What should be learned from Winter Storm Uri?

Winter Storm Uri affected more than half of the United States from South Texas to Maine. Texas was the hardest hit in terms of loss of life, infrastructure failures, damage to homes, and business interruptions. Impacts from the storm paint a sobering picture for today and the future. In addition to the loss of and damage to human life, nearly every segment of the state’s infrastructure system was impacted, including transportation, power generation, drinking water, agriculture, and food supply chains. More than thirty percent of the state’s power generating capacity went offline, leaving four million Texans in the dark and in frigid temperatures at the storm’s peak. Power losses and freezing temperatures led to cascading effects in water infrastructure, with approximately 12 million people—more than 40% of the state’s population—experiencing disruptions to their sources of clean, potable water. Oil refineries, chemical manufacturers and other industrial plants in Texas reported releasing around 3.5 million pounds of extra pollutants into the air. 

Winter Storm Uri clearly revealed that the state of Texas has developed an electric power system that does not prioritize infrastructure resilience. Rather, for many years the state’s energy policies can be characterized as “a race to the bottom” by power generators to provide the lowest-priced power and ensure cost reductions. And in fact the result has been that in recent years Texas could boast about some of the lowest power prices in the U.S., which politicians leaned on in its boasts of being one of the nation’s most business-friendly states. Yet, to be clear, its approach to energy market structure, planning, and cost control has centered around consistent under-investment in every aspect of power infrastructure.

In the aftermath of Winter Storm Uri, members of the Public Utility Commission of Texas (PUCT) were discussing what happened and why. The answers should have been obvious since the PUCT intentionally had not adopted resilience standards for the state’s electric power utilities. Hence, without such standards, the likelihood of the state’s power generators taking the necessary investment action over the years was very low. Texas’ deregulated electricity market, which was supposed to provide reliable power at a lower price, left millions in the dark, together with a very clear and sobering message for not only Texans but for the rest of the nation.

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How to Avoid a Climate Disaster by Bill Gates
 

Gates’ book benefits from the author's immersion in global health issues and interventions over many years. When Gates presents an extremely ambitious plan to solve a global problem that appears to be out of control, we’re inclined to believe his perspective on saving the planet. His plan includes scientific and technological breakthroughs and unprecedented efforts on a global scale. Gates’ deep dive into climate issues, his third book since “The Road Ahead” (1995) and “Business @ the Speed of Thought” (1999), approaches solving huge problems with characteristic humility and as an outspoken advocate for science. Gates made his views about the incredible importance of science during the COVID-19 pandemic and was “rewarded” with seemingly endless rounds of conspiracy theories aimed at debunking his views. 

Gates has increased his personal and financial commitment to climate change in large part motivated by what he has personally learned through his health initiatives about low-income countries’ need for clean energy and the likelihood that they will suffer most from a warming planet. The tech billionaire is well aware of the fact that technology fixes backed by his fortune will not be sufficient. Gates is teaming on climate issues with Amazon founder Jeff Bezos, who last year announced a $10 billion Bezos Earth Fund and that still amounts to a mere drop in the proverbial bucket. Not unlike what has happened in the last few years in innovative vaccine development, Gates views climate change initiatives like treating a potentially devastating global disease. 

From his natural disposition and experience, Gates is hopeful that we can solve the problems, but doesn’t make any promises in his book. He envisions that the coming fight of our lives will require major scientific breakthroughs along the way. Gates is able to define the cure for a planet at risk of continued warming to the point at which the world as we know it unravels. The cure: humans need to cut emissions of greenhouse gases from its current 51 billion tons annually to zero. Gates realizes that this challenge will be tougher than anything humanity’s ever done. Staying constant and consistent with the mission over the next 30 years will be imperative. Given the unpredictability of innovation, which Gates knows only too well, many different paths need to be followed. 

Over the course of twelve chapters, Gates’ book explains global warming basics; describes the five main categories of emissions and how they can be reduced; lays out the role of regulations for curbing carbon; covers ways of adapting to a warmer world; gives an overarching plan for cutting emissions, and ends with steps that individuals can take to prevent the crisis, including political action. His book is packed with data presented in context to help readers understand the relative impacts of different greenhouse gas sources and the potential for different fixes to reign them in. Perhaps most important and revealing, Gates stresses the importance of the huge role that government has to play in spurring innovation, policy and regulations, generating robust marketplaces to drive the creation and deployment of carbon-free technologies, and decarbonizing the national and global economy. And not least of all, making sure that the results work equitably for everyone. 

In the book’s final chapter, Gates offers readers a glimpse of hope after their immersion in its daunting content:

“I’m optimistic that we’ll make real progress on climate change—because the world is more committed to solving this problem than it has ever been… Even though the pandemic has wrecked the global economy, support for action on climate change is just as high as it was in 2019.”

HARC and Winter Storm Uri

By ARNOLD SCHUCHTER, St. James Faith Lab Tech Editor

President Biden marked his first day in office by taking steps to rejoin the Paris agreement. Thankfully, even in the absence of a federal commitment in recent years, many cities in the U.S. remained at the forefront of taking climate action. Following President Trump's withdrawal from the agreement in 2017, a slew of states and cities pledged to uphold the goals of the Paris Accord. In fact, many states, cities, and businesses accelerated their decarbonization efforts despite economic and national political headwinds. Former Secretary of State John Kerry, who is now the first U.S. Special Presidential Envoy for Climate, said efforts by local leaders have kept the country engaged in the climate fight at a time when leaving the agreement could have spelled disaster. 

Now that the federal government will again be more involved, there has to be more partnerships in decarbonization across jurisdictional lines. Some cities are ready to become laboratories for policy and innovation that can build on proven solutions to the climate crisis. On that end, congressional legislation and Biden’s executive actions will be extremely important, but cities and other non-federal actors have to be encouraged and incentivized to step up as well. No doubt there’s a very long way to go, with reasons for extreme pessimism but also glimmers of optimism. While the U.S. cut carbon emissions by 9% last year, it was primarily because of the effects of the coronavirus pandemic reducing the environmental impact of transportation and other sectors. A much sought-after national economic rebound could derail further progress on cutting emissions.

Even to this day, measuring emissions remains a fundamental challenge. A recent study (published by Nature Communications) found that 48 U.S. cities are under-reporting their greenhouse gas emissions by an average of nearly 20%. This discrepancy can be attributed in part to a lack of expert guidance and resources or, more likely, systematic utilization of available ones. The nation’s cities contribute three-quarters of all carbon dioxide emissions from fossil fuels. As urban populations continue to grow, projections show emissions from urban areas tripling by 2030. But cities across the nation all use different methods for reporting their emissions. And many are leaving out specific fuels or sources.

Ironically Winter Storm Uri in Texas and the Great Texas Blackout of 2021 could offer some good news in connection with the role of urban jurisdictions playing a key role in climate change. The Texas Blackout led to my discovery of the Houston Advanced Research Center (HARC) that for years has done an admirable job of researching and making science-based recommendations to Texas to prepare for and deal with extreme weather conditions. In recent years, however, these recommendations were made in the context of Texas seeing significant growth in low-cost energy resources, namely wind, accompanied by increasing investment in solar. Thus, while HARC was issuing warnings about the potentially disastrous consequences of extreme weather events, power generation development in Texas was resulting in plenty of power available to homes and businesses in the state—that is, under blue-sky conditions. 

The issue and threat in Texas made very clear Uri was the weakness of power infrastructure in the face of extreme weather conditions, and the lack of preparedness for rare “green swan” events including, for example, Hurricane Harvey. In case you’re not familiar with the term “green swan,” it is an unexpected environmental catastrophe connected with global warming that triggers crises with consequences. Traditional approaches to power development planning taken by utilities cannot account for the possibility of unexpected green swan events. Winter Storm Uri proved that current methods of energy planning and infrastructure investment by utilities in Texas simply looking at historical data become completely irrelevant when dealing with the risk of green swan events. Power infrastructure planners and regulators using business-as-usual methods of analysis have been driving forward while looking in the rearview mirror. For years HARC has been trying to make clear to energy planners in Texas that they can no longer ignore the impacts of a changing climate on the state’s power system and must begin to incorporate science-and-data-based climate models into their planning efforts, rather than simply the backward-looking retrospective approach deployed today.

Every state in the nation should take full advantage of the significant amount of work that HARC, drawing on other research and analysis resources, has done looking at climate risk impacts in the energy sector. For example, the U.S. Department of Energy and the National Academies of Science have published a multitude of reports on the coming climate risk to the nation’s power sector: HARC has been developing a climate risk analytics platform to help energy planners and utilities in Texas and elsewhere better assess climate risk. Over the years the data and models used by HARC have been made available to the Electric Reliability Council of Texas (ERCOT) for planning purposes. 

Established in 1982 as a nonprofit university consortium, the defining concept for the creation of HARC was to act as a technology incubator to bridge basic energy research and market applications in Texas and elsewhere. In 2001, HARC admirably realigned its mission to concentrate its research on “sustainable development.” HARC defines sustainability as public and private sectors in tandem engaging in practices that consider and support ecological, economic and societal health and vitality. Sustainability presumes that resources are finite and must be conserved, protected and distributed in a manner that meets the needs of the present without compromising the ability of future generations to meet their own needs. 

Winter Storm Uri has to be viewed in the context of extreme climate and environmental events that have impacted Texas just in the past decade. Between 2010 and 2020, according to data from the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA), 47 severe storms, six drought events, five tropical cyclones, five floods, three wildfires, and one severe winter storm impacted Texas. With Winter Storm Uri added to the list, understandably millions of Texans have been asking why the state wasn’t better prepared. The message for Texans and people in other states is to focus on infrastructure investments to withstand not only severe storms but other categories of disaster that may have a deceptively high risk of occurrence. 

HARC provides a model for the ways in which research, science, and engineering can be deployed to understand and address issues related to air quality, clean energy, water resources, and climate risk. It offers Texas and all levels of U.S. government and the private sector the kind of multi-disciplinary expertise and innovative teamwork that is necessary to competently address the nation’s most pressing sustainability challenges and opportunities. Now more than ever, Texas, the U.S., and nations around the world need science-based solutions and independent analyses that address economic, environmental and social issues. And HARC’s Climate Program offers great promise as an initiative that uses data analytics to facilitate a much greater understanding of climate risk and development of climate mitigation and adaptation strategies in any political jurisdiction.