Texas shows need for infrastructure spending has 'never been greater': Engineering CEO

Brooke DiPalma

·Associate Producer

Sun, February 21, 2021, 8:47 AM

Extreme weather that's plunged much of the U.S. into the deep freeze — and put Texas failing energy infrastructure in the spotlight — underscores the dire need for federal infrastructure spending, the top executive of an professional services firm told Yahoo Finance.

On Saturday, President Joe Biden declared a state of emergency in the Lone Star State after millions were left without water and electricity amid frigid temperatures. The crisis has prompted an "urgent need" for funding into America's infrastructure that's been a long time coming, according to Jacobs (J) CEO Steven J. Demetriou.

"Over the last 10 years, both sides of the aisle have been talking about the urgent need for infrastructure," said Demetriou, whose company is headquartered in Dallas Texas.

"There's a generational opportunity under the Biden administration to really move forward," the CEO added. "I think the desire is there, the climate change drivers, digital drivers, I think we're gonna see some movement here in 2021."

Texans were completely caught off guard as a winter storm knocked out power for millions, causing widespread pandemonium. Demetriou told Yahoo Finance the incident is eye-opening, and called Texas "only one example of these type of things that are happening across the country," underscoring an "urgent need" to fix the U.S.'s crumbling network of roads, bridges and energy systems.

"But that's only the beginning of the issues...cities and towns desperately need to modernize schools, upgrade and expand water infrastructure and many other services," he added, citing how extreme weather is exacerbating the problem.

"These crazy issues in Texas and across the globe...sea level rise in some cities, flooding, bushfires, the fact that throughout the United States....we are clearly at a stage where the need for federal infrastructure investment has never been greater," Demetriou added.

Not just 'throwing money' at the problem

(Photo by SAUL LOEB / AFP) (Photo by SAUL LOEB/AFP via Getty Images)

Outlined with 'The Biden Plan to Invest in Middle Class Competitiveness', the Biden administration calls for a $1.3 trillion investment in the country's infrastructure over ten years, "to equip the American middle class to compete and win in the global economy, to move the U.S. to net-zero greenhouse gas emissions, and to ensure that cities, towns, and rural areas all across our country share in that growth."

Yet Demetriou emphasized that there's much more involved than "just throwing money at each of these individual issues."

He added: "It really creates an opportunity for a modern set of integrated economic, social and environmental strategies to drive infrastructure investment going forward. It's not about concrete and steel, it's more about connecting urban and suburban communities through multi-purpose infrastructure solutions."

The executive noted that when it comes to the economic impact of the average taxpayer, this issue "goes beyond the traditional economic measures" and is "about saving people's lives."

Shares of Jacobs are up nearly 11% from a year ago, with shares closing at $112.41 a share on Friday, February 19th's market close.

VIDEO 8:00 Texas shows need for infrastructure spending has 'never been greater': Engineering CEO (yahoo.com)

What's behind the extreme cold in Texas?

Jeff Berardelli

Sat, February 20, 2021

For many, especially folks who live in the South, the arctic outbreak that has gripped the nation's heartland for the past week is the kind of cold that only happens once in a century. Countless record cold temperatures were set. Conditions overwhelmed the Texas power grid, cutting off electricity to millions and bursting water pipes, creating a humanitarian crisis.

But with climate change making for generally warmer winters and causing heat records to outnumber cold records by 2 to 1 globally over the past decade, this historic cold snap may seem counterintuitive. It's not. In fact, paradoxically, a warmer climate may have actually contributed to the extreme cold.

The science of meteorology has come a long way in the past few decades, so much so that meteorologists saw this extreme winter weather coming many weeks in advance. That's because this extreme pattern was initiated by a large and recognizable phenomenon which unfolded in the Arctic at the beginning of the year called Sudden Stratospheric Warming, or SSW. 

CBS News previewed the wild winter weather in this January 7th article, explaining how over the course of just a few days in late December and early January, temperatures in the atmosphere high above the North Pole warmed by 100 degrees Fahrenheit — jumping from minus-110 degrees Fahrenheit to minus-10.

SSW's are a natural occurrence which happen every couple of winters and portend extreme weather in the weeks following them. That's because when the Arctic warms rapidly it disrupts a spinning mass of cold air — the polar vortex — a semi-permanent weather system which is present each winter. 

Normally the jet stream winds around the vortex and acts as a lasso of sorts, keeping the cold air trapped inside. But when it gets warm in the Arctic, the jet stream weakens and elongates, allowing the cold air to plunge south.

This enables a broad mountain of warm air to form over the Arctic, temporarily supplanting the cold vortex. The warm mountain acts as an atmospheric block, redirecting the jet stream and bitter cold air southward.

Meteorologists saw the extreme pattern coming weeks ahead. How? A Sudden Stratospheric Warming miles above the North Pole (a natural event) with a warmed Arctic due to climate change piggy backing on that pattern = unstable PV & wavy extreme jet stream, with extreme cold & warm. pic.twitter.com/yRmapIFi2c

— Jeff Berardelli (@WeatherProf) February 19, 2021

While this bitter cold air mass was certainly memorable for the upper Midwest, it wasn't all that out of the ordinary for them. The record set back in 1899 was much more widespread and severe in the northern tier of the U.S.

So which cold wave was more extreme? February 1899 or February 2021. The answer is ...... not even close. February 1899 was much colder nearly everywhere. pic.twitter.com/QM01c1Y1cH

— Brian Brettschneider (@Climatologist49) February 18, 2021

What made this particular situation historic was that the core of the cold air — a piece of the polar vortex — plunged much further south than it really ever does: a full 4,000 miles from its usual home near the North Pole.

As a result, hundreds of daily record lows were set within the past week, focused on the south-central Plains States. Dozens of all-time records were also set as the unprecedented cold gripped cities and towns unaccustomed to and unprepared for the bitter blast. The animated loop below shows monthly records in dark blue dots and all-time record cold in black dots.

As the influence of the Vortex weakens, a loop of the week's records. 100s of daily, dozens of monthly & all-time records. The most impressive records are south, because this historic event was less about the extremity of the airmass, and more about how far south the core was. pic.twitter.com/iTllZ9Mf6w

— Jeff Berardelli (@WeatherProf) February 18, 2021

This has produced some astonishing visuals. A frozen waterfall in the Ozarks of Arkansas.

It’s magical out there! A completely frozen up Glory Hole Waterfall... from in the Ozarks of Arkansas. #arwx pic.twitter.com/ym11MxdkQ5

— Brian Emfinger (@brianemfinger) February 18, 2021

And frozen swamps in Louisiana.

Frozen Louisiana - video pic.twitter.com/KtUE0etQhQ

— The duck girl (@Louisianaboater) February 17, 2021

This comes despite a long-term trend in which winters have been warming all across the U.S. and cold has been lessening. In Minneapolis-St. Paul, for example, from 1970 to 2020 the coldest temperature of the year has edged upwards by 12.1 degrees Fahrenheit.

60-year trend in January temperatures using NCEI county-level data. #ThisIsFine 🔥 pic.twitter.com/eUzRRIGrxO

— Brian Brettschneider (@Climatologist49) February 10, 2021

The recent extreme weather was not limited to the U.S. When the jet stream is extreme in one region, it is often extreme all across the globe. In Saudi Arabia, snow-covered camels made for a rare, but not unheard of, sight.

So it is snowing now in Saudi Arabia.The camels (gamel in Arabic) are not into it.Snow. Saudi Arabia. Let that sink in. pic.twitter.com/0LMUionJNa

— Cali Dreaming NaphiSoc (@NaphiSoc) February 18, 2021

Snow also fell in Jerusalem and parts of Jordan and Syria, while at the same time record heat was impacting other parts of the Middle East like Iraq, where the temperature soared to 93 degrees in winter.

Iraq 🇮🇶has just shattered its national heat record for the month of February.New record is +34.0°C at Nasiriya. Smashing previous record of +32.6°C (same place) in 1963. h/t @extremetemps pic.twitter.com/S3dUZma9oA

— Scott Duncan (@ScottDuncanWX) February 17, 2021 How extreme cold and extreme heat are connected

While this extreme cold paired with extreme heat may seem odd, it's actually what meteorologists would expect of a wavy jet stream. Think of it this way: what goes up must come down. When the atmosphere forces cold air south, there must be an equal and opposite reaction forcing warm air north. When air masses are displaced into places they don't typically visit, weather extremes and the impacts they bring to society follow.

A number of climate scientists think that climate change may not only be making sudden stratospheric warming more likely, but that climate change itself may have a similar effect in the Arctic, because it is also causing significant warming. Due to human-caused climate change, the Arctic is warming at three times the pace of the global average.

The wavy jet stream theory, as it relates to climate change, was pioneered by Dr. Jennifer Francis at Woodwell Climate Research Center. The theory makes logical sense: Arctic warming reduces the gradient between warm and cold air, and thus weakens the temperature contrast mechanism which powers the strength of the jet stream. That results in a weaker, more wavy jet stream, which is more likely to spill its cold air southward. 

The theory has since been adopted by many other climate scientists, who view the apparent increasing extremes, like this latest bitter blast, as sign the theory has merit. But a sizable group of other scientists have their doubts about the impact of climate change and Arctic amplification on the jet stream. 

That's partly because the atmosphere is very noisy and climate models are not quite yet capable of reproducing the finer details of a complex system. Thus, finding evidence to definitively prove or disprove the theory has been a challenge. But many long-time meteorologists believe the logic, the research and the qualitative evidence they have observed is enough to make the case.

What all meteorologists and climate scientists can agree on is this extreme event was set in motion by a Sudden Stratospheric Warming. That was the driving force. 

For those tired of cold and snow, good news: it seems the extreme pattern has about run its course. The globe is about to return to a more normal pattern. That does not preclude cold air outbreaks and snowstorms for the U.S. as we head into spring, but it should allow the weather to return to some degree of normalcy.

TEXAS DEEP FREEZE
Bedford locked water meters years ago. Now officials are reversing that decision




The winter storm that caused power outages and burst pipes brought unintended consequences to Bedford as people couldn’t shut off their water because their meters were locked.

But city officials said it’s time to change that.

Mayor Michael Boyter said that several years ago, Bedford installed smart meters, and public works officials advised the city council that water meters should be locked to prevent damage to the more expensive digital equipment.

“There were unintended consequences to that decision,” Boyter said.

As pipes began to burst, the city got calls from residents, he said.

Boyter said city employees will start unlocking meters when calls slow down to make emergency repairs from the storm and prolonged cold, but if people have the proper tools, they can unlock the meters themselves.

This week, Bedford got 230 requests to remove the water meter locks.

As North Texas thaws out, the next 48 hours are critical in terms of dealing with broken pipes and water mains, he said.

Boyter said the council will meet soon to change the ordinance that requires locking the meters.

People can unlock their water meters without penalty from the city, he said.

“It was poor advice that we got, and we’re going to fix it,” he said.

In a state that once sang ‘Freeze a Yankee,’ the myth of an invincible Texas crumbles


Bud Kennedy
Fri, February 19, 2021, 


Bob Arnold

Forty years ago, Texans felt so indestructible that we sang along when a Dallas radio station played “Freeze a Yankee”:

Cut off the gas, turn off the oil

And let ‘em all freeze and boil

After the most costly storm in state history destroyed homes, businesses, cities and lives, songwriter Bob Arnold of Dallas said last week was “just completely embarrassing” for Texas.

“Now the Yankees are not freezing — we are,” he said.

Texas’ pinchpenny failure to prepare for decennial winter storms, along with state bureaucrats’ grossly lazy oversight of energy companies, put another giant dent in the myth of an invincible Texas.


Bob Arnold, then an energy company spokesman, wrote the song “Freeze a Yankee.”

“Nobody wants to spend a lot of money, and now that’s come to bear fruit,” said Arnold, a former energy company spokesman who co-wrote the 1979 lyrics for his folk group, the Folkel Minority, a spinoff from the Vocal Majority chorus:

We gonna keep all the gas we can make

And let them Yankees shiver ‘n’ shake

“Back then, there were so many states that didn’t want drilling — they expected Texas to do that,” Arnold said.

“It doesn’t do us any good if we can’t run the power plants.”

If you thought the last week was the end of the nightmare, think again.

Both years Texas had record winter cold — 1899 and 1949 — they were followed by deadly floods.

In 1899, our coldest winter on record was followed by 12 straight days of rain that June, inundating Waco, Belton and much of Central Texas along the Brazos and Colorado rivers.


The 2 below zero mark from 1949 was the coldest Fort Worth day of the century.

In Fort Worth, the low temperature last week was 2 below zero. That matched a chilly low Jan. 31, 1949.

Three months later — barely time to recover — more than 10 inches of rain turned the Trinity River into a sea 14 blocks wide.

The 1949 flood killed 10 people and pushed 13,000 people out of their waterlogged homes.

I didn’t think of that. The official Texas state climatologist did.

The 1949 storm was the only cold snap that brought as much snow and ice statewide as this one, according to John Nielsen-Gammon of the Texas Center For Climate at Texas A&M University.

“This combination of extreme cold and heavy winter precipitation is a lot more rare than just cold temperatures alone,” he said.

Think about it. Usually when it’s bitterly cold, it’s also dry.

“This whole storm was so unusual,” he said.

He’s sticking with his prediction for warmer temperatures over the next two decades, including winters where temperatures with rise by an average of 1.6 degrees.

A former state lawmaker, Ron Simmons of Carrollton, cited Nielsen-Gammon’s study of “extreme weather” as a reason past Texas Legislatures didn’t require power plants to winterize.

Climate change makes events like last week less likely, not more likely, Nielson-Gammon said.

Yes, we get more hurricanes, wildfires, tornadoes and drought. But there’s no indication that we are getting more extreme cold or winter storms.

Jennifer Francis, an Arctic climate-change scientist at the Massachusetts-based Woodwell Climate Research Center, agreed that we can expect fewer record cold spells.

But she didn’t let Texas leaders off the hook.

She wrote by email: “Lawmakers chose to ignore the chorus of scientists who warned that extreme events like this one will still happen, thus leaving millions of people and basic infrastructure vulnerable to damaging impacts of severe weather like this.”

They ignored us right up to the storm.

We knew this storm was coming more than a week ahead. Yet nobody in state or local government even warned anyone not to run their car inside a garage, or not to bring a grill inside, or how to turn off city water or prepare for utility outages.

“It’s very disappointing that decision-makers in government and utility companies, as well as individuals. did not take the warnings more seriously,” Francis wrote.

Our lawmakers and leaders left us all in the dark.

Texas Still Reeling As Country, Companies And Traders Assess Damage From Winter Storm's Strike On Energy Grid


Bibhu Pattnaik
Sun, February 21, 2021, 



The U.S. is still coming to grips with what Bloomberg News described today as "one of the most remarkable weeks in power and gas market history."

A blast of cold weather triggered blackouts and disruptions to water systems throughout the week, after Texas experienced one of its coldest days on record on Monday.

Tens of millions of people have been affected by lack of power and water since. More than 4 million of Texas' 29 million people had no power at one point, and the water supplies of over 14.5 million people were affected as the extreme cold caused pipes to freeze and burst, according to Reuters.

Texas has a deregulated power market that is largely cut off from the rest of the country's. Warning signs came two days before Monday's events, when a sudden loss of power hit the grid. That, and a similar but smaller event in 2011, has drawn criticism against operators for failing to adequately prepare.

About 65,000 customers of ERCOT, the state's main grid operator, remained without power as of Saturday afternoon. State health officials have linked more than two dozen deaths to the power crisis. About half of the state is still experiencing water disruptions, Reuters reported Saturday.

The surge in electricity demand crippled the state's grid, forcing authorities to use rolling blackouts to prevent an uncontrolled blackout that might have taken weeks, or longer, to fix. This was the country’s biggest-ever forced blackout, according to Bloomberg. CBS News quoted the state's top power grid official as saying that the system was "seconds and minutes" away from leaving residents without power for months when the storm hit. The system was back to normal as of Friday, operators said.

President Joe Biden on Saturday approved a major disaster declaration for Texas. This will allow affected people to get federal funding for home repairs and low-cost loans. At least two dozen people have died as a result of the crisis.

Gas traders are pleading for cash as the prices for heating fuel went up to 300-fold due to increased demand and slashed production.

As Texas struggles to recover, customers in the state are facing unprecedented price hikes in their power bills as a result of the recent snow storm. Media reports tell of residential customers facing bills jumping into the thousands of dollars for the month of February, compared to the low hundreds for January. Power customers are being hit with huge bills if they had chosen a floating-rate contract, which is tied to wholesale contracts, the Financial Times reported. The wholesale power rate hit the maximum allowed $9,000 per megawatt hour for five days beginning last Sunday, according to the newspaper. That amounts to a rate of $9 a kilowatt-hour for a typical household that normally pays 12 cents per kilowatt-hour.

Reuters reports that pollution escalated as refineries burned and released gases to prevent damage to their equipment amid the power and gas outages. The flaring, as this protective measure is known, darkened the skies with smoke that was visible for miles in eastern Texas. Refineries belonging to Valero Energy Corporation (NYSE: VLO), Marathon Petroleum Corp (NYSE: MPC), Exxon Mobil Corporation (NYSE: XOM) and Motiva Enterprises were the top polluters, according to a Reuters review of preliminary data supplied to the Texas Commission on Environment Quality.

Dow Inc (NYSE: DOW) CEO Jim Fitterling called on Biden to use the crisis to advance the president's proposed $2 trillion push for infrastructure and green energy spending. "Don’t waste the crisis, you use this to drill in,” he said in an interview with the Financial Times. Dow had to shut down chemical plants in Texas during the storm, and the company expects investments in grids will boost growth in the years ahead, according to FT.

Atmos Energy Corporation (NYSE: ATO) is aiming to raise cash to fulfill a multi-billion-dollar committment to secure fuel, Bloomberg reported today. Atmos is one of the biggest independent suppliers of natural gas in the country and has 3 million customers in eight states. But it is not mainly a producer natural gas and as such had to hit the markets to secure more gas last week. The bill, due at the end of March, could be as high as $3.5 billion.

Photo courtesy the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration.

Gary Anglebrandt contributed to this report.

Texas Crisis Exposes a Nation's Vulnerability to Climate Change

City of Richardson workers prepare to work on a water main pipe that burst due to extreme cold in a neighborhood Wednesday, Feb. 17, 2021, in Richardson, Texas. Water service providers in Tennessee, Oklahoma, Texas and other states hit hard by frigid winter storms and mounting power outages are asking residents to restrict usage as reports of water main breaks, low pressure and busted pipes emerge. (AP Photo/LM Otero)


Even as Texas struggled to restore electricity and water over the past week, signs of the risks posed by increasingly extreme weather to America’s aging infrastructure were cropping up across the country.

The week’s continent-spanning winter storms triggered blackouts in Texas, Oklahoma, Mississippi and several other states. One-third of oil production in the nation was halted. Drinking-water systems in Ohio were knocked offline. Road networks nationwide were paralyzed, and vaccination efforts in 20 states were disrupted.

The crisis carries a profound warning. As climate change brings more frequent and intense storms, floods, heat waves, wildfires and other extreme events, it is placing growing stress on the foundations of the country’s economy: its network of roads and railways, drinking-water systems, power plants, electrical grids, industrial waste sites and even homes. Failures in just one sector can set off a domino effect of breakdowns in hard-to-predict ways

Much of this infrastructure was built decades ago, under the expectation that the environment around it would remain stable or at least fluctuate within predictable bounds. Now climate change is upending that assumption.

“We are colliding with a future of extremes,” said Alice Hill, who oversaw planning for climate risks on the National Security Council during the Obama administration. “We base all our choices about risk management on what’s occurred in the past, and that is no longer a safe guide.”

While it is not always possible to say precisely how global warming influenced any one particular storm, scientists said, an overall rise in extreme weather creates sweeping new risks.

Sewer systems are overflowing more often as powerful rainstorms exceed their design capacity. Coastal homes and highways are collapsing as intensified runoff erodes cliffs. Coal ash, the toxic residue produced by coal-burning plants, is spilling into rivers as floods overwhelm barriers meant to hold it back. Homes once beyond the reach of wildfires are burning in blazes they were never designed to withstand.

Problems like these often reflect an inclination of governments to spend as little money as possible, said Shalini Vajjhala, a former Obama administration official who now advises cities on meeting climate threats. She said it is hard to persuade taxpayers to spend extra money to guard against disasters that seem unlikely.

But climate change flips that logic, making inaction far costlier. “The argument I would make is, we can’t afford not to, because we’re absorbing the costs” later, Vajjhala said, after disasters strike. “We’re spending poorly.”

The Biden administration has talked extensively about climate change, particularly the need to reduce greenhouse gas emissions and create jobs in renewable energy. But it has spent less time discussing how to manage the growing effects of climate change, facing criticism from experts for not appointing more people who focus on climate resilience.

“I am extremely concerned by the lack of emergency management expertise reflected in Biden’s climate team,” said Samantha Montano, an assistant professor at the Massachusetts Maritime Academy who focuses on disaster policy. “There’s an urgency here that still is not being reflected.”

A White House spokesperson, Vedant Patel, said in a statement, “Building resilient and sustainable infrastructure that can withstand extreme weather and a changing climate will play an integral role in creating millions of good paying, union jobs” while cutting greenhouse gas emissions.

And while President Joe Biden has called for a major push to refurbish and upgrade the nation’s infrastructure, getting a closely divided Congress to spend hundreds of billions, if not trillions, of dollars will be a major challenge.

Heightening the cost to society, disruptions can disproportionately affect lower-income households and other vulnerable groups, including older people or those with limited English.

“All these issues are converging,” said Robert Bullard, a professor at Texas Southern University who studies wealth and racial disparities related to the environment. “And there’s simply no place in this country that’s not going to have to deal with climate change.”

Many Forms of Water Crisis

In September, when a sudden storm dumped a record of more than 2 inches of water on Washington in less than 75 minutes, the result was not just widespread flooding but also raw sewage rushing into hundreds of homes.

Washington, like many other cities in the Northeast and Midwest, relies on what is called a combined sewer overflow system; if a downpour overwhelms storm drains along the street, they are built to overflow into the pipes that carry raw sewage. But if there is too much pressure, sewage can be pushed backward, into people’s homes — where the forces can send it erupting from toilets and shower drains.

This is what happened in Washington. The city’s system was built in the late 1800s. Now climate change is straining an already outdated design.

DC Water, the local utility, is spending billions of dollars so that the system can hold more sewage. “We’re sort of in uncharted territory,” said Vincent Morris, a utility spokesperson.

The challenge of managing and taming the nation’s water supplies — whether in streets and homes or in vast rivers and watersheds — is growing increasingly complex as storms intensify. Last May, rain-swollen flooding breached two dams in central Michigan, forcing thousands of residents to flee their homes and threatening a chemical complex and toxic waste cleanup site. Experts warned it was unlikely to be the last such failure.

Many of the country’s 90,000 dams were built decades ago and were already in dire need of repairs. Now climate change poses an additional threat, bringing heavier downpours to parts of the country and raising the odds that some dams could be overwhelmed by more water than they were designed to handle. One recent study found that most of California’s biggest dams were at increased risk of failure as global warming advances.

In recent years, dam safety officials have begun grappling with the dangers. Colorado, for instance, now requires dam builders to take into account the risk of increased atmospheric moisture driven by climate change as they plan for worst-case flooding scenarios.

But nationwide, there remains a backlog of thousands of older dams that still need to be rehabilitated or upgraded. The price tag could ultimately stretch to more than $70 billion.

“Whenever we study dam failures, we often find there was a lot of complacency beforehand,” said Bill McCormick, president of the Association of State Dam Safety Officials. But given that failures can have catastrophic consequences, “we really can’t afford to be complacent.”

Built for a Different Future

If the Texas blackouts exposed one state’s poor planning, they also provided a warning for the nation: Climate change threatens virtually every aspect of electricity grids that are not always designed to handle increasingly severe weather. The vulnerabilities show up in power lines, natural-gas plants, nuclear reactors and myriad other systems.

Higher storm surges can knock out coastal power infrastructure. Deeper droughts can reduce water supplies for hydroelectric dams. Severe heat waves can reduce the efficiency of fossil-fuel generators, transmission lines and even solar panels at precisely the moment that demand soars because everyone cranks up their air conditioners.

Climate hazards can also combine in new and unforeseen ways.

In California recently, Pacific Gas & Electric has had to shut off electricity to thousands of people during exceptionally dangerous fire seasons. The reason: Downed power lines can spark huge wildfires in dry vegetation. Then, during a record-hot August last year, several of the state’s natural-gas plants malfunctioned in the heat, just as demand was spiking, contributing to blackouts.

“We have to get better at understanding these compound impacts,” said Michael Craig, an expert in energy systems at the University of Michigan who recently led a study looking at how rising summer temperatures in Texas could strain the grid in unexpected ways. “It’s an incredibly complex problem to plan for.”

Some utilities are taking notice. After Superstorm Sandy in 2012 knocked out power for 8.7 million customers, utilities in New York and New Jersey invested billions in flood walls, submersible equipment and other technology to reduce the risk of failures. Last month, New York’s Con Edison said it would incorporate climate projections into its planning.

As freezing temperatures struck Texas, a glitch at one of two reactors at a South Texas nuclear plant, which serves 2 million homes, triggered a shutdown. The cause: Sensing lines connected to the plant’s water pumps had frozen, said Victor Dricks, a spokesperson for the federal Nuclear Regulatory Agency.

It is also common for extreme heat to disrupt nuclear power. The issue is that the water used to cool reactors can become too warm to use, forcing shutdowns.

Flooding is another risk.

After a tsunami led to several meltdowns at Japan’s Fukushima Daiichi power plant in 2011, the U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission told the 60 or so working nuclear plants in the United States, many decades old, to evaluate their flood risk to account for climate change; 90% showed at least one type of flood risk that exceeded what the plant was designed to handle.

The greatest risk came from heavy rain and snowfall exceeding the design parameters at 53 plants.

Scott Burnell, a Nuclear Regulatory Commission spokesperson, said in a statement, “The NRC continues to conclude, based on the staff’s review of detailed analyses, that all U.S. nuclear power plants can appropriately deal with potential flooding events, including the effects of climate change, and remain safe.”

A Nation’s Arteries at Risk

The collapse of a portion of California’s Highway 1 into the Pacific Ocean after heavy rains last month was a reminder of the fragility of the nation’s roads.

Several climate-related risks appeared to have converged to heighten the danger. Rising seas and higher storm surges have intensified coastal erosion, while more extreme bouts of precipitation have increased the landslide risk.

Add to that the effects of devastating wildfires, which can damage the vegetation holding hillside soil in place, and “things that wouldn’t have slid without the wildfires start sliding,” said Jennifer Jacobs, a professor of civil and environmental engineering at the University of New Hampshire. “I think we’re going to see more of that.”

The United States depends on highways, railroads and bridges as economic arteries for commerce, travel and simply getting to work. But many of the country’s most important links face mounting climate threats. More than 60,000 miles of roads and bridges in coastal floodplains are already vulnerable to extreme storms and hurricanes, government estimates show. And inland flooding could also threaten at least 2,500 bridges across the country by 2050, a federal climate report warned in 2018.

Sometimes even small changes can trigger catastrophic failures. Engineers modeling the collapse of bridges over Escambia Bay in Florida during Hurricane Ivan in 2004 found that the extra 3 inches of sea level rise since the bridge was built in 1968 very likely contributed to the collapse, because of the added height of the storm surge and force of the waves.

“A lot of our infrastructure systems have a tipping point. And when you hit the tipping point, that’s when a failure occurs,” Jacobs said. “And the tipping point could be an inch.”

Crucial rail networks are at risk, too. In 2017, Amtrak consultants found that along parts of the Northeast corridor, which runs from Boston to Washington and carries 12 million people a year, flooding and storm surge could erode the track bed, disable the signals and eventually put the tracks underwater.

And there is no easy fix. Elevating the tracks would require also raising bridges, electrical wires and lots of other infrastructure, and moving them would mean buying new land in a densely packed part of the country. So the report recommended flood barriers, costing $24 million per mile, that must be moved into place whenever floods threaten.

Toxic Sites, Deepening Peril

A series of explosions at a flood-damaged chemical plant outside Houston after Hurricane Harvey in 2017 highlighted a danger lurking in a world beset by increasingly extreme weather.

The blasts at the plant came after flooding knocked out the site’s electrical supply, shutting down refrigeration systems that kept volatile chemicals stable. Almost two dozen people, many of them emergency workers, were treated for exposure to the toxic fumes, and some 200 nearby residents were evacuated from their homes.

More than 2,500 facilities that handle toxic chemicals lie in federal flood-prone areas across the country, about 1,400 of them in areas at the highest risk of flooding, a New York Times analysis showed in 2018.

Leaks from toxic cleanup sites, left behind by past industry, pose another threat.

Almost two-thirds of some 1,500 Superfund cleanup sites across the country are in areas with an elevated risk of flooding, storm surge, wildfires or sea level rise, a government audit warned in 2019. Coal ash, a toxic substance produced by coal power plants that is often stored as sludge in special ponds, has been particularly exposed. After Hurricane Florence in 2018, for example, a dam breach at the site of a power plant in Wilmington, North Carolina, released the hazardous ash into a nearby river.

“We should be evaluating whether these facilities or sites actually have to be moved or resecured,” said Lisa Evans, senior counsel at Earthjustice, an environmental law organization. Places that “may have been OK in 1990,” she said, “may be a disaster waiting to happen in 2021.”

This article originally appeared in The New York Times.

© 2021 The New York Times Company

Texas power outage brings electrification-natural gas debate to a head

Professor on Texas power outages: 'We failed to take the steps we need to weatherize' at the end of January and  beginning of February, 2011,

Akiko Fujita
·Anchor/Reporter
Sun, February 21, 2021

In the aftermath of the winter storm that knocked out power to millions of homes in Texas, the finger pointing against renewable energy has been swift.

Research shows the dangers of fossil fuels, including natural gas, but the recent winter storm that led to crippling power outages across regions in Texas has put into question the use of renewable energy instead of natural gas.

Republican Gov. Greg Abbott, Texas Congressman Dan Crenshaw (R-Houston) and Texas Agriculture Commissioner Sid Miller blamed solar and wind energy for the power outages in their state. Abbott said renewable energy “thrust Texas into a situation where it was lacking power on a statewide basis,” while Crenshaw tweeted “This is what happens when you force the grid to rely in part on wind as a power source.” Meanwhile, Miller said, in a Facebook post: “We should never build another wind turbine in Texas. The experiment failed big time.”

The criticism ignores the dominance of fossil fuel use in Texas, the largest producer of crude oil and natural gas in the U.S. But, it points to a growing unease brewing within the natural gas industry, as the public turns a critical eye towards its carbon footprint, and local electrification initiatives gain momentum nationwide.

"This is the most difficult thing for Texas to admit as a huge natural gas state,” said Michael Webber, an energy resources and mechanical engineering Professor at the University of Texas at Austin. “Our natural gas system is not delivering what we need. They're all having trouble but this is really a natural gas problem more than anything else right now."

Methane natural gas has long been touted as a transitional fuel, a cleaner alternative to coal-fired electricity. At the height of the fracking boom in 2014, then President Barack Obama praised methane as a “bridge fuel” that would power the economy to a cleaner, low-carbon future, “if extracted safely.”

But as cities across the country race to reach aggressive targets laid out in the Paris Climate agreement, there is increasing skepticism around natural gas usage. While gas utilities have reduced methane emissions by 73% since 1990, according to the American Gas Association (AGA), a trade organization representing more than 200 natural gas suppliers, experts say its continued use doesn’t cut output deep enough, to get the country to net-zero emissions by 2050.

“The climate implications are huge, whatever fossil fuel it is,” said Sandy Bahr, director of the Arizona Chapter of the Sierra Club, who has been waging a fight against the gas industry in the state, adding that natural gas may sound OK but it’s not.

Natural gas bans

The fight for full electrification in the U.S. has largely been at the local level so far. And the fault lines have formed predictably, along party politics. In California, more than 40 cities have adopted building codes that dramatically reduce their reliance on gas.

The city of San Jose, along with Berkeley has led the way. In 2019, San Jose became the largest in the country to ban natural gas in new construction. Since last year, the city has committed to zero net energy in 100% of new homes. Democratic Mayor Sam Liccardo said the goal is to make all homes all-electric by 2050.

“Buildings are critically important because we know that that is where an awful lot of emissions can be controlled relatively quickly, both through retrofits and through new construction,” he told Yahoo Finance. “By moving from gas to electric, not only are we improving the planet's health we're also improving our own health.”

Last month, New York City Mayor Bill de Blasio called for an end to all fossil fuel connections in new construction by 2030. Denver aims to have all new homes electrified by 2024, while the Seattle City Council unanimously approved to update its energy codes, to ban most natural gas usage in some apartments and commercial buildings.

Zero-sum

AGA President and CEO Karen Harbert said 180 million Americans already rely on gas in their homes, and that transitioning to 100% renewable energy is not feasible or cost efficient. In fact, she said natural gas usage has contributed to a 73% cut in methane emissions since 1990.

“It's not a bridge fuel. It's not a bridge source of energy, and neither is our infrastructure,” she said. “And the amount of emissions further emissions that we can reduce, again, at your home is a very small part of the overall emissions picture of our country.”

Still, the industry has waged an aggressive campaign against efforts to phase out methane. When the Seattle City Council first drafted legislation to ban gas hookups in new buildings, Puget Sound Energy hired lobbying firm CBE Strategic, to “deploy a strong coalition of labor and business” to push back. In conservative states like Arizona, lawmakers have moved quickly to pass preemption laws that prevent gas bans from being debated, even though no such legislation has been introduced.

Arizona State House Representative Kristen Engel, a Democrat, said the preemption bill in her state was heavily funded by Southwest Gas, leading to the nickname “Southwest Gas Bill.”

“It really does seem to be the gas industry trying to get out ahead. They see what's happening in other parts of the country, maybe they hear or they think that the cities might follow suit,” Engel said. "And they're trying to get some action on the legislative level to just sort of cut that off at the pass."

Harbert said the AMA has never lobbied for state preemption bills, but supports the move to give customers an option, saying “you can't outright just tell people and mandate their energy choice.”

On social media, the AMA is framing the use of natural gas as a lifestyle choice, partnering with influencers to promote #cookwithgas to reach a younger demographic on platforms like Twitter and Instagram. Other hashtags have been used to promote the industry’s work with frontline workers and food pantries during the pandemic, Harbert said.

“We will continue to use those platforms to reach out to the types of stakeholders that depend on natural gas,” she said. “Everybody loves to cook, particularly now that we're at home. And so, that's just another channel to get out a message about what natural gas does for you as an individual or as a foodie.”

Webber, who is also the chief science and technology officer at ENGIE, one of the largest electric and gas utilities, said the fight between the fossil fuel industry and renewable energy advocates shouldn’t be framed in a zero-sum context, in part because that takes away from efforts to further regulate the gas industry — actions that can be taken immediately.

“Is it a bridge to a future without gas ...or is it part of the destination as well. We don't know the answer yet,” he said. “Are we going to keep gas and add carbon capture, or keep gas but replace the gas with bio-gas, or keep gas but replace the gas with hydrogen? Are we going to get rid of the gas entirely? This is an open question.”

A Giant Flaw in Texas Blackouts: It Cut Power to Gas Supplies

Rachel Adams-Heard, Javier Blas and Mark Chediak
Sat, February 20, 2021, 



(Bloomberg) -- When the Texas power grid was on the brink of collapse and its operator plunged thousands into darkness, it didn’t make an exception for the oil and gas field.

Power was, unsurprisingly, diverted to hospitals and nursing homes. Ercot, as the grid manager is known, was staving off utter catastrophe, its chief executive later said.

But leaving shale fields like the Permian Basin dark had an unintended consequence. Producers who depend on electricity to power their operations were left with no way to pump natural gas. And that gas was needed more than ever to generate electricity.

As one executive described: It was like a death spiral.

The result was a vicious cycle that serves as a painful lesson to any power grid operator and utility company dealing with rolling outages during extreme weather.

Several energy companies say that, while frozen infrastructure and equipment malfunctions caused gas volumes to plummet, a lack of power also had a profound impact on supply. It’s a phenomenon that highlights just how interconnected -- and interdependent -- Texas’s energy network is.

In the Permian, most drillers target more valuable crude, with gas typically considered an unwanted byproduct. That wasn’t the case over days of forced power outages as nearly every source of fuel faltered in the unprecedented cold that slammed Texas.
SO THEY FLARE OFF THE GAS CAUSING GLOBAL WARMING

Even with its explorers focusing on crude, the state is the country’s biggest gas producer, and the fuel makes up just over half of the sources of its power generation mix.

A crucial part of the natural gas system was knocked out by the power outages: compressor stations that help keep gas flowing through pipelines.

As Ercot started asking utilities to prompt big customers to reduce consumption Sunday evening, those stations went down and the pressure across multiple gas pipelines started to drop, ultimately tripping some utilities off line because of lack of fuel.

That, in turn, led some areas of the Eagle Ford shale and the Permian to simply turn off gas production completely.

The situation got much worse in the early hours of Monday as demand continued to climb. Ercot simply didn’t have the power, and millions of homes fell into darkness.

Ercot executives have said the utilities ultimately determine which circuits to turn off during a rotating outage. The grid operator didn’t have information on power being cut to gas compressor stations, a spokeswoman said in an email.

At its peak, nearly 40% of U.S. oil output was shuttered due to the extreme cold and associated blackouts. Three-quarters of the U.S. frack fleet was lost this week, leaving 41 crews working to blast water, sand and chemicals underground to release trapped oil and gas, Matt Johnson, chief executive officer at Primary Vision Inc., said Friday.

Already, companies including Marathon Oil Corp. and Devon Energy Corp. have begun using restored power from local grids or generators to restart output, according to people familiar with the matter.

It’s not yet clear how long it will take to restore all the lost oil and gas supply, but oil traders and executives have said they hope most of the production lost will return within days as temperatures rise and power becomes available.


©2021 Bloomberg L.P.