Sustainability

The Big Story

Without power, millions sweat through Houston heat wave

Millions across Houston and surrounding regions are facing a June heat wave without air conditioning or refrigeration in the aftermath of Hurricane Beryl's assault on the city.

"Those bricks get hot after a while — you have to get out," Leola Cornett-Treya of Northeast Houston told The Hill, referring to the brick-built homes that make up much of the city's building stock.

More than a million households in Texas's biggest city are without power, most of them customers of regional utility CenterPoint Energy. In surrounding regions like Polk County, as many as 85 percent of residents still don't have power.

Every household without power equates to between two and three people lacking energy.

The power outages correspond with other crises:

Much of the county land around Houston is under a boil water advisory.
An oppressive heat has settled over the region in the wake of Beryl, an unusually early storm which maintained hurricane strength — and wind speed — throughout most of its passage over the city, according to local meteorologists at Space City Weather.

That destruction has worsened Houstonians' exposure to another anomaly: Heat.

Much of the Gulf and Atlantic Coasts of the U.S. are sweltering under dangerous heat indices — the composite metric of heat and humidity — of above 103 Fahrenheit, according to The New York Times.
While the Houston area's projected heat index is a bit below that — hovering just below a still-hazardous 100 until the weekend — it is expected to crest at 104 by Saturday.

To make matters worse, the heat index assumes that a person is sitting in the shade, which doesn't account for the power of Houston's tropical sun beating down on roofs, streets and brick facades, heating the air inside darkened homes.

That lack of electricity is driving frustration toward CenterPoint. But it is also dangerous, particularly for those suffering from additional health complications. Diabetics need electricity to keep their insulin cool; people on oxygen or CPAP machines need it to breathe.

But everyone — especially the elderly and very young — needs power to ward off the risk of dangerous overheating. And the need for refrigeration is similarly universal: In the Texas summer, food goes bad fast once electricity is cut off, leaving people hungry.

And for those with electric stoves, no power means no ability to boil unsafe water; lack of water, in turn, worsens the risk of dangerous heat.

Local organizations — and the city as a whole — are kicking into gear. The city has made use of the Metro bus and train system free to help people get to publicly run cooling centers or the homes of relatives.

Then there are community groups. Cornett-Treya — an assistant Hub Captain with the community group Northeast Action Collective — helps run one of an Inflation Reduction Act-funded network of small solar-and-battery-powered resilience centers, based out of a local homes, which provide a place for a dozen households in the area to cool down, charge their phones or get a sandwich.

"If we don't have it, we know where to get it," Cornett-Treya said: batteries of all sizes, fans, food, cooling packs for insulin, tarps, water.

This, she told The Hill, is the Houston way. "We pick up our boots, forget about our problems, and do what we have to do."

Welcome to The Hill's Sustainability newsletter, I'm Saul Elbein — every week we follow the latest moves in the growing battle over sustainability in the U.S. and around the world.

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Essential Reads

Latest news impacting sustainability this week and beyond:

Bipartisan lawmakers introduce bill that could help pave the way for carbon import tax

Rep. John Curtis (R-Utah), the GOP nominee for retiring Sen. Mitt Romney's (R) seat, introduced bipartisan legislation with Rep. Scott Peters (D-Calif.) calling for a federal study of carbon intensity for common domestic imports, potentially paving the way for a carbon import tax.

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California must retire gas-guzzling trucks to meet 2045 emissions targets: Study

California must retire existing heavy-duty trucks to meet the state's 2045 carbon neutrality goals, in addition to promoting the purchase of zero-emissions vehicles (ZEVs), a new study has found. Stricter policies that cover both the rollout of zero-emissions trucks and the early retirement of gas-guzzlers could slash cumulative greenhouse gas emissions by 64 percent, according to the study, published on Monday in Environmental …

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House passes GOP bills aiming to block dishwasher and fridge efficiency standards

The House on Tuesday passed a pair of bills that aim to block efficiency standards for refrigerators and dishwashers — the latest in a series of Republican efforts to hit the administration on household appliance restrictions.

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California advances first-in-nation plan to set water budgets for cities statewide

California officials have approved a first-of-its-kind regulation that will set long-term limits on the amounts of water the state’s urban utilities can use on an annual basis. The State Water Resources Control Board granted unanimous support Wednesday to sweeping conservation measures that are expected to generate about 500,000 acre-feet in water savings each year by 2040. The quantity conserved is enough to quench the …

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Battery Bungle

Lithium-ion batteries carry risk of forever chemicals

The growing use of lithium-ion batteries in phones, cars and utility storage brings with it a hidden risk: Pollution by PFAS-bearing chemicals, a new study has found.

The soil, snow and water around battery manufacture facilities and landfills in three countries are polluted with a novel form of PFAS, according to results published on Monday in Nature Communications.

"Slashing CO2 emissions with innovations like electric cars is critical, but it shouldn't come with the side effect of increasing PFAS pollution," coauthor Jennifer Guelfo of Texas Tech said in a statement.

Current battery manufacture relies on a class of synthetic chemicals called Bis-perfluoroalkyl sulfonamides (bis-FASIs), which are used to keep electrical components stable amid the heat and caustic chemistries of their manufacture.

"In North Carolina specifically, we've found these chemicals seeping from landfills into leachates," Duke University scientist Lee Ferguson said in a statement.

The levels of bis-FASIs in the leachate are at about 1 part per billion — or about 15 times the maximum level estimated by the Environmental Protection Agency to be safe for other PFAS derivatives.

The authors emphasized the importance of rapidly designing safer alternatives.

"We should use the momentum behind current energy initiatives to ensure that new energy technologies are truly clean," they wrote.

On Our Radar

Upcoming news themes and events we're watching:

The Lake Fire, California's second-largest wildfire this year has already burned 28,000 acres (43 square miles) amid a brutal heat wave. This season has already seen nearly 140,000 acres (220 square miles) burned, as opposed to less than 8,000 acres by this time last year.

"What we've seen so far in California – more than 600% increase in wildfires," Cal Fire Deputy Director Nick Schuler told CNN.
Some analysts at Goldman Sachs are souring on artificial intelligence, a voraciously water- and energy-dependent sector. The industry is expecting a coming $1 trillion in capital expenditure over the next few years — to unclear near-term benefit.

While real transformative changes are possible with the technology, they are a decade off — and the costs are here now, MIT professor Daron Acemoglu told Goldman. One aspect of that cost, Brian Janous of Microsoft told Goldman, was that "tech firms are starting to realize that power supply will be a significant constraint on the technology."

"Recognition of the problem is one thing. Janous added, "Solving it is a much more difficult challenge."

In Other News

Branch out with different reads from The Hill:

Biden points to Texas leaders over delay in Beryl aid

President Biden blamed the federal government’s delay in releasing aid to Texas in response to Hurricane Beryl on state leaders, saying they did not make a formal request for a major disaster declaration.

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FEMA unveils building restrictions in flood zones

The Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) on Wednesday announced finalized rules for the Federal Flood Risk Management Standard (FFRMS).

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Around The Nation

Local and state headlines on sustainability issues:

New CenterPoint Energy map shows repair work hasn't even started in many areas still without power (ABC 13 Houston)
Texas Leaders Worry That Bitcoin Mines Threaten to Crash the State Power Grid (InsideClimate News)
Hawai'i Gov. Josh Green signs bill banning seabed mining in state waters (Big Island Now)

What We're Reading

Sustainability news we've flagged from other outlets:

Home Insurance Rates in America Are Wildly Distorted. Here's Why. (The New York Times)
Bird flu response in Michigan sparks COVID-era worry on farms (Reuters)
How the last queen of Hawaiʻi is influencing the debate over deep-sea mining (Grist)