The Energy Transition in Texas
Prof. Daniel Cohan
Rice University
Presentation to Nature
Conservancy of Texas
October 2024
Texas Electricity
2
Air quality and health impacts of Texas coal plants
3
(Strikethrough: Retired since 2017)
Parish and Martin Lake are #2 and #8 SO2 emitters nationally
4
National trends in�power plant emissions
5
CO2
SO2
DFW and Houston: “Severe” nonattainment of 2008 (75 ppb*) standard
6
U.S. map: https://www3.epa.gov/airquality/greenbook/map8hr_2008.html
Texas data: https://www.tceq.texas.gov/cgi-bin/compliance/monops/8hr_attainment.pl (2021-2023 data shown)
Houston: 83 ppb
Penalties for each class of nonattainment area
DFW:
81 ppb
San Antonio: 76 ppb
*Latest (2015) standard is 70 ppb
Expected Particulate Matter (PM2.5) nonattainment in Texas
7
EPA tightened standard from 12 to 9 µg/m3 in 2024
Sulfate is #2 component of�PM2.5 in Houston
8
Plot speciation for any location: https://gispub.epa.gov/air/trendsreport/2023/#pm2_5_composition
Sulfate
Organic C
Crustal
Sea salt
Data from Deer Park monitor
Note: Houston’s only speciation monitor is in Deer Park near the Ship Channel, but highest PM is at North Loop and North Wayside monitors
February 2021 blackouts
Demand would have been winter record
Supply fell 40% short
Almost no imports (isolated grid)
Coal: ~40% down
Wind turbines froze
Nuclear: 1 unit down
Gas: ~40% down
Nearly 200 deaths, mostly from hypothermia and CO poisonings
Causes of February blackouts
10
Majority of outages were from natural gas (power plants and fuel)
Trends in ERCOT fuel mix
11
Rapid growth of wind, solar, and batteries
12
Wind
Solar
39
GW
28
GW
1 GW
(2017)
1 GW
(2002)
Batteries
1 GW
(2021)
9
GW
Texas Competitive Renewable Energy Zones: $7B for transmission
13
Texas CREZ
For comparison, generation often costs ~$20-60/MWh
https://www.ferc.gov/legal/staff-reports/2017/transmission-investment-metrics.pdf
Solved the “chicken and egg” problem of building wind farms and transmission lines by targeting several windy zones.
Now, CREZ lines are becoming congested.
Other regions have not invested as much in transmission recently
Wind and Solar Curtailments
14
Solar curtailments at 5 pm by month
Wind curtailments in April by hour
Nationally, what’s in the queues is cleaner than what’s on the grids
15
Solar panel prices since 1975
17
Renewable electricity global deployment and costs
18
Cumulative deployment (log scale)
Cost (2022$/MWh) (log scale)
Solar PV
Onshore wind
Offshore wind
Land Use for Energy Today
19
Land use for net-zero strategies
20
Princeton Net-Zero America study:
High electrification scenario
High Electrification, low RE scenario
Low electrification scenario
High Electrification, high RE scenario
Land impact depends on more than simply acreage
21
http://www.thescarletbeard.com/img/Indonesian_coal_mine.jpg
Conclusions
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