Month: August 2012

Energy in the News: Austin becomes an all-green municipal operation

This article announced that the City of Austin’s annual municipal electricity purchases would all be from GreenChoice renewable energy.  This was about 328 million kilowatt hours a year in 2017.  Though the electricity coming through the lines was a mix of all power sources, this mechanism allowed Austin to dedicate its electric budget to wind power, allowing more demand  to be sold on the system.

Costs premiums of about $8.5 million detailed in this story have since come down markedly, in part due to my intervention.

=====

Today, Austin becomes an all-green municipal operation

Marty Toohey, Austin American Statesman, Aug 31, 2012

Today Austin will become the nation’s first major green-energy-only municipal operation, a milestone it will reach by relying on renewable energy the city has been unable to sell to its 400,000 other electric customers.

…every penny the city would normally spend on nonrenewable sources will instead go to a West Texas wind farm. This will reduce the carbon footprint of one of Central Texas’ biggest carbon-producing enterprises.

“Austin calls itself a green city. A lot of that is hype,” said environmental activist Paul Robbins, who has been pushing the city to switch to renewable energy for more than a decade. Now that it has, he said, “This is the first time in a long time Austin is truly a leader.”

 

Water in the News: Top Water Users 2011

Among the city’s biggest water users, some familiar names

Marty Toohey, Austin Statesman, October 28, 2011

A handful of prominent Austinites are again among the city’s thirstiest residential water users, including some who previously blamed broken pipes and other aberrations for using far more water than the typical Austin Water Utility customer.

With Central Texas more than a year into one of the worst droughts in recorded history, the households of health care magnate Robert Girling, auto dealer Doug Maund, lobbyist Neal “Buddy” Jones, U.S. Rep. Michael McCaul and champion cyclist Lance Armstrong used between 13 and 20 times what the average Austin home used over the past year, according to Austin Water Utility records.

The list, obtained through an open records request by environmental activist Paul Robbins and verified by the American-Statesman with the water utility, shows water consumption from Oct. 1, 2010, to Sept. 30, 2011. That time frame roughly corresponds to the current drought, which has left Lake Travis, Austin’s primary source of water, about 37 percent full and dropping.

 

Water in the News: Throwing Toilets Out of Airplanes

Toilet program, once flush with cash, asking for more funding

Rebates for high-efficiency toilets have resulted in 1.3 million gallons of water saved per day.

Marty Toohey, Austin Statesman, Aug 31, 2012

For years, the City of Austin has offered to pay most or all of the cost of buying and installing new, high-efficiency toilets to help the city conserve a limited resource.

They have asked for an additional $3 million for the program…

Paul Robbins, a longtime environmental activist and frequent critic of the water utility, contends…

“It’s cheaper to do a shared savings program,” Robbins said. “Instead, they’re throwing toilets out of airplanes. They seem to have forgotten that money is a nonrenewable resource.”