via Community Impact

This year’s Austin City Limits festival has several green initiatives to urge concert-goers to become more eco-friendly.

AUSTIN — Attendees can visit the ACL Cares section of the festival, where organizations such as Red Cross of Central Texas and the Texas Wildfire Relief Fund will accept donations for wildfire relief.

Austin Parks Foundation, Austin Music People, Anthropos Arts, Grounded in Music, HeadCount, Health Alliance for Austin Musicians, Love Hope Strength Foundation, One, Rock the Vote, SharedEarth.com and the SIMS Foundation will be on hand to promote parks and trails, music education, political activism and green living.

The Nature Conservancy, a global organization dedicated to protecting ecologically important land and water, will offer information about their mission.

The group recently released a list of “green bands” who help spread the message, including Pearl Jam, Jack Johnson, Guster, Willie Nelson, Dave Matthews Band, The Roots and the Court Yard Hounds, who perform this year.

“This is the first year we’re partnering with ACL and we are just thrilled because what our studies tell us is that the music industry is a really critical component of inspiring the next generation of environmental leaders,” said Vanessa Martin, spokeswoman for the Nature Conservancy’s Texas Chapter.

The study shows that teens and young adults today are almost as equally likely to listen to their favorite musician as they are to their parents or friends about environmental issues and the importance of nature.

That made the connection with ACL and Austin’s music scene that much more relevant, she said.

The organization plans to raffle off a large blue kayak, which also serves as a visual landmark to find the booth. They will also have personal cooling devices and information about water in Texas. Those who purchase a $10 membership will receive a limited edition ACL t-shirt.

Green Mountain Energy is offering carbon offsets along with ticket sales. The $3 “FanTag” offsets the equivalent of 220 pounds of carbon dioxide. The program is meant to make up for the emissions of generators, shore power, staff travel and festival vehicles.

Look for the ACL Cares section near the Barton Springs Road entrance or visit www.aclfestival.com.

When most people think of green energy and growing, they probably do most of their thinking on dry land. This is no surprise. In fact, it’s quite easy to forget about our autotrophic friend algae, peeking out from the water to say hello. Especially when in extreme cases, algal floods and their abundant decomposition ponds and lakes kill so many fish, tadpoles and worms within (but don’t blame the algae, phosphorus and nitrogen runoff invited them to the party).

AlgEternal, located just outside of Austin in Weimar, hopes to reconnect people with algae in a big way. They will soon open a facility in the J.J. Pickles Research Campus at UT, where they plan to grow a large amount of algae in a small space, using a vertical method that involves glass tubes, a process reminiscent of restructured mushroom farms with just a handful more of the precise technology needed with carbon fixing phototrophs (temperamental photosynthesizers).

This partnership between UT’s Electromechanical department, UTEX Culture Collection of Algae and the commercial company represents the vested interests of all three. The University has always been interested in the commercial production of bioefficient energy (they have their own green electric company, after all), while AlgEternal has received invaluable help and practical application from the Scientists at the University (especially the vast resources of the UTEX Culture Collection of Algae ).

The production of algae will be used for biofuels(because of their similar structure to petroleum) as well as for cosmetics and pharmaceutical use (algae produces up to 50% of their weight in vitamin rich oils), as well as having quite a bit of Omega 3 in it(which you might know if you’ve ever had the green kombucha). AlgEternal hopes to work with a neighboring company at the J.J. Pickles Campus OpenAlgae, who extracts oils, to create a thriving algae community, and hopefully inspire similar production methods around the country. They are not the first to harvest in this way, but have the potential to succeed on an entirely new scale).

The proposed rate increase of 13 percent would apply to all customer classes. The average residential electric bill will rise by about $15 a month.

A rate increase was last considered in 2006, but better than expected financial results the following years combined with budget-tightening and drawing down utility reserves allowed for a delay.

Austin Energy is proposing four residential rate design options and redesigned rates for commercial and residential customers, including consolidating these customers into seven classes, phasing-in demand charges over three years for the smallest commercial customers, adding a customer charge and a new electricity delivery charge, and increasing the power factor adjustment from 85 to 90 percent for commercial customers with a demand charge.

The city’s Electric Utility Commission will hold four public meetings on the proposed changes; Sept. 1, Sept. 19, Oct. 3 and Oct. 17.

The Austin City Council will hold public meetings in November and December with the goal of approving and implementing new rates by early 2012.

The Rate Analysis and Recommendations Report, the four residential rate design options, the commercial rate design, the schedule of public meetings and background information on prior public meetings can be found here.

Posted on August 24, 2011 at 6:00 am by Tom Fowler

A number of Texas power plants may need to cut back operations or shut down completely if the state’s severe drought continues into the fall, an official with Texas’ main transmission manager told FuelFix.

At least one North Texas power plant has had to reduce how much it generates because the water level in its cooling reservoir has fallen significantly, said Kent Saathoff, vice president of system planning and operations for the Electric Reliability Council of Texas.

If the state’s drought continues for much longer and water levels continue falling at other power plant reservoirs, other units could be forced to curtail operations or shut-down completely, Saathoff said.

“Right now we don’t have a significant problem with it, but it could become one,” Saathoff said in an interview. “This has been the driest 12-month stretch we’ve seen in Texas in a long time.”

ERCOT has declared power emergencies several times this summer as record demand met a large number of unplanned power plant outages. Plant operators say the long hot summer has also meant more wear-and-tear due to longer operating hours for power plants.

On Aug. 4 the state came close to initiating rolling blackouts when the margin between power supply and demand grew too  thin. It would have been just the fourth time in 21 years the state would have taken such extreme measures.

ERCOT – which oversees the high voltages transmission system that connects 75 percent of the state, including most major cities – can call on industrial customers to cut about 1,500 megawatts of demand during emergencies.

And in a few cases there are programs where utilities are able to temporarily cut residential demand during peak hours – Austin Energy has been able to cut 35 to 45 megawatts of peak demand by cycling off air conditioners in about 90,000 homes twice per hour for 10 minutes.

But with those resources close to tapped out during recent peak demand days, ERCOT asked two power plant operators – Garland Power & Light and NRG Energy – to bring two power plants each out of mothballs to have available through the end of October.

Garland’s two 61 megawatt gas-fired units were online this week while the two NRG gas-fired units located on the Houston Ship Channel are expected to be ready by Sept. 1.

ERCOT may need to ask other power plant operators to bring other mothballed units back online this winter if the drought continues, Saathoff said.

“There’s another 2,000 megawatts of mothballed capacity we can call on, but it will take a couple of months for them to come back,” he said.

For the time being, that appears to be all ERCOT can do to deal with the drought, he said.

“The bottom line is there’s not much we can do absent rain,” Saathoff said. “Cooling reservoirs just aren’t being replenished.”