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.

 

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.

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).

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

In 2019, Texas ran an advertising campaign in California, aimed at businesses upset by summer electricity blackouts, claiming they offered more reliable electricity sources. 

Texas is in the news this week, because extreme cold in the state has led to significant failures of the state-specific electricity generation and transmission system--75% of the state is powered through a state-exclusive grid not connected to the national electricity transmission system.

More than 40 people have died, at the peak more than 4 million households did not have electricity, and utility companies were forced to impose rolling blackouts to prevent the system from completely crashing ("Texas was "seconds and minutes" away from catastrophic monthslong blackouts, officials say," Texas Tribune). 

Photo: ABC13, Houston.

Water systems are failing both because of lack of electricity and frozen pipes. 

Residential and commercial property owners are experiencing many tens of thousands of dollars of building damage because of frozen and burst pipes.  All told the losses could total in the billions.

A failure of sustainable energy sources? At the outset, conservatives took the opportunity to blame the rolling blackouts on wind turbines, making out to be ridiculous sustainable energy policies and the proposed Green New Deal ("No, the Green New Deal Did Not Cause the Texas Power Outage," New York Magazine, "Texas shows that when you cannot govern, you lie. A lot," Washington Post).

Wind turbines function in extremely cold climates, such as Greenland, Manitoba and across the Northern United States, so long as they're weatherized.

Cold temperature weather map of the Continental United States, Tuesday February 16th, 2021.

New York Times.

No, a failure of conventional energy sources.  The reality is that the failures are primarily that of generating plants and systems using natural gas (and to some extent coal and nuclear energy).  This is because during winter, ERCOT, the electricity production and distribution coordinating authority for Texas, plans for reduced production of wind energy anyway.  More than 60% of the state's electricity in winter comes from natural gas, coal, and nuclear energy.

But ultimately the failure is due to a failure to be proactive and weatherize the Texas electricity system to be able to deal with extreme cold. The saddest thing that has come out is that similar problems, but much less worse, in 1989 and 2011 led to recommendations in studies of the electricity failures, by the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission to better weatherize their electricity production and delivery systems for extreme weather events ("The Texas grid got crushed because its operators didn’t see the need to prepare for cold weather," Post).

An extreme example of state regulatory failure. The Texas electricity failures are a regulatory failure, one that was easily preventable, had the right regulatory framework been developed ("The Texas Power Outage Started With Bad Policy," Texas Public Policy Institute).  

Not being under federal regulation wouldn't necessarily lead to any problems, if Texas had developed a strong regulatory framework to oversee electricity production.  But they failed to do so ("Don't blame Texas energy players for blackout, blame the electricity grid's irresponsible game," Houston Chronicle).

It's similar to what happened in Michigan with dam failures last summer ("Displacing a problem doesn't solve it: an example of how restrained regulation can cost millions of dollars | Flooding in Mid-Michigan from a dam break," 2020) or the lead poisoning of the Flint water system ("Don't use the local water: Parkersburg, WV and Flint, MI," 2016).

But failure to weatherize wasn't the only regulatory failure.  They built a regulatory framework that heightens rather than reduces risk.  It works when conditions are normal, but not when they aren't.  From the Houston Chronicle:

The state grants monopolies to companies to maintain the transmission lines. CenterPoint has the contract for the Houston area. 

Centerpoint is forbidden from owning generating assets or even batteries to store power along their wires. Electricity retailers manage customers and then buy, sell or trade electricity contracts. Some generators own retail operations, such as NRG Energy, which owns Reliant and other retail brands. 

The exceptions are rural cooperatives and municipally-owned utilities such as San Antonio’s CPS. They can do it all, powerplants, transmission and retail sales.

(1) In Texas, they set up a regulatory framework that prioritizes low electricity prices.  

(2) They prioritized low prices while also disincentivizing reliability.  They failed to require and incentivize weatherization for extreme cold or heat 

Kaiden Antoine, 3, stands by the stove, his family's only source of heat since their power has been out since yesterday, Tuesday, Feb. 16, 2021, at Cuney Homes in Houston. Jon Shapley, Houston Chronicle / Staff photographer.

This week, 185 Texas electricity generation plants shut down because of weather-related issues, this was about 40% of the state's generation capacity.

(3) Nor did they require firms to have standing power in reserve (buffer/redundancy).  As demand has increased, supply hasn't kept up, putting the system at risk.  

Although in this week's case, a buffer couldn't have made up for the loss of 1/3 or more of the overall power generation capacity of the system.

(4) Even worse, they created a wholesale market for electricity prices focused on one or two days in advance, rather than locking in pricing for longer periods.  This works well enough in normal operating conditions, but gyrates wildly in extranormal circumstances, which can drive utility firms or individual customers out of business.

Griddy.  For example, the firm Griddy, which charges people $10/mo. plus a charge per kilowatt hour based on the usually low wholesale prices, was charging more than $20 per kilowatt hour earlier this week, leading to daily charges for some customers of $1,000 or more, when normally the price would be about $30/month.  

I don't know how much Griddy is able to hedge prices with longer term supply contracts ("Texas freeze squeezes Macquarie-backed Griddy," Financial Review).  They say that 96.9% of the time they offer super cheap prices.  But that 3.1% of the time! can be a killer.  

I guess enough, because they haven't been forced into bankruptcy, which was what happened with the DC area firm Clean Currents, in 2014, when a single cold snap resulted in volatile wholesale prices, and they ceased operations  ("Cold and unhedged: How the polar vortex drove Clean Currents out of business ," Washington Business Journal).  From the article:

A majority of Clean Currents' on- and off-peak wind power purchases were hedged, Skulnik said, but enough were unhedged to sink the company as wholesale energy prices spiked. 

“It’s not like prices went up 20 percent, or even 50 percent,” he said. “We saw prices that went up 500 percent. We were hedged, but we were not hedged enough. We didn’t have the resources to cover the spot market prices we were being hit by.” 

 One of the region’s fastest growing companies as recently as two years ago, Clean Currents was a business that area governments were eager to host.

Even if Griddy hedges wholesale prices, they don't extend that protection to customers, pricing electricity to customers by the day and hour, based on the wholesale price ("Texas power retailer Griddy to customers in face of freeze: Please, leave us," Bloomberg). 

The Texas electricity system as a whole is set up like the Griddy business model.  Griddy customers are completely exposed, all the benefit from low prices, but also all the risk from high prices.

The same thing goes for customers in the Texas grid,  They benefit from low prices most of the time, at the expense of reliability, and occasionally experience extreme loss of power for multiple days, at great expense.  From the Houston Chronicle:

Electricity generators compete to meet the state’s power needs with the cheapest sources, whether coal, nuclear, wind, natural gas, or solar. ERCOT forecasts the expected demand weeks in advance, companies bid to provide the cheapest power, and ERCOT contracts for what it needs the day before. 

No prediction is perfect, though, so ERCOT builds in a reserve. The price paid to generators is based on the actual consumption, though, which means Texans do not pay for power they do not use. Other states pay generators to standby if needed, but not ERCOT. 

The typical price for ERCOT electricity is about $25 for a megawatt hour. But ERCOT can pay as much as $9,000 to get power providers to generate enough electricity to meet the state’s needs.

El Paso Electric Rio Grande generation plant, located in Sunland, New Mexico.

El Paso shows a different way.  By contrast, El Paso, being on the extreme western edge of Texas, is part of the Western transmission grid that the rest of Texas is not connected to.  

Plus, after the 2011 FERC recommendations, they began to more assiduously invest in winter weatherization ("Not being connected to rest of Texas helped El Paso in cold wave," El Paso Times).  From the article:

EPE spent $4.5 million to repair and better winterize its old Newman, Rio Grande and Copper power plants, EPE officials said. It also resulted in EPE’s Montana power plant and a Rio Grande plant generator, added after the 2011 freeze, to be designed to withstand below-freezing temperatures, Buraczyk said.

Unlike the rest of Texas, and granted their temperatures weren't quite as cold, El Paso Electric had no problems with providing electricity 

Climate change is making this worse, by making weather more extreme, not just during the summer months, but throughout the year, including winter.  Extreme can be more snow and cold, or less snow and cold.

Disconnected from the grid can make bad problems worse.  The Texas electricity failure this week was accentuated by its "go it alone" approach to electricity regulation and production.  Even though the loss in electricity production was a self-own, had they been connected to eastern and western grids they could have imported electricity from outside the state, making up for their regulatory failures.

But Texas isn't connected to the nationwide electricity grid.  

The state is so big it is a market unto itself, and by choosing to be disconnected from transmission interconnection systems that cross state lines, they are able to evade federal regulation.  But when for whatever reason they have need for a greater amount of electricity than they can generate, they have no ability to bring electricity in from outside the state.

Is the Texas power failure a result from a failure to "invest in infrastructure"?  Yes and no.  Yes, because the State of Texas built a regulatory framework for electricity generation and transmission that accentuated risky operation in times of extreme conditions.  And because elected officials don't focus much on long term investment in infrastructure.

No, because nothing forced them to develop a risky electricity system.  They had the means to develop a different kind of system, which would have only cost a little bit more, and it would have avoided the kinds of catastrophic risks and costs that have occurred this week.

They chose not to do so.  Even after twice being told that their system was at risk to extreme cold.  And knowing that climate change is leading to extreme weather events--rain, flooding, hurricanes, cold--that impact power systems.

Do I think Texas deserves "federal funds" to deal with the disaster?  No, I don't  It wasn't a "natural disaster."  It was a disaster created by a failure to act proactively ("Texas, the go-it-alone state, is rattled by the failure to keep the lights on," Post, "Texas electric grid is an easy fix, if lawmakers will admit their error," Houston Chronicle).  From the Chronicle article:

Most people know the lowest bidder does not always provide the most reliable product. 

Making sure a vendor can actually deliver the product also seems like common sense. 

ERCOT, the Texas electric grid manager, though, does neither of those things because Republican politicians who have controlled state regulations for two decades have failed to heed 13 years of dire warnings. Instead, they believed free-market advocates who argued financial incentives would encourage responsible planning. ... 

The solutions are easy and obvious. The present situation was first anticipated in a report in the Texas House Select Committee on Electric Generation Capacity and Environmental Effects Report published Jan. 12, 2009. ... 

Texas has the only American electricity grid with no rules for resiliency. Instead, the GOP majority argued that a system that pays higher prices when demand goes up would incentivize generators to make sure their systems work during extreme weather. ... 

Consumers need to watch closely as Texas authorities begin debating reforms. Lobbyists see an opportunity to gain subsidies for their industries. 

The reforms we need, though, are simple. 

First, connect to the rest of the country via the national grid and accept federal regulation so we can import electricity when we run out. 

Texas should also require generators to prove they are prepared for the weather events climate change will bring before they can offer their power to the wholesale market. That would reduce the risk of failure and force generators to weatherize. 

Power prices will rise, ever so slightly, but it will reduce the risk of another Texas Blackout. The Texas Blackouts prove them wrong. 

Now our political leaders are giving us misleading scapegoating, political gamesmanship and another front in the culture wars.

Why should they benefit, yet again--e.g., Texas cut funds for fighting wildfires, then asked for federal funding ("Texas wildfires: Is Rick Perry being hypocritical asking for federal aid?," Christian Science Monitor)-- from a failure to plan and operate according to best practice advice?

If the failures had their causes in federal inaction or failure, like the pandemic, the levee breaks in New Orleans, or the dam break and flooding in Midland, Michigan, and to some extent the lead in the water problem in Flint*, I'd say they had a justifiable case for federal disaster funding.

For want of a nail etc. | Fallout from Flint water disaster continues

“For want of a nail, the shoe was lost.
For want of a shoe, the horse was lost.
For want of a horse, the rider was lost.
For want of a rider, the battle was lost.
For want of a battle, the kingdom was lost,
And all for the want of a horseshoe nail.”

-- Benjamin Franklin, Poor Richard's Almanack

This proverb is often quoted in regard to failure in battle and being unprepared.

---

Like with how police officers don't have to pay when they lose lawsuits over misconduct--instead the city or county pays the judgement, e.g., Chicago pays out tens of millions of dollars each year ("Where is the risk management approach to police misconduct and regularized killings of citizens?"), government officials rarely pay the costs of their failures, instead, tax paying citizens pay.

This comes up with the debacle over lead in water in the City of Flint.  The city shifted from "Detroit water" to local water in an effort to save money.

But for whatever reason, the officials in charge of the water system, even though they knew it was required, did not add the suggested chemicals necessary to deal with the difference in water acidity between Detroit water and water from the Flint River.

For whatever reason, contrary to law the state agency overseeing water matters did not require the city to add the chemicals.  And the city didn't have the money to pay for the equipment they needed to be able to add the chemicals anyway ("Why didn't Flint treat its water? An answer, at last," Detroit Free Press).

As a result, pipes corroded and lead leeched into the water.

The State of Michigan just agreed to pay $600 million to people disproportionately affected by the water problem ("Michigan to Pay $600 Million to Victims of Flint Water Crisis," New York Times).
.
There are other judgments that have been paid out also.

According to the Free Press, the cost of the necessary chemicals was $150/day, about $3,000/month.

That's a lot cheaper to pay out than $600 million.  Even with some additional costs for new equipment.

While there has been a lot of discussion about how what happened is an illustration of the need to invest in infrastructure, and that's true ("Flint’s water crisis highlights need for infrastructure investment and innovation," Brookings Institution), the problem here is much simpler.  Just basic failure to do the most basic requirements in your job.

Just because the State water agency failed to order the city to treat the water, the water officials in Flint understood that they needed to add anti-corrosion chemicals, because of the change in water source.  But because they weren't ordered to do so, they didn't do it.

It's also an illustration of the failure to adopt modern risk management practices in government.

---

Dams.  Also see, regulatory failures concerning dams in Michigan costs hundreds of millions of dollars in damage after dams were breached ("Midland, Michigan, failed dams, floods caused $200M in damages to 2,500 buildings," Bridge; "Displacing a problem doesn't solve it: an example of how restrained regulation can cost millions of dollars | Flooding in Mid-Michigan from a dam break").

Aerial photo of flooding in downtown Midland, Mich., Wednesday, May 20, 2020. (Photo: Kelly Jordan and Junfu Han, Detroit Free Press)

Associated Press photo.

Explosive materials in the Port of Beirut.  In recent memory, perhaps the biggest example of risk management failure to protect public health is the recent explosion of impounded fertilizer at the Port of Beirut.

Fertilizer, in the right conditions, can act like a bomb, and this was almost 3,000 metric tons of fertilizer ("Why Beirut's ammonium nitrate blast was so devastating," Nature).

A ship carrying the cargo had been impounded.  The Port Authority wanted the fertilizer moved, but despite multiple entreaties to the country's courts, nothing happened, for 6 years.  Evidentally, the courts did not understand the dangerous conditions created by the cargo impoundment ("Blame for Beirut Explosion Begins With a Leaky, Troubled Ship," New York Times).

Image from video by Agence France Press.

Apparently a nearby fire likely triggered, the fertilizer, and the explosion killed more than 200 people, injured more than 5,000, left 300,000 people homeless and destroyed thousands of properties.

It led to massive political demonstrations and the fall of the national government.

It's an epic fail(ure) example of poor risk management.

Although after the explosion, ports elsewhere were motivated to determine whether or not they also have risk issues around fertilizer ("After Beirut explosion, ports around the world searched for ammonium nitrate," Washington Post).

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

About ten years ago, then Montgomery County Councilmember Roger Berliner pushed the idea of the county taking over the public utility infrastructure in order to improve reliability and operation.  He was widely derided for this position by the Washington Post and in other quarters ... although at the instigation of utility regulatory agencies in Maryland and DC, Pepco has since instituted a multi-billion dollar reliability improvement program.

-- "You can't wish away the need to upgrade aging utility infrastructure," 2014
-- "Press piling on Montgomery County's utility dreams," 2011

It even came up in DC, during the review of Exelon's acquisition of the firm which included Pepco, the local electric utility serving DC and parts of Maryland ("The opportunity to create a DC Municipal electric utility: presentation tonight," 2015).

Seattle Public Utilities uses its revenue stream to fund best practice water-related infrastructure, while the funding stream of the electric utility in Medellin has been used to invest in significant social infrastructure there ("Medellin: from narco terrorism to a hub of innovation & social urbanism," RSA). From the article:

These projects were largely funded by the EPM (Empresas Publicas de Medellin, a public utilities company set up in 1950 and owned by the municipality). In 2000, the city of Medellin and EPM partnered to reinvest 30% of its profits in a series of public works and spaces such as libraries, parks, schools and transport infrastructure. This targeted the integration of the poor and marginalised communities through public realm investment.

The City of Manassas offers a bunch of utility services, including cable television.

Although just as there are examples of many great municipal utilities, there are some examples of ones that are terribly operated, such as Philadelphia Gas Works and the water authority in Flint, Michigan.  Often this happens because politics gets in the way, such as making the utility out to be more of a way to employ supporters of elected officials, or for other reasons.

And sometimes, especially with water authorities, abetted by poor oversight, because the community it serves is too small economically to adequately provide revenue flows to maintain and invest in the system there can be serious problems.

Our Hamburg, Our Grid: Germany.  Interestingly, there is an article in the Guardian about how the city-state of Hamburg, Germany purchased the utility generation and distribution firm serving it, and how they've been able to move the utility forward in terms of sustainability ("Getting privatisation undone puts centre-left in good shape in Hamburg"). From the article:

In September 2013, 51% of the electorate voted to “re-municipalise” the local electricity and district heating networks, as proposed by grassroots initiative “Our Hamburg Our Grid”. ..

The re-municipalised electricity grid, for which Hamburg paid the Swedish energy group Vattenfall €610m, has been making the city senate a healthy profit since 2017.

The Greens are finding that having utility grids in public hands allows them to propose initiatives that would otherwise have sounded like pipe dreams. Hamburg, a city whose wealth has historically grown around its inland port, has in recent years turned into a busy laboratory for renewable energy schemes.

Hamburg is now the first state in Germany to write a legally binding date into its constitution, the year 2030, not just for halving its carbon emissions from 1990 levels, but also for phasing out coal power for district heating altogether. The 250,000 households in the city which use district heating are still powered by coal stations in Wedel and Tiefstack.

In the future, the Greens propose, Hamburg homes will be heated entirely from renewable sources such as waste incineration, biomass or solar power. There is a proposal to build a large heat storage system underneath the harbour, capturing excess heat produced in the summer for use during the winter by pumping hot salt water hundreds of meters deep into the soil.

-- "Our City, Our Grid: The energy remunicipalisation trend in Germany", from Reclaiming Public Services, Transnational Institute

Portland, Oregon.  In the fallout of the Enron bankruptcy, the City of Portland tried to purchase the municipal portion of its utility, but it was thwarted by the bankruptcy court, Wall Street, and public opinion.

And speaking of Portland, it runs the water utility, and some very conservative forces tried to use rising water rates because of required investments in infrastructure from federal mandates as a way to bring about privatization ("Portland Public Water District: Ballot Measure 26-156 trounced by nearly 3-to-1 margin," Portland Oregonian).

California.  The bankruptcy of Pacific Gas & Electric in California.  Because of being deemed responsible for a number of wildfires, the primary electric (and gas) utility in California is in bankruptcy.  Some quarters are advocating that the state take over and run the utility.

-- "Let’s end the devastation by making PG&E public," San Francisco Chronicle
-- "There's a better way out of the PG&E bankruptcy," San Francisco Chronicle

Too big to succeed?  The thing is that the scale there are talking about is so much bigger than a typical utility operating at the scale of a county or city.

TVA and public utility distribution at the local scale.  But rural electric cooperatives and the Tennessee Valley Authority offer a more scalable alternative.

TVA is a big public utility, a Depression-era economic development initiative to bring electric power to rural areas.

While the big TVA is the primary producer of electricity, at the regional scale it is self-organized into nine customer service districts and within those districts smaller and separate organizations, many municipally owned, such as the "Electric Power Board" in Chattanooga are the sellers of electricity to individual users.

Some local electricity distributors are particularly innovative. The one in Chattanooga is a leader in linking high speed Internet ("Chattanooga as a smart city," 2014) to the grid as a management tool, providing high speed computing services much more cheaply as a result, along with cable television and telecommunications services.

If PG&E were to be taken over by the state, they should organize similarly.