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      in US Politics

      Why is Texas suffering power blackouts during the winter freeze?

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      Millions of people in Texas have spent days in below-freezing temperatures without power in what officials have called a “total failure” of the state’s electricity infrastructure. How did oil- and gas-rich Texas – the biggest producer of energy in the US – get here?While there are many factors that led to the power outages in Texas, the state’s power grid has come under intense scrutiny in light of the storm. Here’s what we know so far about Texas’s power grid and the role it played in the state’s winter disaster.Who controls Texas’s power grid?The “Lone Star” statelikes to go it alone when it comes to delivering power to its residents. Texas is unique among the 48 contiguous US states in that it relies on its own power grid. The other 47 states are all part of the two power grids that service the eastern and western halves of the country.The Electric Reliability Council of Texas, known as Ercot, manages the state’s power grid. Ercot is technically a non-profit corporation, and while it functions independently from the state’s government, the corporation is overseen by a state agency called the Public Utility Commission of Texas. Members of the commission are appointed by the state’s governor.Texas is the only state in the country, besides Alaska and Hawaii, that is not part of either the Eastern Interconnection or Western Interconnection, the two main power grids in the US. This means that Texas is not regulated by the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission (Ferc), the agency that oversees interstate electric transmission. Instead, Texas is basically “an electrical island in the United States”, as described by Bill Magness, CEO of Ercot. While this means that Texas has more control over electricity in the state, it also means there are fewer power plants the state can rely on for power.Parts of Texas are not serviced by Ercot. El Paso at the western tip of the state gets power from the Western Interconnection, which is why the city has been saved from the most brutal effects of the power outages.Why are so many people without power?Ercot turned off power for millions of customers after several power plants shut down due to the below-freezing temperatures the state is experiencing. Officials at Ercot said the equipment at the plants could not handle the extreme, low temperatures. The choice was either shutting down power for customers or risking a collapse of the grid altogether.Why is Texas on its own power grid?For as long as electricity has existed in Texas, the state, which prides itself on its independence has relied on itself for power. Officials in the state have long had a stubborn will to stay out of the hands of federal regulators.While Magness, Ercot’s CEO, said that the shutdown was due primarily to “reasons that have to do with the weather”, critics have said Texas’s energy market incentivizes cheap prices at the cost of delaying maintenance and improving power plants. In 2011, the state experienced similar blackouts, though for a shorter period of time compared with what has been seen this week.Following those blackouts, the Ferc gave a series of recommendations to Ercot to prevent future blackouts, including increasing reserve levels and weatherizing facilities to protect them from cold weather.Ed Hirs, an energy fellow at the University of Houston, told the Washington Post that Ercot “limped along on underinvestment and neglect until it finally broke under predictable circumstances”.Did renewable energy play a role in the grid’s malfunction?While Republicans have been blaming frozen wind turbines for the state’s blackouts, officials and experts say that malfunctions in natural gas operations played the largest role in the power crisis.Ercot said all of its sources of power, including those from renewable sources, were affected by the freezing temperatures. The state largely relies on natural gas for its power supply, though some comes from wind turbines and less from coal and nuclear sources.Natural gas can handle the state’s high temperatures in the summer, but extreme cold weather makes it difficult for the gas to flow to power plants and heat homes. Michael Webber, an energy resources professor at the University of Texas Austin, told the Texas Tribune that “gas is failing in the most spectacular fashion right now”.With the climate crisis likely to trigger more freak weather events like the one Texas is suffering it is noteworthy that there are places that experience frigidly cold weather that rely heavily on wind turbines and manage to have electricity in the winter. In Iowa, a state which sees freezing temperatures more often than Texas, nearly 40% of electricity is generated by wind turbines.What are officials doing to prevent future blackouts?With millions still without power as of late Wednesday, officials in Texas remain focused on getting power back to residents and remedying the damage from the storm. Politicians from both major parties have criticized Ercot for its handling of the storm, but officials have steered clear of providing examples of specific fixes. Texas’s governor, Greg Abbott, has called for an investigation into Ercot, declaring it an emergency item for the state’s legislative session.But some Texas leaders have made it clear that they believe Texas should remain independent from the national power grids. Rick Perry, a former governor of the state who also served as Donald Trump’s energy secretary until 2019, said: “Texans would be without electricity for longer than three days to keep the federal government out of their business.” More

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      in US Politics

      Losing our marbles over Stonehenge | Brief letters

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      Donald Trump’s acquittal in the US Senate (Report, 14 February) surely provides the best possible evidence for never allowing politicians to get involved in judicial decision-making. Their priorities lie in other directions. Les Baker Fordingbridge, Hampshire• The Queen gets £220m a year for seabed lease options for windfarms (Queen’s property chief delays sale of Scottish seabed windfarm plots, 12 February). Really? Perhaps she could give the country her cut given the future costs of the climate crisis, Covid and the expected hardships to come? Stephen King London• While I can empathise with Elizabeth Kerr (Letters, 11 February) my own travel aspirations are more mundane. I would just like to be able to visit Scotland to hand-deliver the teddy bear I have bought for my first grandchild, born six weeks ago. Nick Denton Buxton, Derbyshire• I assume that the original site in Wales was the manufacturer’s showroom (Dramatic discovery links Stonehenge to its original site – in Wales, 12 February). After all, you wouldn’t buy a circle of standing stones unless you’d seen it standing up and circular, would you? Katy JennisonWitney, Oxfordshire• If the people of Wales call – quite rightly – for the return of the “Preseli marbles” (Letters, 12 February) please can the stones go home by the same route and method so that we can all enjoy the spectacle? Sue BallBrighton More

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      in UK Politics

      New coal mine would be an embarrassment and sap UK’s climate credibility, warn dozens of charities

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      Dozens of humanitarian charities and green groups have written to Boris Johnson in protest at government approval for a new UK coalmine.They warn the decision is “an embarrassment” when Britain is hosting international talks this year, when other countries will be urged to set tougher climate goals. And they are calling on the prime minister to send the decision to a public inquiry, saying backtracking would “help restore confidence in the UK government’s climate leadership, both internationally and at home”.Exactly a year ago, Mr Johnson announced the deadline for the phase-out of coal from Britain’s energy system would be brought forward a year to 2024, under a government drive to reach net-zero carbon emissions.But earlier this month Robert Jenrick, the local government secretary, refused to block a 2019 decision by Cumbria county councillors to give the green light to the UK’s first deep coal mine in 30 years.This was despite pleas for Mr Jenrick to intervene, and despite government pledges to rapidly decarbonise the economy.The mine would take coal from under the Irish Sea to make steel, and supporters say less coal would have to be imported. The government defended its decision, saying the planning approval was a local matter.However, the prime minister’s father, Stanley, told the BBC the decision was a “massive mistake” in public-relations terms.“How can we ask other countries to bring in their climate change-reduction programmes when we are reopening the whole argument here in Britain?” he asked.The 81 people who signed the letter include representatives of Oxfam, Save the Children, the RSPB, the New Economics Foundation, Friends of the Earth, the Wildlife Trusts, Greenpeace and Christian Aid.In 2017 the UK co-founded and now co-chairs the PoweringPast Coal Alliance, a group of governments, businesses and organisations that push for a switch from coal power generation to clean energy.The letter – seen by The Independent – says given that the UK’s credibility is at stake, it is “mystifying” that the government is not intervening. “This decision will make it much harder to fulfil the ambitions of the Powering Past Coal Alliance,” it warns. “Alok Sharma MP, the COP president, when questioned before a Commons business select committee,clearly understood that the mine approval was an embarrassment. “The Climate Change Committee has urged the government to reconsider, highlighting that the increase in emissions from this mine alone would amount to more emissions than it has projected for all open UK coal minesto 2050.”Mike Starkie, mayor of Copeland council, told the BBC the mine would bring large numbers of jobs and prosperity to the area. “It’s been broadly welcomed across Copeland  – I’ve never known a project that’s carried so much public support,” he said.The signatories acknowledge it is “crucial” to support West Cumbria in switching to sustainable employment but claim research shows that investment in green industries locally would provide significantly more than the mine’s 500 jobs.The Climate Change Committee says all coal, including coking coal, should be phased out by 2035, they point out. “The government therefore risks allowing the creation of a stranded asset as the mine may be required to close only a few years after it opens. “It also sends the wrong signal to all those countries who want to hold on to coal, from Poland to China.”Friends of the Earth coal campaigner Tony Bosworth said: “The mounting criticism over the government’s coal mine decision is completely justified. This new mine undermines Boris Johnson’s credibility ahead of this year’s crucial climate summit.”The Independent has asked the government to respond. More

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      in Elections

      Biden killed the Keystone Pipeline. Good, but he doesn't get a climate pass just yet | Nick Estes

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      Joe Biden scrapping the Keystone XL permit is a huge win for the Indigenous-led climate movement. It not only overturns Trump’s reversal of Obama’s 2015 rejection of the pipeline but is also a major blow to the US fossil fuel industry and the world’s largest energy economy and per-capita carbon polluter.There is every reason to celebrate the end of a decade-long fight against Keystone XL. Tribal nations and Indigenous movements hope it will be a watershed moment for bolder actions, demanding the same fates for contentious pipeline projects such as Line 3 and the Dakota Access pipeline.Biden has also vowed to review more than 100 environmental rules and regulations that were weakened or reversed by Trump and to restore Obama-era protections to two Indigenous sacred sites, Bears Ears and Grand Staircase-Escalante, which are also national monuments in Utah. And he issued a “temporary moratorium” on all oil and gas leases in the Arctic national wildlife refuge, sacred territory to many Alaskan Natives.None of these victories would have been possible without sustained Indigenous resistance and tireless advocacy.But there is also good reason to be wary of the Biden administration and its parallels with the Obama administration. The overwhelming majority of people appointed to Biden’s climate team come from Obama’s old team. And their current climate actions are focused almost entirely on restoring Obama-era policies.Biden’s policy catchphrases of “America is back” and “build back better” and his assurance to rich donors that “nothing would fundamentally change” should also be cause for concern. A return to imagined halcyon days of an Obama presidency or to “normalcy”– which for Indigenous peoples in the United States is everyday colonialism – isn’t justice, nor is it the radical departure from the status quo we need to bolster Indigenous rights and combat the climate crisis.Obama’s record is mixed. While opposing the northern leg of Keystone XL in 2015, Obama had already fast-tracked the construction of the pipeline’s southern leg in 2012, despite massive opposition from Indigenous and environmental groups.His “all-of-the-above energy strategy” committed to curbing emissions while also promoting US “energy independence” by embracing domestic oil production. Thanks to this policy, the lifting of a four-decade limit on exporting crude oil from the United States, and the fracking revolution, US domestic crude oil production increased by 88% from 2008 to 2016.Domestic oil pipeline construction also increased – and so, too, did resistance to it. During the protests against the construction of the Dakota Access pipeline, Obama’s FBI infiltrated the Standing Rock camps. “There’s an obligation for protesters to be peaceful,” he admonished the unarmed Water Protectors at the prayer camps who faced down water cannons in freezing weather, attack dogs, mass arrests and the ritualistic brutality of a heavily-militarized small army of police.In 2018, Obama claimed credit for the United States becoming the world’s largest oil producer, urging industry elites in Texas to “thank” him for making them rich. Trump’s subsequent, and more aggressive, policy of “unleashing American energy dominance” built on Obama’s gains.Undoing four years of Trump – and the lasting damage it brought – can’t be the only barometer of climate justice. Nor should we lower our expectations of what is possible and necessary for Native sovereignty and treaty rights.Biden partly owes his election victory to Native voters. Arizona voting districts with large Native populations helped flipped the traditionally Republican state last November to his and Democrats’ favor. Native aspirations, however, don’t entirely align with Biden’s climate agenda, the Democratic party, or electoral politics.In Arizona, where Biden won the Native vote, the Forest Service could, in the coming months, hand over 2,400 acres of Chi’chil Bildagoteel, an Apache sacred site, to the Australian mining company Rio Tinto. In 2014, the Arizona Republican senator John McCain attached a rider to a defense authorization bill to allow the transfer of land to make way for a copper mine, which would create a nearly two-mile wide open-pit crater destroying numerous Native burial sites, ceremonial areas and cultural items in the process. (Last year, Rio Tinto blew up Juukan Gorge Cave, a 46,000-year-old Indigenous sacred site, to expand an iron ore mine in Australia.)A Democratic Senate passed Resolution Copper; Obama signed it into law; and Trump fast-tracked the environmental review during his last days in office. Resource colonialism is a bipartisan affair.Much like the Standing Rock Sioux Tribe’s dilemma with the Dakota Access pipeline, the Apache Stronghold, made up of members of the San Carlos Apache Tribe opposing the copper mine at Oak Flat, has little recourse. No law exists giving Native people control of their lands outside government-defined reservation boundaries.We must ask ourselves why Biden and his supporters can imagine a carbon-free future but not the end of US colonialismRio Tinto’s copper mine aims to meet at least a quarter of the United States’ annual copper needs, an essential metal that will be in high demand for renewable energy and electric vehicles. According to the World Bank, three billions of tons of metals and minerals like copper and lithium will be required by 2050 for wind, solar and geothermal power to meet the base target of the Paris agreement, which Biden has committed the US to rejoining.And before Trump left office, the Bureau of Land Management issued a final permit to the Canadian mining company Lithium Americas to create an open-pit lithium mine at Thacker Pass on traditional Paiute land in Nevada. The mine could bolster Biden’s $2tn “green energy” transition plan. Lithium is a key ingredient of rechargeable batteries, and it’s what attracted Elon Musk’s Tesla battery factory to Nevada. Last October, Biden reportedly told a group of miners that he planned to increase domestic lithium production to wean the country from foreign sources like China.These “green” techno fixes and consumer-based solutions might provide short-term answers, but they don’t stop the plunder of Native lands. Even the addition of Deb Haaland, a member of the Laguna Pueblo, to the Biden cabinet won’t fundamentally change the colonial nature of the United States. We must ask ourselves why Biden and his supporters can imagine a carbon-free future but not the end of US colonialism.But no matter who is US president, Indigenous people will continue fighting for the land and the future of the planet. For us, it has always been decolonization or extinction. More

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      in Elections

      John Kerry says workers have been fed false narrative on climate change – video

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      US climate envoy John Kerry says US workers have been fed a false narrative on climate change over the last few years. The former US secretary of state was speaking as president Joe Biden signalled a major shift on climate policy by signing a host of executive orders. Kerry highlighted job growth in renewable energy as evidence of a misled belief that had spread that resolving climate change would come at a cost to workers
      Biden signals radical shift from Trump era with executive orders on climate change More

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      in US Politics

      Biden signals radical shift from Trump era with executive orders on climate change

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      [embedded content]
      Joe Biden has warned the climate crisis poses an “existential threat” to the world as he unveiled a radical change in direction from the Trump era by halting fossil fuel activity on public lands and directing the US government to start a full-frontal effort to lower planet-heating emissions.
      “We have already waited too long to deal with this climate crisis, we can’t wait any longer,” the US president said as he signed a battery of executive orders on Wednesday. “We see it with our own eyes, we feel it in our bones. It’s time to act.”
      Biden has instructed the US government to pause and review all oil and gas drilling on federal land, eliminate fossil fuel subsidies and transform the government’s vast fleet of cars and trucks into electric vehicles, in a sweeping new set of climate executive orders.
      “We desperately need unified national response to the climate crisis, because there is a climate crisis,” Biden said.
      He pledged to put “environmental justice” at the center “of all we do” to help mitigate the disproportionate effects of climate change on Black and brown communities in the US, with policy and funding changes.
      The president framed the actions as a remedy to pandemic-driven unemployment as well as an environmental benefit.
      Biden said that millions of well-paid jobs would flow from investments in clean energy such as solar and wind, as well as energy efficiency measures for homes and the clean-up of former oil wells.
      “These aren’t pie in the sky dreams, they are concrete actionable solutions,” the president said.
      “This isn’t time for small measures, we need to be bold. It’s about jobs, good paying union jobs, it’s a whole of government approach to put climate change at the center of our domestic, national security and foreign policies. We can do this, we must do this and we will do this.”
      The slew of executive actions direct the Department of the Interior to pause new oil and gas leases on public lands and offshore waters and launch a “rigorous review of all existing leasing”, according to a White House planning document.
      The directive opens up a path to the banning of all new drilling on federal land, a campaign promise made by Biden that has been widely praised by climate groups and caused outrage within the fossil fuel industry. Biden has called the climate crisis the “existential threat of our time” and the White House has said the new executive orders will help push the US towards a goal of net zero greenhouse gas emissions by 2050.
      “President Biden and his administration are taking an important step in the right direction by limiting oil and gas development on federal lands,” said Robert Howarth, professor of ecology at Cornell University, who added that the world “must rapidly transition away from fossil fuels” to avoid disastrous climate change.
      Jesse Prentice-Dunn, policy director at the Center for Western Priorities, added that “Hitting pause on oil and gas leasing is a crucial first step toward reforming a rigged and broken system that for too long has put oil and gas lobbyists ahead of the American people.”
      Around a quarter of the US’s planet-heating emissions comes from fossil fuel production on public lands and it is estimated a national ban on leasing would reduce carbon emissions by 280m tons a year. Donald Trump’s administration opened up almost all federally owned land to drilling, a move cheered as a job creator by industry but decried by environmentalists and Native American tribes.
      “There has to be a balance point: people over money,” said Daniel Tso, a member of the Navajo Nation.”I welcome an end to federal fossil fuel leasing and the necessary transitions to more sustainable economies for the Navajo Nation.”
      Kathleen Sgamma, president of the Western Energy Alliance, which represents oil and gas drillers in western states, has said her group will challenge the moratorium in court. “The environmental left is leading the agenda at the White House when it comes to energy and environment issues,” she said.
      Biden’s new set of executive orders, dubbed “climate day” by environmental campaigners, adds up to one of the most wide-ranging efforts ever taken by a US president to tackle the climate crisis, building upon his decision last week to re-enter the Paris climate agreement.
      Alongside the review of public lands, the Biden administration will install climate as an “essential element” of US foreign policy and national security, craft a strengthened national emissions reduction target, seek to eliminate fossil fuel subsidies and will set a new goal of conserving 30% of American land and oceans by 2030. The new emissions goal may well be presented at an international climate summit that Biden is planning for Earth Day, on 22 April.
      The White House, for the first time, will have an office of domestic climate policy to coordinate Biden’s climate agenda alongside a national climate task force that will comprise of 21 government agency leaders to adopt a “whole of government” approach to reducing emissions. A review of scientific integrity practices will roll out.
      The orders also establish an environmental justice interagency council to address the racial and economic inequities exacerbated by climate change and air and water pollution. Biden hopes to pass a $2tn clean energy package through Congress and he will direct that 40% of investments will be aimed at disadvantaged communities.
      In all, the climate package is a strong repudiation of the Trump administration, which consistently sidelined or derided climate science, dismantled policies designed to lower emissions and withdrew from the Paris climate deal.
      “This is the single biggest day for climate action in more than a decade, and what makes it all the better is that President Biden and Vice-President Harris are just getting started,” said Gene Karpinski, president of the League of Conservation Voters. More

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      in US Politics

      US returns to global climate arena with call to act on 'emergency'

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      The US has returned to international climate action with a focus on helping the most vulnerable on the planet, Joe Biden’s climate envoy announced at a global climate summit, promising financial assistance for those afflicted by the impacts of climate breakdown.John Kerry told world leaders at the virtual Global Adaptation summit on Monday: “We’re proud to be back. We come back with humility for the absence of the last four years, and we’ll do everything in our power to make up for it.”He called on countries to “treat the crisis as the emergency that it is” by reducing greenhouse gas emissions, and warned that the costs of coping with the climate change were escalating, with the US spending more than $265bn (£194bn) in one year after three storms. “We’ve reached a point where it is an absolute fact that it’s cheaper to invest in preventing damage or minimising it at least than cleaning up.”Current greenhouse gas emissions, he said, put the world on track to experience, “for the most vulnerable and poorest people on earth, fundamentally unliveable conditions, so our urgent reduction in emissions is impelled by common sense”.Kerry said the climate was a top priority for Biden. “We have a president now, thank God, who leads and tells the truth … and he knows that we have to mobilise in unprecedented ways to meet this challenge that is fast accelerating, and we have limited time to get it under control,” he said.He said the US was working on a national plan, known as a nationally determined contribution to be submitted to the UN under the Paris agreement, for emissions reductions to 2030. That would be published “as soon as practicable”, he promised.There would also be financial assistance to the poorest and most vulnerable, he promised. “We intend to make good on our climate finance pledge,” he said.Financial assistance from the US to poor countries suffering the impacts of climate-related disasters all but dried up during the Trump administration, as the US refused to continue payments into the global Green Climate Fund.The UN secretary general warned, in an interview with the Guardian last December, that without the $100bn a year in climate finance which has long been promised to flow to poor countries by 2020, the developing world would lose trust.A sizeable slice of that $100bn is expected to come from the US, directly through overseas and indirectly through development institutions and businesses.The Climate Adaptation summit, hosted by the Netherlands, included contributions from the UN secretary-general Antonio Guterres, Germany’s chancellor Angela Merkel, the UK’s Boris Johnson and India’s prime minister Narendra Modi, as well as former UN secretary-general Ban Ki-moon, and Kristalina Georgieva, head of the International Monetary Fund.Kerry warned that adaptation to the impacts of extreme weather must go along with drastic reductions in emissions. “There is no adapting to a 3C or 4C world, except for the very richest and most privileged,” he warned.“Some of the impacts are inevitable, but if we don’t act boldly and immediately by building resilience, we will see dramatic reversals in economic development for everybody, and the poorest and most vulnerable communities will pay the highest price,” he warned.Kerry called for all countries to come forward to the forthcoming UN Cop26 climate summit, in Glasgow this November, with commitments to reach net zero emissions by mid-century and national plans to reduce greenhouse gases in the next decade. More