Affirmative Action Quotas--but for fracked gas

Texas explores new frontiers in hypocrisy

I think American history— which sadly includes slavery, Jim Crow, and mass incarceration—means that we should be actively working to level the playing field between all Americans; as I said in my last book, I think there’s a strong argument for reparations. But you know who doesn’t think so? The government of the state of Texas, which in January put the official kibosh even on the watery set of practices doing business as “DEI.” The legislature has made it explicitly illegal to teach “the 1619 project” in the state’s schools. Texas’s attorney general, Ken Paxton, has joined lawsuits against other states for supposedly engaging in affirmative action at their colleges; earlier this winter he was sticking his nose into Costco’s business, demanding that they end any consideration of diversity or equity or inclusion so that everyone could be “treated equally and with respect.”

So it might (or might not) surprise you to know that Texas Republicans are on the edge of instituting a quota system in the Lone Star state. Not to benefit minorities who have been discriminated against for generations, but to protect fossil fuels, which have been cosseted and subsidized from the jump. SB 388, already approved by the State Senate, would require utilities, electric coops, or generations installing a megawatt of solar, wind or battery power to also install a megawatt of “dispatchable” power, which the law defines to exclude batteries.

As the Texas energy analyst Doug Lewin explained last week,

it is the most heavy-handed, anti-market kind of legislation, requiring one megawatt of gas for every megawatt of wind, solar, and storage that gets built. Advocates of central planning are cheering that Texas may abandon its competitive market that has brought, as the Governor said in his State of the State Address, a 35% increase in power generation sources in the last four years.

Meanwhile the State Senate is also considering a bill—SB 819—that would use the “police power of the state” to dramatically limit new solar and wind projects. They’d now need to get a permit from the state’s public utility commission—something that gas, coal, and nuclear power plants do not need—and those permits would be hard to get: a wind turbine would need to be 3000 feet from a neighbor’s property line (an oil well only has to be 467 feet, and that’s only for fear it might drain some of the neighbor’s oil). Lewin again: if the law passed it would be “all but impossible” to build new renewables in Texas.

The reason for this quota system and this rank discrimination against renewables is pathetically obvious: sun, wind, and batteries are eating the lunch of oil, gas and coal in Texas. They’re cheaper and faster to build, and so the state’s booming economy has been turning to them faster than anywhere else in the country—there were days this winter when renewables were supplying nearly 70% of the state’s power. The state’s utilities are installing ever more batteries precisely because they are dispatchable (that is, they turn on quickly and easily), making it much easier to stabilize the vast Texas grid. This, for obvious reasons, worries the hydrocarbon industry that’s largely headquartered in Houston, and so they are using their political power to try and hobble renewables. It’s the same strategy the Trump administration is using nationally: never forget that on day one of the new reign Trump declared an “energy emergency” and then carefully defined “energy” thusly:

“Energy” or “energy resources” means crude oil, natural gas, lease condensates, natural gas liquids, refined petroleum products, uranium, coal, biofuels, geothermal heat, the kinetic movement of flowing water, and critical minerals

It’s not hard to figure out what team Trump is leaving out: sun, wind, and batteries. Because that’s not who funded their campaign to the tune of nearly half a billion dollars. (If you want a deep glimpse into the mindset behind this corruption read Russell Gold’s column in the Times). But in the process they’re doing even more damage to the national interest than with their leaked Signal chats or their pathetic verbal attacks on our European allies. If you take seriously the idea that the greatest national security battle is over who will develop AI first, then the competition is with China. (Here’s Tom Friedman’s column from this morning). Lewin points to a study released earlier this month at a Houston conference and endorsed by groups like the Chamber of Commerce that are

not exactly the historical constituency for renewable energy.

But unlike the Texas Senate, these organizations live in the real world, and they seem to understand the need for solar, wind power, battery storage, and gas because they know the country needs all the power it can get.

For the foreseeable future, the vast, vast majority of those electrons will come from renewables and batteries. As S&P Platts puts it, “[R]enewables and batteries are by far the main source of supply in all three cases on a nameplate basis given their availability, low-cost, [and] preference from consumers.”

In particular, the study said

the U.S. will need “additions of between 60 and 100 gigawatts of gas” over the next 15 years — and “over 900 gigawatts of renewables and batteries.”

That could happen. Left to its own devices Texas is turing decisively toward renewables, and Florida is not far behind. As Alexander Kauffman reported in Grist this week

Florida vaulted past California last year in terms of new utility-scale solar capacity plugged into its grid. It built 3 gigawatts of large-scale solar in 2024, making it second only to Texas. And in the residential solar sector, Florida continued its longtime leadership streak. The state has ranked number two behind California for the most rooftop panels installed each year from 2019 through 2024, according to data the energy consultancy Wood Mackenzie shared with Canary Media.

Which means that Republican legislators are pushing back there as well—but Florida doesn’t have an oil industry, and it does have a large number of residents who are starting to recognize that when hurricanes come through solar power and battery backup is likely to be a lot more resilient than the standard grid.

Look, in a rational world we would be massively discriminating in favor of sun and wind and batteries. Because they do not melt the planet. But at this point it would be a huge help just to not discriminate against them.

Oh, and the momentum for Sun Day keeps building, ahead of our big public launch. Here’s the Sun of the Week, from Graham Zimmerman, a world-class climber who helps lead the remarkable climate efforts at Protect Our Winters. Draw your own at sunday.earth

In other energy and climate news:

+Here’s a quite beautiful and humane letter from one of the UK climate activists jailed for their protests last year

Our politicians are perfectly willing to lead when the country goes to war, but not when it comes to stopping emissions, which will save lives. In light of all of this, it was clear to me that civil resistance was the only option left. I didn’t do it for fun, for attention or for the sake of it. I did it because I knew that it could work. We’re taught about Martin Luther King, Nelson Mandela and the suffragettes in school: they’re celebrated as heroes now. But nobody pays much attention to the fact that they were absolutely vilified by the government, the judiciary and the journalists at the time.

In the end I’ve done what I can, and a judge chose to send me to prison for it. I don’t blame him, and I don’t spend my time wishing things had gone differently. The whole experience has shaped me and made me who I am today.

You learn about society by seeing how people are treated in its prisons, and it’s an absolute mess in ours. This whole experience has deepened my understanding of our system and strengthened my conviction that change is desperately needed. Not reform – we need revolutionary change. The prison system is insanely broken – people here are not treated like human beings.

Meanwhile, another 77-year-old British climate protester—who was released after a few months only to be returned to jail when they couldn’t find an electronic monitor small enough to fit around her wrists—gave her own account this week

“The police arrived to arrest me on 20 December [2024] and I had just 10 minutes to pack. I was behind bars for Christmas, new year and my birthday on 10 January. For my second period in prison I spent 41 days and 41 nights at Eastwood Park.”

She said some of her experiences bordered on the absurd. When she first arrived at Peterborough, aged 77, she was asked to do a pregnancy test. “I burst out laughing, I said I’m not going to do it, it’s an insult. They didn’t make me do it.”

“When I was a complete novice in prison the other women were very kind and showed me how things work. They were shocked and horrified when they found out I had been imprisoned for a climate protest. I think around 80% of the women I met should not have been in prison. Help with problems such as mental health, addiction and housing would have been more useful.”

+Some excellent anti-Musk art. Watch the video through to the end!

+If you’re wondering whether smartphones have done anything useful for our society, here’s one answer: the Gorilla Glass originally designed to keep your iPhone from shattering when you dropped it is now being scaled up to provide incredibly insulating windows. As Christopher Mims reports

This new kind of window could save American households billions of dollars in wasted energy each year, while allowing expansive views of the outdoors and making our homes quieter, more comfortable and able to survive even the most violent weather. The key enabling technology is thin panes of glass—sandwiched between thicker standard glass—which exist because of the same manufacturing and chemistry breakthroughs that made possible the light, strong, scratch-resistant screens on our smartphones, tablets and watches.

+The invaluable veteran journalist Keith Schneider on why EPA’s decision to stop enforcing key regulations will harm not just the environment but the economy

In the last half-century, arguably no other government-led initiative has been as measurably effective in improving the lives of Americans, restoring the condition of the country, and simultaneously growing the economy as the laws and regulations administered by the EPA. The agency supervised a profound era of land and water conservation and pollution prevention that made the country more beautiful, safer, and economically wealthier.

The greenest regions of every state are typically among the most prosperous. In 1970, at the start of the EPA, America’s gross domestic product was $1.1 trillion, or $9 trillion in current dollars. Today the GDP is $30.3 trillion, more than three times larger.

+Whoa. I knew congestion pricing was a good idea for New York City but I wouldn’t have predicted it would work this well this fast. A new study finds that

Using Google Maps Traffic Trends, we show that the policy increased speeds in the Central Business District, had spillovers onto non-CBD roads, and reduced estimated vehicle emissions throughout the metro area. Relative to a set of control cities, average traffic speeds in NYC’s CBD increased by 15% following the introduction of congestion pricing, with larger effects during the most congested hours. Roads commonly traversed on routes to the CBD before the policy have also seen an increase in speeds and a decrease in estimated vehicle CO₂ emission rates. Overall, these speed changes reduced realized travel times on trips to and within the CBD by approximately 8%. The increase in speed is greatest in neighborhoods closer to the CBD, with no significant difference between neighborhoods with different income levels.

That means, of course, that the Trump administration is scrambling to shut down the whole thing before other cities can get ideas.

Meanwhile, in rational world, Parisisans voted 65-35 percent over the weekend to “pedestrianize” 500 more streets in the French capital

+Record wildfires spread in South Korea

The blaze in Uiseong destroyed Gounsa, a Buddhist temple built in the 7th century, according to officials from the Korea Heritage Service. There were no immediate reports of injuries, and some of the temple’s national treasures, including a stone Buddha statue, were evacuated before the fire reached the wooden buildings.

Meanwhile, temperatures set new records in Phoenix, where the mercury hit 99 degrees yesterday. In March.

+Gunther Thallinger, a director of the German financial giant Allianz, wrote one of those essays worth bookmarking yesterday, both for its comprehensiveness and plainspokenness

CO₂ emissions directly increase the amount of energy trapped in the Earth’s atmosphere. This is not a vague or future issue—it is physical reality. The more emissions, the more energy retained. The more energy, the more extremely the atmosphere behaves. Storms intensify. Heatwaves last longer. Rain falls harder. Droughts cut deeper. This is the first principle.

These extreme weather phenomena drive direct physical risks to all categories of human-owned assets—land, houses, roads, power lines, railways, ports, and factories. Heat and water destroy capital. Flooded homes lose value. Overheated cities become uninhabitable. Entire asset classes are degrading in real time, which translates to loss of value, business interruption, and market devaluation on a systemic level.

The insurance industry has historically managed these risks. But we are fast approaching temperature levels—1.5°C, 2°C, 3°C—where insurers will no longer be able to offer coverage for many of these risks. The math breaks down: the premiums required exceed what people or companies can pay. This is already happening. Entire regions are becoming uninsurable. (See: State Farm and Allstate exiting California’s home insurance market due to wildfire risk, 2023).

This is not a one-off market adjustment. This is a systemic risk that threatens the very foundation of the financial sector. If insurance is no longer available, other financial services become unavailable too. A house that cannot be insured cannot be mortgaged. No bank will issue loans for uninsurable property. Credit markets freeze. This is a climate-induced credit crunch.

This applies not only to housing, but to infrastructure, transportation, agriculture, and industry. The economic value of entire regions—coastal, arid, wildfire-prone—will begin to vanish from financial ledgers. Markets will reprice, rapidly and brutally. This is what a climate-driven market failure looks like.

+Here’s some good news: A Penn State student, Divya Tiagi, has managed to dramatically refine a hundred year old math problem that should make it possible to build even more efficient wind farms.

“I created an addendum to Glauert’s problem which determines the optimal aerodynamic performance of a wind turbine by solving for the ideal flow conditions for a turbine in order to maximize its power output,” said Tyagi, who earned her bachelor’s degree in aerospace engineering.

Her adviser, Sven Schmitz, the Boeing/A.D. Welliver Professor in the Department of Aerospace Engineering and co-author on the paper, said Glauert’s original work focused exclusively on the maximum attainable power coefficient, which measures how efficiently a turbine converts wind energy into electricity. However, Glauert did not account for the total force and moment coefficients acting on the rotor — the spinning unit with attached blades — or how turbine blades bend under wind pressure.

“If you have your arms spread out and someone presses on your palm, you have to resist that movement,” said Schmitz, a faculty member in the Institute of Energy and the Environment. “We call that the downwind thrust force and the root bending moment, and wind turbines must withstand that, too. You need to understand how large the total load is, which Glauert did not do.

I like looking at images of geniuses at work on equations on whiteboards. I don’t understand the numbers, but it comforts me that someone else does. As you look at this one, just reflect for a moment on the Trump/Musk attacks on diversity and on funding for basic science