford has made in over a generation,” Stuart Rowley, Ford of Europe’s president, said in a statement. “It underlines our commitment to Europe and a modern future with electric vehicles at the heart of our strategy for growth,” Rowley added. The business also wants its commercial vehicle segment in Europe to be zero-emissions capable, plug-in hybrid or all-electric by 2024.
Three people dead after Arctic processing plant collapse – Three people are dead following the partial collapse of one of Russian mining giant Norilsk Nickel’s processing plants, the company said on Saturday. The processing plant was undergoing maintenance at the time of Saturday’s incident, according to Reuters. The production security of Norilsk Nickel’s locations has recently come under public scrutiny after a major fuel leak at its power plant located close to the Russian city of Norilsk and multiple smaller accidents that occurred in 2020, the outlet noted. Norilsk has since pledged to invest $1.4 billion over five years into building up its industrial safety measures. “This accident shows that apparently, these efforts are not enough, and we, accepting responsibility for what happened, will tighten requirements for industrial safety and for the people who are responsible for it,” Vladimir Potanin, Nornickel chief executive and the largest shareholder, told Reuters. According to Nornickel, the plant still continues to operate with partial restrictions. A regional committee opened up a criminal investigation into the incident, Reuters reported. The company was fined $2 billion earlier this month for damage caused in the fuel spill last year. A regional committee opened up a criminal investigation into the incident.
Texas Failed To Winterize Nuclear Plant Leading To Reactor Shut Down — A polar vortex split dumped Arctic air into Texas, along with multiple winter storms, created havoc on the state’s power grid operated by the Electric Reliability Council of Texas (ERCOT). What happened, and why, more specifically, how did one nuclear power plant which provides power for two million homes shutdown? How is it possible that a nuclear power plant in Texas had to shutter operations due to freezing weather, but nuclear power plants can operate without disruption in Russia? The answer is simple – the South Texas Nuclear Power Station failed to winterize its facilities. After all, whoever thought Arctic conditions would be seen in on the Gulf of Mexico? On Monday, the nuclear power plant had to shut one of two reactors down, halving its 2,700 megawatts of generating capacity. The plant, which operates on a 12,200-acre site west of the Colorado River about 90 miles southwest of Houston, provides power for more than two million homes. According to Washington Examiner, the nuclear power plant was not winterized to withstand cold weather. “It’s very rare for weather issues to shut down a nuclear plant,” said Brett Rampal, director of nuclear innovation at the Clean Air Task Force. “Some equipment in some nuclear plants in Texas has not been hardened for extreme cold weather because there was never a need for this.” On Monday, South Texas Nuclear Power Station posted “Event Number: 55104” on the Nuclear Regulatory Commission website explaining low steam generation was due to the loss of water pumps. In response, reactor one was shutdown. “It was the connection between the power plant and outside systems,” Alex Gilbert, project manager at the Nuclear Innovation Alliance, told the Washington Examiner. The reactor’s shutdown only represented 1,280 megawatts of the 30,000 megawatts of outages on Monday. Nuclear power provides about 11% of ERCOT’s power. Much of the power generation loss was due to freezing wellheads that impeded the flow of natgas to power stations, triggering electric shortages as demand overwhelmed the grid. The high concentration of natgas generation on ERCOT’s grid makes it vulnerable to power disruptions if fuel flow is disrupted.
Holtec agrees to keep $10M storage cask at its Camden headquarters – Holtec International has agreed to a $10 million precaution to end a court fight over its planned decommissioning of the Oyster Creek nuclear power plant. The safety measure – a massive cask made of steel and concrete – is part of a settlement that resolves lawsuits between the Camden firm, Lacey Township and the township’s planning board. The court fight began after Lacey’s planning board in August 2020 rejected Holtec’s application to put more storage casks at the now-idled nuclear facility. The casks would hold spent nuclear fuel as part of Holtec’s decommissioning project. A Holtec affiliate currently is developing a business in decommissioning closed nuclear power plants, while the Camden firm pursues plans for a consolidated fuel-storage facility in a remote area of New Mexico.
Groups Concerned About Nuclear Power Want Questions Asked About Point Beach Plan –Citizen groups are urging a federal agency to ask many questions about a proposal to extend the life of Wisconsin’s only remaining nuclear power plant. The two reactors at the Point Beach plant along Lake Michigan, north of Manitowoc, are licensed to run about another decade. But the plant owner, Next Era Energy, has applied to the Nuclear Regulatory Commission (NRC) to extend the licenses until about 2050. Milwaukee-based WE Energies used to own Point Beach, and still buys power from it. Wednesday, the NRC held an online meeting for people to say what they think should be in the agency’s draft environmental impact statement (EIS) as part of the application review. Kelly Lundeen, of the group Nukewatch, wants consideration that if Next Era operates Point Beach for three more decades instead of one, the plant will produce a lot more nuclear waste. “If the company wants to continue to create tons of high-level radioactive waste, they’re asking for enormous trust on the part of the public. They’re also assuming the consent of future generations to create this waste,” said Lundeen. Point Beach and many other U.S. nuclear power plants now store some waste in concrete and steel containers outside the plant that the industry says are very safe. Hannah Mortensen, of Physicians for Social Responsibility Wisconsin, is asking the NRC to consider whether the state will need the energy from what is now a 50-year-old power plant. “When Point Beach was built, alternative energy, such as renewable energy – wind, solar, was not as common, was not as economical. Therefore, I think the EIS needs to take a hard look, a hard look, at the alternate option of different energy sources, in comparison to the proposed action of extending the life of the reactors,” said Mortensen.
Magnitude 7.3 earthquake strikes near site of Fukushima nuclear disaster in Japan – A magnitude 7.3 earthquake struck Saturday off the coast of Japan’s Fukushima prefecture, which was home to one of the world’s worst nuclear disasters almost a decade ago. The Japan Meteorological Agency said the quake – which it initially said had a magnitude of 7.1 – struck at 11:08 p.m. local time (9:08 a.m. ET) at a depth of 34 miles. Fourteen aftershocks were recorded, it said, adding that a tsunami warning had not been issued. The quake was also felt in Japan’s capital, Tokyo. “There have been no anomalies reported from any of the nuclear facilities,” Japanese Prime Minister Yoshihide Suga told a press conference. “Everything is normal.” Checks were still being carried out to determine the number injured, he said, urging people not to venture outdoors and to be prepared for aftershocks. Chief Cabinet Secretary Katsunobu Kato told a separate news conference earlier in Tokyo that almost 850,000 households had been left without power in areas surrounding Tokyo and northern Japan. “Where the tremor was felt the strongest, there is higher risk of structural collapse and landslides,” a spokeswoman for the Japan Meteorological Agency told press in Tokyo. Adding that people should be cautious about tremors. Fukushima became synonymous with nuclear disaster in March 2011 when the area was hit by a 9.0 magnitude earthquake – the strongest in Japan’s history. A tsunami soon followed, leaving more than 15,000 people dead and 2,500 others still missing. The deadly wall of water slammed through the walls of the Fukushima Daiichi Nuclear Power Plant, knocking out the power supply and causing three nuclear reactors to melt, spewing radioactive particles into the air. It will take decades to safely shut down the plant. Space to store the 1 million tons of water – equal to 400 Olympic-size swimming pools – that must be pumped through the reactor to keep the fuel cool, is also running out. While the water has been treated to remove most of the dangerous radioactive components, traces of tritium remain. #160;
Michael Madigan resigns from Illinois House – Chicago Tribune – A half-century after he was first sworn into the Illinois House from Chicago’s Southwest Side, Michael Madigan announced his resignation Thursday, a little more than a month after he was deposed by fellow Democrats as the nation’s longest-serving statehouse speaker. In a statement, the embattled 78-year-old lawmaker, ensnarled in a federal corruption investigation, lashed out at his critics as he sought to defend his actions during his 36-year reign as House speaker. “It’s no secret that I have been the target of vicious attacks by people who sought to diminish my many achievements lifting up the working people of Illinois. The fact is, my motivation for holding elected office has never wavered. I have been resolute in my dedication to public service and integrity, always acting in the interest of the people of Illinois,” he said. While his resignation from the House had been expected, Madigan remains the state’s Democratic Party chairman and head of the 13th Ward Democratic organization. The latter post will allow him to choose his successor. Aides said he has no plans to step down from either role.
DeWine refuses to explain aide’s role in bailout scandal – If you asked most people to start up a dark money group and then funnel more than $1 million through it and into another such group, they’d probably want to know what it was going to be used for.But now that the second 501(c)(4) dark-money group, Generation Now, has pleaded guilty to being at the heart of one of the biggest bribery and money laundering scandals in Ohio history, Gov. Mike DeWine is refusing to discuss what one of his top aides was told when he formed the first dark money group, Partners for Progress.Generation Now pleaded guilty earlier this month to being the major conduit of money between Akron-based FirstEnergy and related organizations and the effort to pass House Bill 6, a $1.3 billion bailout that mostly went to two nuclear plants FirstEnergy started spinning off in 2016. DeWine signed the bill into law in 2019.Last summer, federal authorities arrested then-Speaker Larry Householder and four associates as part of the scandal and two of the associates later pleaded guilty.As he announced the arrests, U.S. Attorney David DeVillers stressed that the dark money made the massive scandal possible.“I don’t see how (the conspiracy) could possibly have happened” without it, DeVillers said.The feds haven’t accused DeWine’s aide, Legislative Affairs Director Dan McCarthy of wrongdoing, but they refer to his dark-money group in an affidavit supporting Householder’s arrest as “Energy Pass-Through.”Among the activities Generation Now pleaded guilty to was engaging in transactions“designed to conceal the nature, source, ownership and control of the payments” from FirstEnergy and associated companies.But DeWine and McCarthy don’t want to discuss whether McCarthy intended to obscure that FirstEnergy was bankrolling an effort to prop up nuclear plants it was spinning off.Asked last week about the matter, DeWine Press Secretary Dan Tierney pointed to a statement McCarthy issued last summer when The Cincinnati Enquirer first reported that he’d started a dark money group that helped fund the HB 6 effort.In it, McCarthy explained that in addition to his lobby work for FirstEnergy, he had also worked with people who had adversarial relationships with Householder and one of his indicted associates, Neil Clark, so “any insinuation I was involved in this disgusting scheme is without merit.” But he didn’t explain why he founded Partners for Progress two days after the founding of Generation Now, or why a week later his dark money group got $5 million from FirstEnergy and within a month it was forwarding some of that money to Generation Now. ‘
Editorial: Repeal corrupt HB 6 now. Expel indicted Rep. Householder – Beacon Journal – What will it take to knock down House Bill 6, a corrupt Ohio law which still stands like the coal-fired smokestacks of old? Well, after nearly eight months of waiting, it appears Ohio Senate Bill 10, sponsored by Republican Sen. Mark Romanchuk, is advancing. That’s good news for consumers, as it would formally remove one form of electric utility subsidy and provide refunds to electric utility customers. However, coal and nuclear subsidies would stay and renewable energy provisions would remain dead.HB 6 remains polluted by a $61 million bribery scandal tied to its support and passage. Federal investigators allege FirstEnergy Corp., known as “Company A” in court filings, bribed former Ohio House Speaker Larry Householder, R-Perry County, and others to pass the bill that allows a $1 billion-plus rate-payer bailout of two nuclear power plants and other operations once owned by Akron-based FirstEnergy Corp. The conspiracy continues to grow. On Feb. 5, representatives of the political group Generation Now signed a guilty plea acknowledging it was part of a criminal conspiracy with Householder, who was arrested in July, and others. Those others include lobbyists for FirstEnergy and its former subsidiary FirstEnergy Solutions. Two men also have pleaded guilty in the case.In some quarters, including this editorial page, House Bill 6 was hailed in 2019 for helping to keep the Davis-Besse and Perry nuclear power plants online. Nuclear energy is a reliable source for Ohio and is considered clean energy. The two Lake Erie plants employ thousands of people, as well. In written testimony in support of Senate Bill 10, Greg R. Lawson, research fellow at the Buckeye Institute think tank, called HB 6’s decoupling provisions, a type of subsidy, egregious for locking in “the highest possible cost to consumers for the maximum benefit of one company – FirstEnergy.” The Buckeye Institute, a conservative free market public policy supporter, says SB 10 is a step in the right direction but “does not repeal the bailouts or all that was wrong with House Bill 6.” The Nature Conservancy, in its written testimony, also calls SB 10 a step forward, but adds it doesn’t come close to addressing the “myriad” of shortcomings in the state’s energy policies. The nonpartisan conservancy group urges the state to work with “businesses and manufacturers, municipalities, environmental and conservation groups, consumer advocacy agencies” and others in crafting an energy plan for the state. Even if one agrees that Energy Harbor (formerly FirstEnergy Solutions) needs a subsidy to keep its aging nuclear plants online as a reliable, clean source of electricity, Ohio lawmakers should try again. Scandal taints HB 6 and the House, where Householder remains a representative.
Hoops introduces bill to repeal energy subsidies in HB 6 – – State Reps. Jim Hoops, R-Napoleon, and Dick Stein, R-Norwalk, on Tuesday introduced legislation to repeal the controversial nuclear and solar energy subsidy created by House Bill 6. Stein said several changes at the federal level since the original passage of House Bill 6 make the subsidy no longer necessary to maintain operations at Ohio’s two nuclear plants, Davis-Besse and Perry. House Bill 128 calls for refunds to ratepayers for fees collected under both provisions. “The average ratepayer has already seen a decrease in their rates due to House Bill 6 and, with the proposed changes in House Bill 128, customers will see further ratepayer protections,” Hoops said. Former Ohio House Speaker Larry Householder, R-Glenford, was arrested last summer and accused of using nearly $61 million from Akron-based FirstEnergy Corp. and others to win control of the Ohio House, pass House Bill 6 and defend it from a ballot effort to block the subsidies.
FirstEnergy terminates fee, shares additional details on fallout from House Bill 6 investigation – – FirstEnergy announced Tuesday it will stop collecting a fee that likely has cost consumers hundreds of millions of dollars since 2011, as the company continues to wrestle with the damage to its reputation in the fallout of the House Bill 6 corruption scandal. In a new regulatory filing, the Akron-based utility said it will stop collecting “lost distribution revenue” from residential and commercial customers. FirstEnergy has collected this money since 2011 as a way to make up for lost sales as a result of its state-mandated energy-efficiency programs. FirstEnergy spokeswoman Jennifer Young said she didn’t immediately know how much the end of the rider will save customers in total, though a FirstEnergy filing stated that the company will lose 11 cents per share in revenue as a result. Young said the end of the “lost distribution revenue” charges will help FirstEnergy “move forward past some of these regulatory issues” that the company has faced since the company became embroiled in the HB6 scandal, in which ex-Ohio House Speaker Larry Householder and four allies were charged with using more than $60 million in bribe money from FirstEnergy and its affiliates to secure the bill’s passage. The bill was to send $1 billion to two financially troubled Ohio nuclear plants owned by a former FirstEnergy subsidiary.
FirstEnergy says its $4 million payment to state official ‘may have been for purposes other than those represented’ – — In a new disclosure to federal regulators, FirstEnergy is bringing renewed attention to a questionable $4 million payment the company made to someone shortly before that person became a top state regulator. The discovery of the payment prompted the company to fire its then-CEO and other top executives last fall.The Akron-based company described the $4 million payment in a Tuesday filing with the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission. The company first disclosed the payment in October, saying it was discovered during an internal investigation prompted by the fallout from the federal corruption probe into Ohio House Bill 6, the nuclear bailout bill. The company said it made the payment in early 2019, purportedly to end a consulting agreement held with an entity associated with the unnamed official, who Gov. Mike DeWine has said is former Public Utilities Commission of Ohio Chairman Sam Randazzo.The October filing said the company could not determine “if the payments were for the purposes represented within the consulting agreement.” The company faulted then-CEO Chuck Jones and two other senior executives, firing them for violating unspecified company policies and codes of conduct.But the new filing says the company now believes “that payments under the consulting agreement may have been for purposes other than those represented within the consulting agreement.”“The matter is a subject of the ongoing internal investigation related to the government investigations,” the filing says. The company in its new filing went on to describe the possible harm the company could suffer from “any appearance of non-compliance with anti-corruption laws, as well as any alleged failures to comply with anti-corruption laws,” then listing the various state and federal investigations, as well as lawsuits, the company faces emanating from the HB 6 scandal. FirstEnergy for months has been grappling with the the fallout from the HB6 scandal, in which ex-Ohio House Speaker Larry Householder and four allies were charged with using more than $60 million in bribe money from FirstEnergy and its affiliates to secure the bill’s passage. Two Ohio political operatives — Jeff Longstreth, Householder’s former top political aide, and Juan Cespedes, a lobbyist for Energy Harbor, the nuclear plants’ current owner — have pleaded guilty to racketeering charges in connection to the bill’s passage, and a Householder-controlled political nonprofit is expected to also.
FirstEnergy SEC Filing Suggests Improper Transactions Started 10 Years Ago – FirstEnergy has filed a report with the Securities and Exchange Commission saying it has identified improper transactions that date back as far as 10 years ago. The large electric company says these transactions include amounts collected from customers. FirstEnergy’s latest report with the SEC says an internal investigation identified certain transactions that were either “improperly classified, misallocated to certain of the [sic] Utilities and Transmission Companies, or lacked proper supporting documentation.” The report does not provide any more specifics but says the transaction resulted in “amounts collected from customers that were immaterial to FirstEnergy.” The SEC filing also revisits a $4 million payment to end a consulting agreement with a company associated with an individual who went on to become a state regulatory official. Public Utilities of Ohio chair Sam Randazzo resigned after speculation that he was the official in question. FirstEnergy’s report now says payments under the consulting agreement may have been for purposes “other than those reported.” A federal bribery investigation says a utility, believed to be FirstEnergy, funneled millions of dollars to a dark money group that was controlled by former House Speaker Larry Householder (R-Glenford). Investigators say that money was used to help Householder become speaker, and in return, he would pass HB6, a nuclear power plant bailout bill. Two defendants and the dark money group Generation Now have pleaded guilty to federal racketeering charges. Householder has pleaded not guilty and remains in the Ohio legislature after winning reelection this fall.
FirstEnergy says activist investor Carl Icahn looking to buy stake (Reuters) – Activist investor Carl Icahn is looking to buy a stake in FirstEnergy Corp, the energy distributor said in a regulatory filing on Thursday. He intends to acquire a stake worth between $184 million and $920 million, the Ohio-based company said, citing a letter from Icahn dated Feb. 16. (bit.ly/2NlMrh9) The power utility said it does not know if the billionaire investor or his affiliates have already bought shares or derivatives of the company. Icahn Capital did not immediately respond to a Reuters request for comment. Last year, FirstEnergy had received subpoenas in a $60 million bribery case stemming from a controversial bill to bail out the state’s nuclear power plants. Ohio House Speaker Larry Householder and four other men tied to state politics were arrested in the case. Shares of FirstEnergy closed up more than 7% on Thursday.
City Council Issues Two New Subpoenas, Wants to Learn Extent of FirstEnergy’s Dark Money in Cleveland —After issuing a subpoena last week to determine the unknown funding sources of a nonprofit designed to discredit and destroy Cleveland Public Power, Cleveland City Council President Kevin Kelley signed two new subpoenas Friday, council announced. These subpoenas are targeting both the Delaware and Ohio iterations of Generation Now, the nonprofit which last week pleaded guilty to racketeering charges in the $60 million bribery scandal that has embroiled the Ohio statehouse since last year. Council’s goal, as with the subpoena seeking information about Consumers Against Deceptive Fees, is to determine how dark money from FirstEnergy was used in Cleveland, specifically to undercut the public utility. Generation Now, in its guilty plea, acknowledged that it served as a pass-through organization to funnel contributions from FirstEnergy to former House Speaker Larry Householder and others in order to secure passage of House Bill 6, the legislation authorizing a $1 billion+ bailout of two Ohio nuclear facilities, which were then owned by FirstEnergy. Generation Now also provided at least $200,000 in funding to Consumers Against Deceptive Fees. Council wants to know how else the money was used in Cleveland. “We are waiting for information from Consumers Against Deceptive Fees, but we know that they received much more than the $200,000 that tracked back to another FirstEnergy dark money group,” said Council President Kelley, in a statement. “Generation Now seems to be the first stop for a huge amount of money that was then passed out. We want to know where it went and if it was used against the city of Cleveland and CPP.”
Mayor Frank Jackson says Cleveland will sue FirstEnergy over actions by dark-money group against CPP – – Cleveland Mayor Frank Jackson said Tuesday that he intends to sue FirstEnergy Corp. for efforts to undermine Cleveland Public Power, the city-owned electric utility.Jackson, speaking to the City Council, didn’t provide a date for when a city’s suit might be filed, nor did he specify damages for which the city would seek compensation.But unlike previous comments, when Jackson said Cleveland would consider legal action, the mayor was more definitive.“We’re developing a lawsuit on that. We’re going after them,” Jackson said. “I’m going to the jugular on our stuff.”FirstEnergy, contacted for comment by cleveland.com and The Plain Dealer, issued a statement.“FirstEnergy looks forward to engaging in discussions with city of Cleveland leaders to resolve outstanding issues. We support the city’s operation of Cleveland Public Power and are committed to fostering mutual respect for each other’s ability to serve customers,” the company said.Jackson was responding to questions from Councilman Mike Polensek during the council’s opening budget hearing. Polensek asked if the city would join a lawsuit filed by Columbus and Cincinnati seeking to overturn nuclear bailout fees contained in H.B. 6, which FirstEnergy had sought from the legislature.The fees would benefit Davis-Besse and Perry nuclear plants, which are owned by a former FirstEnergy subsidiary once owned.That legislation is tied into a statehouse bribery scandal that toppled former House Speaker Larry Householder and already has led to several indictments.
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