Adaptation. Mitigation. Justice.
CPS Energy’s CEO blamed failed conservation by local residents as a key contributor to the region’s multi-day blackout. Yet the conservation programs are voluntary, underfunded … and the utility didn’t send a single Spanish-language emergency tweet until Texas was 12 hours from near-total grid collapse. Let’s talk. Greg Harman You […]
Power plants without insulation failed, leading to sustained blackouts. But poor insulation in homes across the state made it even harder to stay warm. Amal Ahed | Texas Observer This story was published in partnership with Southerly. When the temperature dropped into the single digits last Monday night, Edilisa wrapped […]
This week, a blast of Arctic air has engulfed much of the central US, bringing freezing conditions and record low temperatures to many states. Texas, in particular, has been badly affected, with grid operators hit by power outages and struggling to provide electricity to millions of residents. The events have […]
Frozen Edition: Enter Polar VorTex Arctic weather loosed by a disrupted jet stream poured over the Great Plains and fanned across Texas this week, turning the state into a frozen huddled mess. New record lows were set in San Antonio for days in a row. Unprecedented and disastrous icy blackouts […]
Blistering Arctic weather poured into Texas this week, freezing wind farms and complicating debate over a needed transition to renewable energy. Greg Harman Two weeks ago, San Antonio’s city-owned utility, CPS Energy, published the Flexible Path Resource Plan (PDF), a report purporting to forecast the cost of moving off coal […]
Welcome to the second edition of your weekly ecological, commonsensical, and anti-commercial news wrap for the Greater San Antonio and South Texas bioregions (i.e., the watersheds of the San Antonio, Medina, and Guadalupe Rivers as well as the wider Gulf they feed). (Oh, and Happy Pigskin Superspreader Day! Please wear […]
What a time to start a weekly news wrap-up on the climate justice front. Stories of sweeping and rapid change have followed the incoming Biden Administration: reentering Paris and punking the KeystoneXL pipeline. On this front, a number of outlets have you covered. WaPo has (almost) all the executive-order action […]
After years of community pressure and, most recently, a petition that would have forced the JK Spruce Coal Plant to shutter, San Antonio’s City-owned utility starts facing reality. Greg Harman On Monday, January 25, CPS Energy officials announced they have charted a possible course “beyond coal” for San Antonio. In a pair […]
EDITOR’S NOTE: Even as President Biden enters the White House with an unprecedented commitment to fighting industrially driven global warming and taking several critical immediate actions, including reentering the Paris Agreement, the pledges we’ve seen to date are still too limited, if only because this global threat is so large, […]
Indigenous-Led Movement Credited With Huge Victory over Proposed Alberta-to-Nebraska Tar Sands Pipeline. Jake Johnston President-elect Joe Biden is reportedly planning on the day of his inauguration to rescind a federal permit allowing construction of the Keystone XL pipeline in the United States, a move environmentalists said would represent an immense […]
Full Broadcast 22-Min Version For our families, planet, and future, San Antonio must shut down its last coal plant by 2030. But City-owned CPS Energy won’t discuss shutting the JK Spruce plant down, other than to warn of the costs. After years of trying to negotiate a just transition to […]
Who is going to pick up the bill for estimated $10B in unpaid bills? Here are some options to avoid mass utility disconnections. Theodore J. Kury The shutdowns and restrictions that governments have imposed to limit the spread of COVID-19 have made it hard for many households to afford basic […]