Energy & Environment

Since Republicans took full control of Washington, Central Texas Congressman Lamar Smith has become a leading voice in setting the party's agenda when it comes to science and environmental regulation. But some worry that agenda could have a chilling effect on research and policy. 

The bats that live under Austin’s Congress Avenue Bridge are back from their winter home in Mexico. But this year, Texas is a little more dangerous for bats. That’s because an invasive fungus that decimates bat populations is now officially in the state.

Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton is suing the federal government over the way it regulates nuclear waste storage.

The risk of damaging manmade earthquakes striking the Dallas-Fort Worth area is substantially lower than it was last year, according to a new earthquake hazard map released this week by the U.S. Geological Survey.

In much of Texas the sun is out, flowers are in bloom and you might be getting that springtime feeling. However, it’s still mid-February and it’s not your imagination: This has been another very warm winter.  

Republicans in Washington are planning to make good on promises to roll back federal regulations on everything from mining pollution to consumer protections for credit card holders.

To do it, they are using an obscure legislative tactic that’s been successful only once in history – a tactic has some legal scholars worried.

Intent on rolling back Obama-era regulations, Republican lawmakers in Washington have placed an EPA rule enacted in the wake of the fertilizer explosion plant in West, Texas, on the chopping block.

A few months ago, Austin launched a new recycling program. A company called Simple Recycling agreed to pick up people’s unwanted clothing and textiles right from their homes. It began distributing big green bags for residents to fill and put at their curbs, just like trash or recycling.

When Donald Trump was running for president he vowed to boost the U.S. oil and gas industry, much of it found right here in Texas. Now that he’s in office, some of his policies seem aimed at doing just that. But others are having the opposite effect.

Imagine a house. Now imagine the roof. What do you see? Some shingles. Maybe a chimney? But really there’s so much more.

District 7 City Council Member Leslie Pool has sponsored a resolution to make more Austin homes solar-ready. Part of that means leaving roof space on new construction without the pipes and vents that prevent solar panels from being installed.

This week has been a dizzying one for people working to understand and combat global warming.

Tweets on climate change from the account of the Badlands National Park were deleted. Plans to scrub climate information from Environmental Protection Agency websites were walked back by the Trump administration. Then, news broke that the budget for the EPA may be cut by $1 billion dollars.

Former Gov. Rick Perry faces a confirmation vote in the Senate on Tuesday for his nomination to lead the U.S. Department of Energy. Among all the questions Perry’s appointment has raised, one that’s gotten little scrutiny is what it might mean for natural gas prices.

Today, former Texas Gov. Rick Perry goes before the U.S. Senate for his confirmation hearing in the hopes of becoming the next secretary of the Department of Energy. 

Of course, Perry famously derailed his presidential bid in 2011 by forgetting the department’s name even as he vowed to abolish it in a GOP primary debate. But, while the former governor may have been – and, according to a New York Times report, may still be – fuzzy on the agency's purview, he is certainly not the only one.

Irving, Texas, oil giant Exxon Mobil must hand over internal documents about global warming to the Massachusetts attorney general, a federal judge ruled earlier this month. It was just the latest development in a strange legal battle that’s sucked in the Texas attorney general and cast a shadow over President-elect Donald Trump’s pick to head the State Department.

The water utility for the City of Austin is hosting two meetings today –  one in the morning and one this afternoon – to look at how Austinites pay for water. The meetings are part of a process called a cost of service rate study that could determine how water rates are calculated in coming years.  

On Sunday a group of  birders will meet in Bastrop to take part in the longest running citizen science project in the world. It’s called the Christmas Bird Count, it began 116 years ago.

With little fanfare the Environmental Protection Agency released a new environmental rule last week that would limit sulphur dioxide pollution from power plants as part of the EPA's Cross-State Air Pollution Rule.

A group of researchers from UT Austin says they’ve created a way to measure the true cost of power in the hopes of guiding America’s energy future.

The study takes into account the fact that the price we pay on our electric bill does not always reflect electricity’s true cost. Some power is subsidized. Some electric sources create public health and environmental problems that aren’t included in the cost.  Then there’s the expense of building and maintaining infrastructure to consider. 

Tomorrow, the Organization of Petroleum Exporting Countries (OPEC) meets in Vienna to try to figure out a way to cut oil production.  For decades OPEC’s set oil prices by controlling supply. So the meeting will be closely watched because it could lead to higher oil prices.

But, the idea to manipulate oil prices by setting limits on oil, didn’t start with OPEC. It started right here in Texas.

During the presidential campaign Donald Trump made a lot of promises about boosting America’s oil, gas and coal industries. Now that he is set to become president, Americans will find those promises easier to make than to keep.

After years of legal battles, the Environmental Protection Agency has started the process of removing Texas from a list of states that need to comply with requirements of one of its air pollution rules.

After last week’s presidential election, the company that owns the Keystone XL pipeline said it was interested in finishing out the project. The pipeline was originally planned to carry oil from the tar sands of Canada to the Texas Gulf Coast, but the part linking up the pipe on the U.S. border with Canada was stopped by President Obama.

Tonight, the public is invited to give its input at a hearing held by the Texas Commission on Environmental Quality (TCEQ) over a permit to allow Dripping Springs to dump almost a million gallons of treated wastewater into Onion Creek, about a day upstream of Austin. That idea has many people in Austin very worried. 

As soon as five years from now, global demand for oil might stop growing. That prediction may not seem surprising, if it came from an environmental group, but when oil giant Shell said as much in a recent conference call, it caused a stir.  Oil companies don’t usually talk publicly about people losing interest in their product.

Texas generates more wind power than any other state in the country. It’s a fact that a lot of people in the state like to crow about, but a new federal review of which states use the most wind as a percentage of their total electricity generation has called that into question. Texas didn’t make the top 10.