news & announcements
Four environmental advocacy groups, gas company settle Clean Air Act lawsuit
The Environmental Integrity Project, Sierra Club, Environment Texas, and Texas Campaign for the Environment reached an agreement with gas plant owner, DCP Operating Company, after the company agreed to make improvements that reduce gas flaring.
Opinion: To cripple Putin, we must transition to renewable energy
Houston Chronicle Op-Ed: Russia’s war with Ukraine is the most recent example of global bad actors manipulating fossil fuel supplies, sources and prices to drive political tensions. A just and clean energy transition can’t wait.
Grid failure was a leadership failure
From our blog: Unfortunately, state officials still have not done all they should to make our grid reliable in the face of extreme weather events. Here are four things Texas officials should do to provide affordable, reliable power in the future.
Editorial: Resign, Craddick and Christian. Regulators misled about winter storm and failed to prevent another
Houston Chronicle: Christian and Craddick misled Texans about the causes of the deadly blackouts. They’ve failed to insist that gas suppliers make urgent investments to winterize facilities and equipment. As such, the commissioners have left us in danger of another grid disaster.
‘Significant interest’ leads TCEQ to schedule public meeting on Max Midstream’s air permit application
Victoria Advocate: If granted, the permit will allow Max Midstream to increase emissions of greenhouse gases measured in carbon dioxide equivalent by more than 100,000 tons per year.
Op-Ed: Texas Legislature, add energy efficiency to winter storm reform
Houston Chronicle Op-Ed: Despite the horror of Winter Storm Uri, when many Texans froze to death of hypothermia in their own homes, the Legislature has not taken a full court press approach to preventing disaster in the future.
‘Collective amnesia’: Texas politicians knowingly blew 3 chances to fix the failing power grid
Houston Chronicle: In the wake of each power failure, or near-failure, over the past decade, Texas lawmakers have repeatedly stood at a fork in the road. In each instance, lawmakers left the state’s lightly regulated energy markets alone, choosing cheap electricity over a more stable system.
The Corpus Christi Water Wars
Rolling Stone: A coalition of residents is trying to halt the region’s rapid industrial sprawl. The fight is now centered on the water supply for a massive new Exxon SABIC plastics plant in the drought-prone Texas city.
South Texas’ Indigenous tribes seek to block Moda Midstream’s terminal expansion
Corpus Christi Caller-Times: Moda Midstream’s plans to expand its crude oil export terminal in Ingleside could disturb a site sacred to the Indigenous Karankawa and other tribes in the Coastal Bend.