Where politics, government and energy intersect.
Ever since an explosion at BP’s Deepwater Horizon offshore rig in 2010 released about five million of barrels of oil into the Gulf of Mexico, researchers have been trying to figure out where much of the oil ended up. A new study is offering some answers. By tracing chemicals in undersea sediment, scientists have found [...]
The Texas agency that regulates industries that pollute, the Texas Commission on Environmental Quality, is questioning federal research into the health threat posed by breathing ozone and is using its website to publish articles that critics call “provocative” and “misleading.” First, some background. Houston has an ozone pollution problem and so do Dallas and big [...]
Denton might very well become a “test case” for other Texas towns that want to abolish fracking.
CenterPoint Energy, a state-regulated utility that maintains poles and wires for over two million electricity customers, had millions of dollars in “excess revenue” last year. At its meeting Friday morning, the Texas Public Utilities Commission considered whether something should be done about that. A report from the PUC’s staff said that last year alone CenterPoint had [...]
The Texas Public Utility Commission meets Friday and will consider a report that says the Houston utility company, CenterPoint Energy, made almost $47 million in “excess revenue” last year. According to one utility watch-dog group, that’s too much. CenterPoint Energy doesn’t sell electricity. It delivers it through thousands of miles of power lines. A charge is added [...]
The Chinati Mountains State Natural Area in south Presidio County finally has public access, according to Corky Kulhmann, senior project manager for land conservation for Texas Parks and Wildlife. This is news given exclusively to KRTS. For eight years, Kulhmann and his team have been working to gain public access to 39,000 acres donated to [...]
It’s not every day that you get to talk to the US Secretary of Energy about how the oil and gas boom affected your hometown. So, when Alyssa Wolverton saw her chance, she took it. After delivering the keynote speech at this year’s SXSW Eco conference, Department of Energy Secretary Ernest Moniz took some questions from [...]
Talk of Texas often conjures images of wide open ranch land and farmers at work their fields. But that iconic territory is being lost, according to a new analysis. Dr. Roel Lopez, director for Texas A&M Institute of Renewable Natural Resources, says the state lost over 1 million acres of privately-owned farm land and forest land [...]
As greenhouse gases reach their highest concentrations in human history, the Obama administration has pledged to take action on climate change, unveiling a Clean Power Plan this summer to go after a prime target of those emissions: coal power plants. And true to form, that plan is running into opposition from lawmakers and regulators in [...]
Texas will need to make big cuts in carbon emissions over the next 15 years under a mandate from the Environmental Protection Agency. You can expect to hear complaints about the EPA rule at a two-day meeting of the House Environmental Regulations Committee starting Monday. The federal agency and state leaders have been at odds for years and many conservatives [...]
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