Climate change makes "ordinary living" a lot more risky

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This is mostly "old" writing that was in the draft folder, from 2022.

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Remember those Parkay Margarine ads? "You can't fool Mother Nature."

1.  Waterfront development.  The New York Times asks why are we still building on waterfronts, given sea level rise ("Why Is New York Still Building on the Waterfront?").  I have to admit I push waterfront based revitalization initiatives and don't always think about this.

The answer: people want to live on the water and it makes money.

Ricardo Arduengo/AFP via Getty Images. An aerial image shows the only access to the Matlacha neighborhood destroyed in the aftermath of Hurricane Ian in Fort Myers, Fla., on Sept. 30, 2022.

2.  Hurricane and Superstorm prone areas.  Florida.  The Times reports that many people can't afford to rebuild in the face of Hurricane Ian.  

And Florida actually improved its building codes, making them stronger in dealing with the effects of hurricanes, albeit that was when the state was run by Democrats ("South Florida, Tulsa, and Santa Fe as examples of regulatory success and Texas as an example of regulatory failure").  The problem is that as hurricanes become more powerful, those building codes need to be extended across the state.

-- To Save America's Coasts, Don't Always Rebuild Them"
-- "Rethinking Building in Storm-Prone Areas"
-- "Three Ways to Build Back Smarter After Hurricane Ian"
-- "Hurricane Ian's Financial Toll Threatens Florida's Real Estate Market"

3.  Casualty insurance.  Plus, most for profit insurers are leaving Florida, leaving the property insurance market to a state owned insurer of last resort, which can never be capitalized to the rate necessary to cover likely risks ("Will 2022 bring the collapse of the Florida homeowners insurance market?," Bankrate).

... I used to get angry when a person involved in selling insurance argued against creating historic districts in DC because the houses wouldn't be able to get insurance.  I would say, "what about Georgetown, Dupont Circle, Capitol Hill, etc.?"

But it would definitely be a lot higher if there were regular risks from weather. 

New York City.  The Times reports, "‘If We Wait, People Will Die’: New Yorkers Still Fend for Themselves in Storms," on how residents in Greater New York are taking steps to protect themselves in the face of severe rains, flooding, Superstorms, Hurricanes, etc. Especially as the effects are not limited to those abutting rivers and waterfronts.  From the article:

Whatever lessons had been learned after Sandy, which brutalized the area with storm surges, coastal flooding and widespread power outages, they didn’t prepare people for the storm risk that Hurricane Ida exposed: flash floods intensified by climate change, and aging sewage systems that cannot absorb storm water fast enough. In the aftermath of Ida, policymakers are still grappling with blind spots in their post-Sandy recovery plans, and homeowners and renters are wondering what, if anything, they can do to protect themselves from rapidly deteriorating conditions. ...

“Our structures are a lot more vulnerable than we thought,” said Eric Klinenberg, a sociology professor and the director of the Institute for Public Knowledge at New York University. “The challenge is more extensive than we recognized, it’s going to cost more than we budgeted, and it’s more urgent than we expected.”

In hindsight, Sandy stands as a book end — the beginning of an era of stronger and deadlier storms, capped a year ago by Ida, a Category 4 hurricane that managed to catch people unaware after making landfall days earlier in Louisiana.

 (We had to add a second sump pump to our DC house, after the terrible rain event a couple years ago, where as much as 5 inches of rain fell in less than an hour in Northwest DC and Montgomery County.  Our area is a little worse because there's an undergrounded creek which leads to a high water table.)

Also see "The Disaster to Come: New York’s Next Superstorm," NYT.

4.  Emergency management failures in Lee County, Florida led to more than 100 deaths ("Facing a Dire Storm Forecast in Florida, Officials Delayed Evacuation" and "Vulnerable and Trapped: A Look at Those Lost in Hurricane Ian," New York Times). "Thanks DeSantis."

Aerial view of the flooding of the Guadalupe River near Kerrville, Texas, on Saturday July 5th, 2025. Photo via U.S. Coast Guard/UPI

5.  Speaking of "if we wait, we will die," that's what happened in Texas earlier this year, with river flooding ("Why Texas Hill Country, where a devastating flood killed more than 135 people, is one of the deadliest places in the US for flash flooding," The Conversation, "24 dead in Texas floods and more than 20 children missing from a girls summer camp," AP).  

Despite past experience with bad flooding, local authorities punted on funding emergency warning systems, partly because they didn't want to spend the money, even with grants as part of the funding mix.  Emergency siren systems are more effective in the middle of the night when people are mostly asleep, and when the flooding happened ("Texas state leaders call for more sirens, flood gauges and mitigation efforts," Texas Tribune).

6.  Wildfire.  Oregonians aren't happy about having to cover the cost of wildfire risk ("Oregon tried to inform residents about wildfire risk. The backlash was explosive," Grist Magazine). From the article:

Last summer, after a series of devastating wildfires, the Oregon state legislature passed a sweeping bipartisan bill to protect against future blazes. The law unlocked money to develop new building codes in vulnerable areas and help residents who wanted to fireproof their homes. It reached the governor’s desk with support from Portland-area Democrats and rural Republicans alike.

Before state officials could implement the new regulations, though, they needed to figure out which areas faced the greatest fire danger. For this reason, the bill required the state forestry department to create a comprehensive wildfire risk map within a year, assigning a risk score to every household in the state. The forestry department finished the map right on time in June. It then mailed a letter to every homeowner who was in a high-risk zone, alerting them that new regulations would be coming soon.

The first version of the Oregon Wildfire Risk Explorer map, published earlier this year. The state retracted the map after public outcry. Oregon Wildfire Risk Explorer

This seemingly anodyne mapping measure produced a frenzy of backlash from every corner of the state. Hundreds of residents showed up at public meetings to berate state officials for designating their homes high risk, and hundreds more wrote in to contest their risk status. Many argued that the state was going to make their insurance more expensive and their property less valuable.

The same Republican lawmakers who had supported the wildfire bill then pounced on the map as an example of state overreach. In early August, the state caved and withdrew the map, vowing to spend another year gathering feedback before releasing a final version. In a tight race for state governor that will be decided next week, the Democratic candidate has distanced herself from the old version of the risk assessment, saying the revision “must address concerns from property owners.”

Like covid, fire pretty much ignores politics.

In Washington State, given federal cutbacks to the US Forest Service and Federal Emergency Management Administration, more wildfires are expected ("WA’s wildfire future: More volatile forests amid slashed budgets," Seattle Times). 

In 2019, Texas paid for billboards in California making fun of electricity shortages in the summer.

7.  Electricity.  With extreme cold and extreme heat, electricity demands are now high throughout the year, rather than peaking and dropping, with demand approaching the edge of capacity.

Supply failures are increasingly likely because of increased demand by Internet data centers ("AI Data Centers Are Sending Power Bills Soaring," Bloomberg, "Big Tech’s A.I. Data Centers Are Driving Up Electricity Bills for Everyone," New York Times, blog entry, "Data centers").

Hundreds of people died in Texas in 2021 because of utility failures in winter ("Talk and lying versus doing: The electricity crisis in Texas is produced by state regulatory failure").  And it turned out that when electricity fails, so do water systems, furthering the negative impacts of the failures.

Drought and power generation.  Note that in the West, where a majority of federal dams generating electricity are located, drought is making it tougher for the dams to be able to generate electricity in the face of water levels dropping below water entranceways for the generating systems ("Lake Powell forecasts show hydropower generation is at risk next year as water levels drop," Colorado Sun).

8.  Extreme heat and deaths.  Communities in hot regions are experiencing a lot more heat-related deaths in the summer, as a result of extreme temperatures having disproportionate effects on those of lesser means. 

More cities are appointing "chief heat officers" to plan for and address the effects ("Planning for heat/climate change | Public health" and "Climate change is already here in many US communities | "Heat Officers" versus Climate Change Officers").

Columbia South Carolina has a pilot program measuring heat islands ("Scientists look for help to exactly measure Columbia’s heat," AP).

9.  Flooding and impact on stormwater and water treatment infrastructure.  Rain events are a lot stronger than they were when most communities built their stormwater capture infrastructure.  Now it is common for the piping to be overwhelmed during storms.  

In 2022, rain-related flooding overwhelmed the water treatment infrastructure in Jackson, Mississippi ("EPA determines water in Jackson, Mississippi, is safe to drink two months after treatment plant failure," CNN), calling attention to how racism leads to underfunding of urban needs, but also the reality that there are billions of dollars in unfunded needs for improvements to existing sewer, stormwater, and water treatment infrastructure.

A man rides his motorcycle through a flooded street in the Melrose Park neighborhood in Fort Lauderdale on Friday. (Carline Jean/South Florida Sun Sentinel)

Last Friday, the Fort Lauderdale Sun-Sentinel reported on high-tide induced flooding there ("Heavy rain during high tide swamps Broward roads ahead of weekend cold front").

Residents on the west side of Salt Lake City were flooded out a couple weeks ago, after the strongest rain event in 120 years--rain also made entry into the foundation wall of our bedroom ("The Oct. 4 rainstorm is just one example of the severe weather in our future," Salt Lake Tribune, "Salt Lake City mayor issues emergency declaration in response to weekend flooding," KSL-TV).

People clean up on Sunday, after Saturday’s historic rain caused significant flooding in a Rose Park neighborhood. Salt Lake City Mayor Erin Mendenhall declared a state of emergency over the flooding late Monday. Wesley Barton, KSL-TV

10. Systems of local government finance, created when the US was growing, are hard pressed to meet demands for new infrastructure needs induced by climate change ("The real lesson from Flint is about municipal finance," 2016).

Public Power week: October 5-11 | Let's think more broadly about utility issues

This week is Public Power Week, calling attention to public power producers (federal dams) and local utilities in electricity (and sometimes gas) that are owned by the local government.  The webpage calls these "community owned utilities."  

-- promotional resources

The American Public Power Association doesn't represent public water utilities (although some local governments are exploring the possibility of harnessing energy from temperature-controlled water streams).

October is also National Energy Awareness Month ("October is National Energy Awareness Month," 2021).

Roots in the rural electrification movement.  Public power organizations grew out of the Rural Electrification movement in the 1930s.  

Since outside of center cities it was rural, some public power utilities exist on the outskirts of cities, like the Southern Maryland Electric Cooperative in Suburban Maryland.  

The ones, like SMEC, that buy electricity from traditional sources just like "investor owned" utilities, don't have a lot of pricing discount compared to those based on hydroelectric power sources.

Community power boards.  Interestingly, with the TVA, many of the communities have community owned utilities, called Electric Power Boards, although TVA like other federal dams, sell power to both for profit and non profit utilities.

Some, like the EPB in Chattanooga, sell cable and Internet services--they did this because they needed an Internet backbone to run their system of smart meters, and made it more robust and a separate service for their customers.  It's an economic development tool ("Chattanooga, Tenn., Makes Economic Case for Municipal Broadband," Government Technology, "The Infrastructure Success Story in Chattanooga," American Prospect) as well.

Drought and power generation.  Note that in the West, where a majority of federal dams generating electricity are located, drought is making it tougher for the dams to be able to generate electricity in the face of water levels dropping below water entranceways for the generating systems ("Lake Powell forecasts show hydropower generation is at risk next year as water levels drop," Colorado Sun).

Local governments want to buy out investor owned utilities.  Some municipalities like Ann Arbor ("Ann Arbor residents plan ballot initiative to dump DTE and begin shifting city toward public power," Michigan Advance), or previously Montgomery County explore(d) taking over electricity services but the cost of buying out the utility is too high.  

-- "Publicly-owned utilities as a way to move sustainable energy policy and practice forward + better operation," 2020

Already in Ann Arbor, the city "sustainable energy utility"--other cities have them too, like DC, is working to build a parallel system to DTE ("Ann Arbor’s sustainable energy utility aims to build the electric power grid of the future − alongside the old one," The Conversation).

The city, with voters’ strong support, is launching its own sustainable energy utility. This new utility won’t replace DTE Energy, the local investor-owned power company, or even use DTE’s wires.

Instead, Ann Arbor will slowly build out a whole new modern power system, starting with installing rooftop solar and battery storage and reducing energy usage in individual homes and businesses whose owners opt in. The city then plans to expand by connecting homes and neighborhoods into microgrids and by using community solar and networked geothermal to allow broader access to clean energy.

When their multi-state utility went bankrupt, the City of Portland tried to buy the city electric utility infrastructure but were denied by the Bankruptcy Court.

LA has a municipal power authority, while San Diego has the capability to do it, but keeps selling franchise rights to San Diego Gas & Electric.  While not cheap either, LA's electricity costs are significantly less than SDGE.

Should California buy PGE.  Because of the wildfire issue, it's even been suggested that the State of California should buy and operate Pacific Gas & Electric, to get them focused on service, and hardening, not just generating profits ("Let’s end the devastation by making PG&E public," San Francisco Chronicle).  Regardless, the Wall Street Journal, "Here are 5 fixes for PG&E," suggests fixes:

1. Stop running equipment til it breaks [and only then replacing it].
2. Use predictive tools to assess risk.
3. Regulate utility safety separate from rates.
4. Manage forests more aggressively.
5. Threaten PG&E's monopoly franchise.

Utility costs are rising.  While not directly a part of the Public Power Week promotion, it should be part of National Energy Awareness Month and provides an interesting opportunity to think about that state of utility costs--electricity and gas--in the US.  Because most markets are profit driven and prices are based on international and national pricing systems, prices are going up.

Over the past 15 years, many companies switched from coal to natural gas because prices were cheaper.  This has combined with increased solar and wind energy to keep prices down, until recently.

But now that international systems for selling and delivering natural gas have been developed, US electricity costs are trending higher, because utilities have many more competitors ("Fracking didn't drive down PA energy bills. What happened?," Spotlight PA).

The Trump Administration is addicted to fossil fuels.  One reason is because the Trump Administration is deliberately de-supporting cheaper forms of electricity generated by solar and wind power ("Trump’s hatred for renewables means the US is falling behind the rest of the world," Guardian, "Puerto Rico’s rooftop solar boom is strengthening grid resilience — why is a federal board trying to stop it?," UtilityDive, "New Report Examines Fossil Fuel Ties of Dozens of Trump Administration Hires," Inside Climate News, "The Trump administration's war on wind & renewable energy," KALW/NPR).

It's also de-funding a wide range of clean energy programs ("US green energy forecast cut by half under Trump despite global surge in solar and win" Financial Times).  From the article:

The IEA said a major factor in the US downgrade was President Trump’s One Big Beautiful Bill Act, which has sped up the end of tax credits for green developments. Permits for wind and solar projects on federal land or waters have also been suspended.

“With the pushing forward of deadlines, renewable capacity additions are now projected to peak in 2027, then decline in 2028 and remain stable through 2030,” the IEA said. 

Doubling back on "conservative fuels/a conservative economy" [I read about this idea recently but I can't find the citation--that for example fossil fuels are conservative and renewable energy sources progressive) reduces US economic competitiveness and resiliency.

Focusing on coal, to some extent oil, and the revived interest in nuclear power ("The New Nuclear Age: Why the World Is Rethinking Atomic Power," Goldman Sachs, "Trump dreams of nuclear as he axes grid projects," Politico) will only increase rates. 

Conservative state action against "progressive power" is an increasing problem as well ("Blaming the Wind for the Mess in Texas Is Painfully Absurd," New Yorker, "With Federal Support for Wind and Solar Waning, States Are Trying to Push Policy Through on Their Own," Inside Climate News

Other issues are:

• strengthening the transmission grid for more resilience in the face of more violent weather ("Building a more climate resistant grid," NRDC, "Three Ways to Prevent Our Next Massive Power Failure," Mother Jones).
• the increased demand for electricity from electric vehicles, although there is the counter-argument that EVs can serve as "batteries" to provide back up power ("The Truth About Electric Vehicles and the Grid: Strengthening—Not Straining—Our Energy Future," NRDC).
• the increased demand for electricity from data centers and AI ("Data centers," 2025),
• that regulatory cost systems for electricity infrastructure push a lot of the cost of servicing data centers on residences ("AI Data Centers Are Sending Power Bills Soaring," Bloomberg, "Big Tech’s A.I. Data Centers Are Driving Up Electricity Bills for Everyone," New York Times).
• continued public opposition to large scale renewable energy projects "in their backyard" ("Nearly all 50 states face local opposition to renewable projects, report finds," Factor This).
• weatherization and electrification household improvement programs to reduce energy demand ("Local neighborhood stabilization programs: Part 5 | Adding energy conservation programs, with the PUSH Buffalo Green Development Zone as a model," 2021). 

Government failure in Texas: electricity generation in extreme cold weather (reprint)

The Guardian has a story, "Texans brace for freezing weather in hopes storm won’t be repeat of 2021," about how the forecasted severe cold weather potentially threatens electricity generation in Texas, because the state hasn't moved that quickly to add resilience to their system, despite hundreds dying and billions of dollars of damage just last year.

They just don't seem to have a bias for action.  

Similarly, Republicans in Florida are dealing with the insurance repercussions of extreme weather in Florida, because most property casualty firms are abandoning the state, leaving the market to the state captive insurance firm, which is underfunded ("Why Republicans are coughing up billions of dollars to save Florida’s insurance market," Grist).  From the article:

In the three months since Hurricane Ian struck Florida, the state’s fragile property insurance market has been teetering on the brink of collapse. The historic storm caused over $50 billion in damage, more than any disaster in U.S. history other than Hurricane Katrina. It also dealt a body blow to an industry that was already struggling to stay standing: Several insurance companies had already collapsed this year even before the hurricane, and major funders are now poised to abandon those that remain.

In recognition of this crisis, Florida Governor Ron DeSantis convened the state’s Republican-controlled legislature last week for a special session devoted to stabilizing the insurance market. In a matter of days, lawmakers passed a package of bills aimed at doing so. The package includes bills that will cut down on litigation and fraudulent claims that raise costs for insurers, but it also provides insurance companies with a $1 billion public subsidy to help them stay afloat next year. That’s on top of another $2 billion the legislature rolled out earlier this year.

I am naive in believing that acting in advance of the potential for failure is better than acting afterwards.

This is a reprint from last year:

Annual household energy resilience planning: a new imperative?

For the past 10+ years, in December, I usually publish an entry on winter weather and "maintenance of way" for pedestrians, bicyclists, and transit, as most snow clearance planning and practice prioritizes motor vehicles.

-- "Snow, winter and the Sustainable Mobility City," 2019 (includes links to many previous entries)

While there is a fair amount of writing about how many households are installing generators in places where the electricity system is likely to fail, I haven't been in a situation, either in DC or Salt Lake, where utility interruption is a frequent occurrence, therefore the cost isn't justified.

But we all know what happened in Texas last February, a record cold snap, and the state's regulatory regime's failure to require winter hardening for critical supply and transmission infrastructure, in particular natural gas, led to massive failures across the state, blackouts, water system failure, and many hundreds of deaths.

-- "Talk and lying versus doing: The electricity crisis in Texas is produced by state regulatory failure"
-- Cold wave: the Texas power debacle disproportionately impacts the less well off"
-- "It's not rocket science: 10 ways to fix the Texas power grid, according to experts (From the Houston Chronicle)"
-- "October is National Energy Awareness Month"

In response, mostly the State of Texas has done very little to mandate system hardening, even though the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission once again has recommended that they do so, just as they did after a similar but less deadly event in 2011 ("Feds call for more regulation of Texas power grid, natural gas industry," Austin American-Statesman).

So what's up for Texans this winter?

The Dallas Morning News reports ("ERCOT report says Texans face steep shortfalls in power capacity if extreme event hits this winter") that the state energy coordination ERCOT, is warning Texas residents that the state is still vulnerable to catastrophic utility interruptions, if this winter is particularly cold.

Texas’ grid operator on Friday released its predictions for peak electricity use in Texas for this winter that showed steep shortfalls in power capacity in an extreme event, despite not accounting for February’s deadly freeze. 

ERCOT’s power demand projection known as the Seasonal Assessment of Resource Adequacy was already facing criticism for using data that did not account for climate change and did not take into account weather and outage data from February’s deadly winter storm. 

The main failure of the report, according to Texas A&M University professor Andrew Dessler, is that the Electric Reliability Council of Texas based projections of extreme demand on the 2011 winter event that left wide swaths of North Texas without power. 

Dessler, an atmospheric sciences professor, said the report shows that Texans have around a one-in-10 chance of seeing weather-related power outages this winter. “One in 10 years seems to me to be not a great worst-case scenario,” Dessler said. “That means that there’s a 10% chance we’re going to do worse than that.”

It's definitely criminal that the State Legislature, Governor, and regulatory authorities have basically done nothing in response to February's crisis, which also affected states outside of Texas, because they were dependent on natural gas supplies from Texas.

This means that residents that can afford it are likely to install generators ("Facing power grid anxiety, Texans are buying generators and bracing for blackouts," San Antonio Report), install converters if they have solar power systems, and buy vehicles, like the Ford F-150 truck, which if you buy the special electricity generation package can power their houses in case the utility distribution system fails, although it still needs gasoline ("Texas man uses new 2021 Ford F-150 to heat home, power appliances during blackout," Detroit Free Press).

But what about the people without the means to protect themselves by buying large stocks of water and generators?

And in any case, if water systems fail because of power interruptions, people will have to store large supplies of water as well.

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States that frequently experience winter cold have long since weatherized their electricity generation systems.  It's the southern states, that before climate change became as serious as it has didn't worry much about "cold snaps," that haven't done this.  It's particularly important in Texas, since it is such a large energy producer.  When systems fail there, they don't just effect Texas, but all the other states that rely on Texas energy production.

 

Privatization of municipal utility systems (water mostly)

Britain has created big problems by privatizing its water and sewage systems, abetted by minimal regulation and even more minimal fines which seem to have zero punitive power in getting the companies to follow the law.  

Since privatization, more than half the net profit has been returned as dividends to the private owners, while investment in infrastructure languishes ("Water privatization: a dirty story about profit," "Watery grave," and "Water firms exist to sustain life. They should answer to citizens, not shareholders," Guardian).

In response to the lead poisoning in the water system of Flint, Michigan, resulting from the city--in bankruptcy then and operated by a state entity--switching from "Detroit" water to local water but with a water treatment system unable to provide the right kind of water treatment--I wrote that Flint's real problem was the system of municipal finance in the US.

--  "The real lesson from Flint Michigan is about municipal finance," 2016

That system was created when the US was growing and industry was thriving, and was dependent on commercial and residential property taxes, and ever rising property values.  

Flint's economy was based on the success of General Motors manufacturing and when the company declined, it cratered local finances and property values--GM has less than 10% of the employees in Flint that it did at its peak.  It's the equivalent of a natural disaster, and very little can be done when 50%-75% of your local tax revenues disappear overnight.

Similar situations beset other communities, often smaller ones, as they face the costs of modernizing and rehabilitating infrastructure--roads, water systems, bridges, streetlights, buildings--that was constructed 50-75 years ago, and now has to be rebuilt, and the community's taxing capacity is no longer commensurate with the need.

For example, I've written about how some communities are selling their bridges to private equity concerns, and allowing the bridges to be tolled, because they can't afford to fix the bridges ("The company buying two Bay City bridges wants to connect with the community," Second Wave Media).

Similarly, water systems owned by local governments are being privatized because they can't keep up with the cost of modernization and new and more stringent environmental regulation.

Towamencin Township residents organize a petition drive to create a November ballot measure to change the township's charter in response to the town's decision to sell its public sewer system for $115.3 million to NextEra Water, a private Florida company. Photo: Charles Fox, Philadelphia Inquirer.

One of the latest examples is Towamencin Township, Pennsylvania, where they have the water treatment system out for bid, and they received a larger than normal bid from a company, NextEra Systems, that is looking to create a business line in water systems ("A Florida company’s $115 million sewer bid stuns a suburban Philly town," Philadelphia Inquirer). For obvious reasons, they accepted that bid.

They bid extranormally high, not on economic considerations, as a way to create a node for further operations.

This is comparable to what rail firms like Keolis did at the start of operations in the US.  They outbid Amtrak to operate commuter rail systems, because they were focused on building their business, not having to run the systems profitably.

Definitely the sales will result in higher bills.  Even though higher bills are inevitable because of the infrastructure needs.  But there will still be a profit percentage, which will come out of the pockets of "customers" where if the system remained owned by the local government, that wouldn't have to happen.

The solution is to have a huge federal infrastructure bank to loan local governments money to deal with infrastructure costs.  But that won't be happening any time soon.

Fortunately, as weak as it can be (e.g. Flint, King George's County, Virginia, etc.) the regulatory system in the US is better than the UK, and the EPA is funded much better, although its ability to regulate is being constrained by the conservative Supreme Court ("The Supreme Court curbed EPA’s power to regulate carbon emissions from power plants. What comes next?," Harvard School of Public Health; "Supreme Court uses 'shadow docket' to revive Trump EPA clean water rule," Reuters), and fines are so much higher in the US, that privatized water utilities are less likely to go rogue the way they do in the UK. 

From "Water firms exist to sustain life. They should answer to citizens, not shareholders":

Add in the failures of privatisation dramatised by excessive water leakages and raw sewage blighting many beaches and rivers, an impossibly overstretched NHS, and workers being badged as irresponsible for merely trying to resist dramatic cuts in their real incomes. All this has crystallised how the whole Thatcherite edifice of economic and social policy, decaying for years, is suddenly and obviously redundant. ...

A centrepiece of Thatcherism – that privatisation plus “light touch” regulation could be applied in any utility – is under siege as never before. Camilla Cavendish, head of the No 10 policy unit under David Cameron, catches the moment when she writes in the Financial Times that water privatisation as designed has failed. What matters for utilities is that they deliver the public interest of cost effectiveness, resilience, reliability and service. That cannot be said today of the universe of energy and water companies. ...

There is little evidence that laying out up to £200bn to take over every utility will bring the universal benefits needed; moreover, this is cash that could be better deployed elsewhere – on levelling up and the drive to net zero.

The better option is more forensic. Look more closely and there is an intriguing spectrum of performance. The government’s 2021 environmental evaluation of nine English water companies shows, miserably, that six receive either one or two stars. (Southern and South West, beach polluters-in-chief, are the one-star performers.) But there are three companies – Northumbrian Water, Severn Trent and United Utilities – that all earn the maximum four stars. What is needed is a regulatory, licensing and governance regime that fosters many more top-star performers, with public ownership the last resort option for the one-stars.

Importantly, the top performers all place social purpose at the heart of their business. All closely engage customers in their decision-making, variants of how the publicly owned Scottish Water, another high performer, has established an independent customer group (ICG) as a permanent independent watchdog that it closely consults and informs. This should not be the preserve of the best. Every water company should embrace a public benefit requirement along with an ICG.

Note that US municipal water systems do tend to be under-regulated too, and like Scottish Water, should have independent customer groups and adequate regulation.

 

Who to contact tags on poles and other utility infrastructure in the public space

 

Asset tag with information on who to contact on a Verizon Wireless pole, 2700 South, Salt Lake City.

A few months ago I got into a comment thread argument on a Washington Post article, about a situation in Silver Spring in addressing a problem with equipment hanging off dangerously from a pole ("When it comes to utility wires and boxes, companies pass the buck").

Generally, poles are owned by the local electric utility or maybe the phone company, and they rent space on them to other providers to install equipment.  

Usually there isn't information on the pole generally, or on the specific pieces of equipment for who to contact if there is a problem.

I made the point that the pole and all the equipment on it should have contact information (asset tags), so any problems could be addressed, and that the article did us a disservice by not addressing the overarching problem of lack of such identification.

People commented that wasn't the point, etc., that the issue was these specific people and their problem with this particular pole.

One of my lines is that there is a fine line between whining and critical analysis.  For example, entries at Greater Greater Washington are more often about whining--why doesn't this work?--without offering deeper analysis.

While I think it's fine to be good at identifying a problem without necessarily being good at identifying solutions, websites and newspaper columnists I hold to a higher standard. I stopped reading GGW years ago, because I just felt for the time spent, I could get more value reading other sources.

Public Service Commissions should be petitioned to make this a requirement.

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Ironically, this is an issue in the park for which I am on the board.  There are no signs posted on who to contact if there is a problem.  Anywhere.  For lost and found, for anything.  This creates a fair amount of problems in my opinion, including giving a sense that there aren't "eyes on the street," which helps to foster vandalism in the restrooms.

Oil dependence | The US as a Petro-state and gasoholic | and war

 

People crowding a train platform in Kharkiv, Ukraine

Twitter photo: Nexta_TV

The Business Week article "The Petro States of America" dating to the Obama Administration made the point that the US is a petro state too, and it has built an economy dependent on oil, especially when it comes to transportation.  More than 90% of all trips are made by car.  

The development of hydraulic fracking in oil and gas production made the US one of the world's top producers, after production had been in decline.  But in response, Saudi Arabia and Russia lowered the price of oil to drive US fracking firms out of business, because they have relatively high production costs per barrel.  So US production has dropped.

Norway shows a different way.  By contrast, Norway, in the face of new riches from oil and gas production in the North Sea, maintained its hydroelectric-based energy economy, and instead of using royalties and other revenues to lower taxes (that's what Britain did) it invested the receipts in a sovereign wealth fund.   Although the US-based Tax Foundation, an advocate for low taxes, doesn't like it ("Norway’s Addiction to Taxes on Oil").

Norway's state-owned "gasoline" brand, Statoil, is installing EV charging points at their stations.

Again, because of  hydroelectricity, Norway is an early leader in the development of electric vehicles ("Why Norway Leads In EVs—And The Role Played By Cheap Renewable Electricity," Forbes, "Environment-friendly mobility: Norway’s high-voltage EV push offers a template for India," Indian Express).

Netherlands and Denmark shift to sustainable mobility.  Similarly, the Netherlands and Denmark, in response to the Oil Crisis of 1973, recognized that they put their countries at risk by shifting to a mobility paradigm dependent on cars and gasoline.  So they instead prioritized transit, biking, and walking, and the necessary land use, transportation and energy policies to shift the paradigm.  

For example, excise taxes on gasoline and automobile purchases are high, and significant monies are invested in transit and biking biking infrastructure.

Separately, Germany is a car manufacturer, but not an oil producer.  Regardless of the importance of car manufacturing to its economy, it has never deemphasized the primacy of transit (complemented by walking, and later biking) as the optimal mode for urban mobility.  (By contrast, the US has a more homogeneous approach to mobility, abandoning transit in favor of the car, when at one time the US had the densest transit network in the world.)

A gasoline-dependent economy is susceptible to disruptions in supply.  In the US, the recent cyberattack on a gasoline pipeline ("Automobility dependence and how the Colonial Pipeline gasoline transportation failure affects gasoline supplies on the Atlantic Coast") and disruptions in gasoline supply due to weather events.

For example, as a result of Superstorm Sandy, gasoline supplies were restricted and many states declared states of emergency, not just because of disaster damage from the storm, but because of reduced access to gasoline ("After Sandy, New York will hold strategic gasoline reserves," Washington Post, "After Sandy, gas lines stretch for miles," CNN). 

A Shell station without gasoline in 1973.

A gasoline-dependent economy is susceptible to changes in world conditions.   Even though the US is one of the largest producers of oil, it is one of the largest consumers of oil too, and because oil is an international commodity, the price for oil is not set based on local production.

If it were, gas would be cheap in Salt Lake City because there are five refineries in and around the city, and it is priced the same as everywhere else.  Instead, oil is priced globally, based on international demand and perceptions of future supply and risks.

In response to the Ukraine War, gasoline prices in Downtown Salt Lake City have risen more than $1 per gallon in less than one week.  Prices are significantly higher in California.  

And governors and US Senators are calling for temporary elimination of gasoline excise taxes to reduce prices slightly ("A pair of Senate Democrats want to suspend the federal gas tax through the end of 2022," Yahoo News, "Push to Pause Gas Taxes Increases as Prices Surge Amid Ukraine Conflict," Newsweek).

Even though the US was devastated at the time by the 1970s oil crisis, which crushed US automobile manufacturers, whose less efficient cars were supplanted by foreign manufacturers, for the most part the land use and transportation planning paradigm dependent on the automobile and gasoline did not change.

The major policy change was putting energy efficiency requirements for higher miles per gallon for car production, measured against an automaker's entire fleet of vehicles ("CAFE Requirements," NAS).  

But the business model for US manufacturers doesn't favor the production of small cars, and over time, foreign manufacturers dominated the market for cars while US manufacturers shifted to SUVs and trucks.

Demand for oil and natural gas empowers producing countries: Resource Curse, Pollution Paradox.  And because most countries are consumers not producers of oil, this gives disproportionate power to renegade countries like Russia and Saudi Arabia, who end up with the double whammy of the "resource curse" and the "pollution paradox."  

The resource curse was coined to describe countries dominated by extractive industries and how few of the financial benefits from oil and mineral production end up fostering positive social and economic development in those countries, and the political structure is often authoritarian.

The pollution paradox, coined by Guardian columnist George Monbiot, describes how companies and people (like the Koch family of Kansas) all in on resources like oil and gas do everything in their power to prevent a switch to more sustainable methods of energy production or alternatives to the automobile.  

And they are super motivated, whereas advocates for change don't have the same level of self interest, and their efforts pale by comparison to the pollution caucus.  

For example, Koch interests fund organizations focused on supporting tax benefits for oil production, developing anti-regulatory state legislation, and opponents to transit and solar energy ("Charles Koch Personally Founded a Group Protecting Oil Industry Handouts," The Nation).

Energy dependence enables war: The Ukraine.  Other countries dependence on Russian oil and gas, especially European countries, is at the heart of Putin's willingness to go to war in the Ukraine.  He figured that Europe would back off because they need his oil and especially natural gas, which is the primary heating source across Europe.

Many US states show the effects of the Resource Curse and the Pollution Paradox.   In the US, many of the states that are large producers of oil and gas, California being a major exception, tend to have politics as fouled as countries like Russia and Saudi Arabia.  They too are victims of the double whammy of the resource curse and the pollution paradox.

For example, Texas has refused to winterize its natural gas production, and blamed last year's disruptions on renewable energy, even though the failures were largely due to natural gas production going off line ("Cold wave: the Texas power debacle disproportionately impacts the less well off," "Texas largely relies on natural gas for power. It wasn’t ready for the extreme cold," Texas Tribune, "One Year Later: The Texas Freeze Revealed a Fragile Energy System and Inspired Lasting Misinformation," Inside Climate News).  

And because natural gas for Texas fuels the energy grid across the midwest, consumers in many states faced massive price increases and problems because of the disruption ("Minnesota gasps at the financial damage it faces from the Texas freeze," Washington Post).  Despite last year's debacle, which killed hundreds, the state is still delaying winterization.

Electric vehicles.  At the same time, shifting to electricity powered automobiles, in combination with a rise in the utilization of wind and solar energy, reduces demand for oil and dependence on other countries for supplies.  

While the total costs for EV power in the US may be higher than gasoline when you figure in the costs of adding infrastructure, that's only true when gasoline is relatively cheap.  If priced at European levels, $7 per gallon or more, EVs are cheaper.  

Fear of EVs is another reason Saudi Arabia aimed to keep oil prices lower.  But Russia has complicated this immeasurably, by invading Ukraine.  

US bans Russian Oil/Could it be a way to foster a shift to green energy?  The US has just banned the purchase of Russian oil--not a particularly large amount, but the heavier oil helps East Coast refineries run more efficiently, and there is talk that the US should accompany the ban with a greater focus on green energy production ("What Does the Russian Oil Ban Mean for the Clean Energy Transition?," Inside Climate News).

Automobile dependence is still an economic vulnerability.   But the cost of creating a national electric charging infrastructure is high, may be less environmental beneficial without the shift to renewable energy sources, and sustainable mobility has a variety of benefits in terms of health, costs, land consumption, environment, etc., that will still be negative even with an EV centric automobile dependent land use and transportation planning paradigm.

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Iraq War/Middle East destabilization.  After 9/11 there were Internet screeds about how the automobile manufacturers weren't donating enough.  I scoffed.  I said it was automobile dependence that created the stage for 9/11.  

As long as the US saw the necessity of protecting Middle Eastern oil supplies, strife would obtain as the resource curse meant the US supported authoritarian rulers, which in some cases ended up with them being deposed.

Invading Iraq only destabilized the Mideast further.  And in turn, outmigration spurred by the war and other strife destabilized Europe and in some respects, contributed to Brexit, because of the rise in the fear of the negative impacts of immigration, especially radicalized Islamists.

Special assessment districts for undergrounding utilities

 Over the years I've mentioned the issue of above ground utility lines in cities, which can be ugly and are subject to failure during storms.  DC is unusual in that above ground lines are banned in the core city (called the L'Enfant City) with an exception for streetcar wires.

12th Street NE, Brookland.  Photo: LoopNet.

When in 2007, I worked as a Main Street commercial district revitalization program manager in the Brookland neighborhood--located in DC's outer city, originally "Washington County", residents there wanted the lines undergrounded on 12th Street, the major commercial street of the neighborhood.

But they were wacked in the way they went about it.  Rather than working with area planning efforts by the city planning office and transportation agency, they argued with them, and the city wasn't interested in undergrounding, because the local utility, Pepco, quoted such high rates (10x the rate of other cities).  

Ideally a utility wire underground program would also have been extended to other major streets in the neighborhood like Monroe Street (pictured), Michigan Avenue, 4th Street, etc.  Photo: Elvert Barnes.

IN FACT, after the actual streetscape construction project was underway, then some litigious residents sued the city over this.  

But if they started out with an attitude focused on working together, focused on solutions, maybe change could have been effected ("Moving towards an underground utility line infrastructure in DC," 2008)

Newport Beach, California has special assessment districts for utility undergrounding.  I just found out that in 2016, Newport Beach passed legislation allowing for the creation of Utility Underground Assessment Districts, so that residents can pay off over time the high cost of burying the lines and re-connecting buildings to the grid from overground to underground ("Underground utility lines in Newport Beach to go to vote," Orange County Register).

Currently, at least six neighborhoods in the city are in the process of burying utility lines, using this method to ease the upfront cost.  Although not without difficulties ("Higher-than-expected bids prolong process of putting Newport utility lines underground," Daily Pilot).

Assessment districts.  

-- "Revisiting creating Public Improvement Districts in transit station catchment areas," 2020,  recommends creating PIDs in association with transit station catchment areas.  In DC, the Brookland commercial district is in the catchment area of the Brookland Metrorail Station

-- "Basic planning building blocks for urban commercial district revitalization programs that most cities haven't packaged: Part 1 | The first six". 2020.  Item #6 discusses "regularized funding" for improvements and discusses special assessment districts such as Business Improvement Districts (which San Diego also uses to fund Main Street programs), San Francisco's Green Benefits District, etc.  

-- "Public improvement fees as sales tax add-ons," 2016.  Colorado and other states have sales tax funded revenue streams for public improvements.

Conclusion.  Had Brookland residents focused on the outcome, getting undergrounded utility lines, instead of being obstreperous, maybe this method could have been adopted to facilitate the project.  Instead, they lost the opportunity for improvement for at least a generation.

Likely, the program in Newport Beach has influenced other Orange County communities, as Dana Point is considering launching a similar program ("Dana Point will consider undergrounding utility lines to improve views and safety," Orange County Register).  The city, at the instigation of residents, is looking into a very ambitious undergrounding program.  Probably, they'll end up with a less ambitious program, more like that of Newport Beach, where residents willing to make the change, agree to special assessments.

===

Also see "Paradise Valley Views Free of Utility Poles," Newport This Week, about a project in Greater Newport, Rhode Island where utility wires were undergrounded to preserve viewshed qualities.  There are nice before and after photos.

Annual household energy resilience planning: a new imperative?

 For the past 10+ years, in December, I usually publish an entry on winter weather and "maintenance of way" for pedestrians, bicyclists, and transit, as most snow clearance planning and practice prioritizes motor vehicles.

-- "Snow, winter and the Sustainable Mobility City," 2019 (includes links to many previous entries)

While there is a fair amount of writing about how many households are installing generators in places where the electricity system is likely to fail, I haven't been in a situation, either in DC or Salt Lake, where utility interruption is a frequent occurrence, therefore the cost isn't justified.

But we all know what happened in Texas last February, a record cold snap, and the state's regulatory regime's failure to require winter hardening for critical supply and transmission infrastructure, in particular natural gas, led to massive failures across the state, blackouts, water system failure, and many hundreds of deaths.

-- "Talk and lying versus doing: The electricity crisis in Texas is produced by state regulatory failure"
-- Cold wave: the Texas power debacle disproportionately impacts the less well off"
-- "It's not rocket science: 10 ways to fix the Texas power grid, according to experts (From the Houston Chronicle)"
-- "October is National Energy Awareness Month"

In response, mostly the State of Texas has done very little to mandate system hardening, even though the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission once again has recommended that they do so, just as they did after a similar but less deadly event in 2011 ("Feds call for more regulation of Texas power grid, natural gas industry," Austin American-Statesman).

So what's up for Texans this winter?

The Dallas Morning News reports ("ERCOT report says Texans face steep shortfalls in power capacity if extreme event hits this winter") that the state energy coordination ERCOT, is warning Texas residents that the state is still vulnerable to catastrophic utility interruptions, if this winter is particularly cold.

Texas’ grid operator on Friday released its predictions for peak electricity use in Texas for this winter that showed steep shortfalls in power capacity in an extreme event, despite not accounting for February’s deadly freeze. 

ERCOT’s power demand projection known as the Seasonal Assessment of Resource Adequacy was already facing criticism for using data that did not account for climate change and did not take into account weather and outage data from February’s deadly winter storm. 

The main failure of the report, according to Texas A&M University professor Andrew Dessler, is that the Electric Reliability Council of Texas based projections of extreme demand on the 2011 winter event that left wide swaths of North Texas without power. 

Dessler, an atmospheric sciences professor, said the report shows that Texans have around a one-in-10 chance of seeing weather-related power outages this winter. “One in 10 years seems to me to be not a great worst-case scenario,” Dessler said. “That means that there’s a 10% chance we’re going to do worse than that.”

It's definitely criminal that the State Legislature, Governor, and regulatory authorities have basically done nothing in response to February's crisis, which also affected states outside of Texas, because they were dependent on natural gas supplies from Texas.

This means that residents that can afford it are likely to install generators ("Facing power grid anxiety, Texans are buying generators and bracing for blackouts," San Antonio Report), install converters if they have solar power systems, and buy vehicles, like the Ford F-150 truck, which if you buy the special electricity generation package can power their houses in case the utility distribution system fails, although it still needs gasoline ("Texas man uses new 2021 Ford F-150 to heat home, power appliances during blackout," Detroit Free Press).

But what about the people without the means to protect themselves by buying large stocks of water and generators?

And in any case, if water systems fail because of power interruptions, people will have to store large supplies of water as well.

======

States that frequently experience winter cold have long since weatherized their electricity generation systems.  It's the southern states, that before climate change became as serious as it has didn't worry much about "cold snaps," that haven't done this.  It's particularly important in Texas, since it is such a large energy producer.  When systems fail there, they don't just effect Texas, but all the other states that rely on Texas energy production.

It's not rocket science: 10 ways to fix the Texas power grid, according to experts (From the Houston Chronicle)

Image: Natalie Hee, Fox 26 via Twitter. 

Following up on "Talk and lying versus doing: The electricity crisis in Texas is produced by state regulatory failure" and "Cold wave: the Texas power debacle disproportionately impacts the less well off."  

I've been putting links to good articles in the comments of the two blog entries.   

Note that one of those articles, the Wall Street Journal's "Texas Electric Bills Were $28 Billion Higher Under Deregulation," makes the point that Texas electricity deregulation has cost consumers billions, rather than saved consumers money overall.  Extend that across the country, and the deregulation argument fails, at least for electricity.

-- article link

Meanwhile it's not clear that the Texas Legislature and Governor will do anything to help prevent this from happening again.  Some corporations made billions from the debacle, while others lost hundreds of millions of dollars or more.  And more than 200 people are dead, there are many billions of dollars in property damage, etc.

And this particular article, focused on the electricity system, didn't mention the need for resiliency steps for water systems, many of which were devastated by the loss of power, and the failure or nonexistence of backup power systems ("Texas water systems failed during February cold storm. Now, the challenge is making them stronger," Houston Chronicle).

1. [Generation and Transmission System] Weatherization standards.  

2. Buy reliability. 

3. On-site fuel. 

4. Label gas facilities “critical.” 

5. Housing efficiency.  [Reducing demand for electricity by consumers.]

6. Rotating outages.  [Through improvements to the grid and the creation of microgrids.  Interestingly in DC, I learned that areas are usually hardwired to particular transmission stations, rather than being able to shift to different connections by changing a switch.]

7. Invest in batteries. 

8. Drill, drill, drill. Get grid and utility operators in the habit of managing through power shortages with regular emergency drills simulating extreme weather events. 

9. Clear communication. 

10. Cheaper, not cheap electricity. While efficiency is an admirable goal, understand that a resilient power grid requires regular investment. That means paying a little more for electricity.

Cold wave: the Texas power debacle disproportionately impacts the less well off

The media is full of articles and stories about the impact on Texans from the power outages, where as many as 4 million households were left without power in the face of bitter cold temperatures, such as this Washington Post article, "The power is back, but millions of Texans wonder what it will take to fully recover — and who will help them," which alerts us to particular tragedies such as a trailer park home to low income households having most of its water system wrecked, or people who died in part because of how the cold accentuated health conditions.

When I wrote the first piece on the failure of the Texas electricity transmission system a week ago

-- "Talk and lying versus doing: The electricity crisis in Texas is produced by state regulatory failure"

which has caused billions of dollars of damages and dozens of deaths, I thought about how to position the article, and one of the ways was "Cold Wave," as an opposite of Eric Klinenberg's book Heat Wave: A Social Autopsy of Disaster in Chicago, which I had just mentioned because it was featured in a recent program broadcast on PBS.

-- Documentary -- Cooked: Survival by Zip Code | PBS Independent Lens"
-- book review

Heat Wave studied the extranormal number of deaths in Chicago during a heat wave in 1995.  The deaths were disproportionately a result of poverty, isolation, and lack of personal and community resources.

Brett Saint rests inside a Gallery Furniture store which opened as a shelter for those in need of food, water and heat Wednesday, Feb. 17, 2021, in Houston. Millions in Texas still had no power after a historic snowfall and single-digit temperatures created a surge of demand for electricity to warm up homes unaccustomed to such extreme lows, buckling the state's power grid and causing widespread blackouts. (AP Photo/David J. Phillip)

Cold Wave is pretty much the same thing.  

HOUSTON, TX - FEBRUARY 16: Karla Perez and Esperanza Gonzalez warm up by a barbecue grill during power outage caused by the winter storm on February 16, 2021 in Houston, Texas. Winter storm Uri has brought historic cold weather, power outages and traffic accidents to Texas as storms have swept across 26 states with a mix of freezing temperatures and precipitation. (Photo by Go Nakamura/Getty Images)

While in most cases, the well off--people with more resources--do better in troubled times, in this case people lost power whether or not they were well off, although many well resourced people had previously installed back up generators, bought trucks that could also double as generators ("Texas man uses new 2021 Ford F-150 to heat home, power appliances during blackout," Detroit Free Press), the reality is that the people who are suffering the most are people who are impoverished, people of color, people with health issues, etc. 

Meanwhile, the Ted Cruzes can fly to Mexico.

Example of neoliberalism overreach at a massive scale.  Neoliberalism has been the dominant political and economic ideology of the past 45 years. It argues that the market is the best arbiter and deliverer of services of all types, that the profit motive and competition yields the best results. And that government always fails.  

Both conservatives and liberals are adherents, although conservatives tend to favor minimal to no regulation, while liberals see the need for regulation to ensure a level playing field and some protections.  Neoliberalism is a separate phenomenon from globalization.  Combined, the two increased precarity without providing much in the way of backstop.

The Texas Legislature created an electricity market with limited requirements on firms, and encouraged "race to the bottom" business models that only worked without problem in normal, not extraordinary, conditions.

Extreme cold and extreme heat lead to significantly increased prices.  But at the same time stress the minimal reliability built into the system resulting from the lack of basic resilience requirements ("How Texas’ Drive for Energy Independence Set It Up for Disaster," New York Times).

Now Texas electricity businesses are declaring bankruptcy because they don't have the money to pay the high charges that were incurred during the peak of the crisis ("Texas Energy Co-Op Files For Bankruptcy After Storm, High Bill," NPR).