San Antonio is trying to marry investment in renewables with economic development in an effort to keep the cost of electricity as low as possible while getting as many jobs as possible, but the city has had a learning curve in this process, yet they remain confident that this vision can come to fruition.

Thirty two companies initially submitted 111 proposals several months ago. The utility then re-opened the bidding process and expected to make a decision by Sept. 1. Even as CPS Energy zeroed in on two finalists, Lewis said, other companies around the globe approached the utility with their own ideas and CPS Energy officials decided to end negotiations and open a third round of bidding after rewriting the specifications of what it wants.

So the problem lies not with no takers, but with many and new ideas coming forward to possibly make this move by San Antonio more profitable.  What this Central Texas metroplex does with this process could set the trend for the country and remains an experiment to watch.

Monthly wind energy graph

Some interesting facts show that wind generation continues to provide a significant amount of energy to the grid as the technology matures, new turbines are developed and better tools are put in place to maximize the turbines generation. The effects of the CREZ (certified renewable energy zone) transmission line build out are starting to be seen as congestion from wind rich west Texas is reduced and more energy is being able to be delivered to the major urban ares. The report shows that wind generation provided 9.9% of the total energy used from January thru June of this year.

Other good news is that the capacity factor (100% capacity factor would be a perfect generator running flat out all of the time all 8760 hours of the year) for the wind fleet has now reached 38.3%  and continues to increase, that’s better than a lot of natural gas plants.

In addition on June 19, 2011, at 10:26 PM, ERCOT set a record for instantaneous wind generation of 7,355 MW (which represented 77.6% of installed wind generation capacity and 14.6% of the ERCOT load at the time).  This broke the previous instantaneous wind generation record of 7,227 MW set on December 10, 2010. So much for wind not working in the summertime.

The amount of wind produced energy continues to increase and the new coastal wind farms have been a major contributor.  According to the CEO of ERCOT wind has saved us a couple of times this year. Back during the February 3rd rolling blackouts the wind farms played a large roll in keeping the grid running when the aging fleet of fossil fuel generators, along with some brand new ones, failed in the cold.  Then during the current heat wave, the coastal wind farms supplied around 2000 mw of much needed energy during one of the highest energy demand days, keeping the lights on. Perhaps the PUC should start paying more attention and let us add some solar to the mix instead of letting the 500mw non-wind project expire as they did.

ERCOT Wind Generation Capacity

Recently San Antonio put out a request for a large solar project and was bombarded with proposals.  ERCOT then announced they are planning to un-mothball several old gas plants just in case we run short on energy again.  It’s the same thing we saw during the legislative session – the fossil fuel companies got to keep billions in tax breaks but solar didn’t get a dime.   Now the PUC is having a meeting (August 22nd) on how they can “fix” the market to get more generation built when they already have the tools and the opportunity staring them in the face.

During a recent ERCOT meeting held at the peak of the energy demand, I over heard folks saying how “it sure would be nice to have some more solar on the system.” Perhaps the politicians should get out of the way and let the engineers do their job.   The public power utilities (municipally owned and rural electric cooperatives) are leading the way.  San Antonio is looking to build 400mw utility scale solar, Austins 30mw Webberville project moving along and several other Munis and Co-ops looking to build solar projects.  But where is the much vaunted deregulated energy market when we need them?  Relying on 30-50years old smelly, toxin spewing existing fleets – or business as usual.

As Texas bakes in the the record summer heat wave and our scarce water resources are being sucked up by traditional power plants ( a typical coal plant can use 10 million gallons of water a day) low impact non polluting energy sources are being allowed to languish on the sidelines. Its time to get with it, and bring some new industries, more jobs and clean renewable energy to the Texas grid to keep the lights on and meet the EPA regulations for clean air and water for us and our children to enjoy. Companies want to build 3000 MW of offshore wind beyond the barrier islands south of Corpus Christi, and there is a 10,000 mw farm that is in the plans to be built up in the Panhandle.

To paraphrase, the answer my friends truly seems to be blowing in the wind, just as the sun comes up every morning.

CPS Energy is the nation’s largest city-owned utility and supplies both natural gas and electricity to the nearly 1.4 million residents of 9^th largest city in the US.  San Antonio is on a path to reduce its reliance on fossil-fueled generation and boost its use of renewable resources, such as wind and solar power, to 20 percent, or 1,500 megawatts, by 2020.

Stricter regulations being formulated by the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency to reduce air and water pollution as well as to control coal waste are expected to force retirement of between 30,000 and 70,000 megawatts of coal generation in the next few years, according to industry studies and San Antonio’s efforts to get ahead of these regulations is pushing them to the forefront of a new energy future here in Texas.

It would appear that the issues facing NRG’s Japanese partners (including Tepco, the beleaguered owners of the doomed Fukushima nuclear plant) are giving everyone pause in their relentless pursuit of the STP expansion.

Texas counties served by AACOG

San Antonio, which sits just north of what many say is one of the largest oil and gas reserves in the country known as the Eagle Ford, is a heart beat away from violating federal air quality standards for ground-level ozone. It seems it is only a matter of time before the increased emissions from the Eagle Ford could drift up on prevailing winds, pushing the area out of compliance.

With drilling expected to increase over the next decade, those responsible for this region’s air quality say the increased pollution could make it difficult to remain under federal limits.  In the past decade, San Antonio’s ozone levels have decreased by 13 percent while its population has increased 13 percent, managing to stay just ahead of federal standards.  However, once a region falls out of compliance, efforts to get back in are time-consuming, politically unpopular and expensive.

It is going to be a tough contest for the environment to compete with the hype about the economic benefits (which always fail to take into account the economic costs to the region for these types of activities – increased health care costs, decreased quality of life costs, and the cost of coming back into compliance with federal air quality standards).

According to a study by the Center for Business Research at the University of Texas at San Antonio and commissioned by America’s Natural Gas Association:

Activity in the Eagle Ford in 2010 alone generated more than $2.9 billion in total revenue, supported roughly 12,600 full-time jobs and provided nearly $47.6 million in local government revenue.

Last year there were 72 active oil leases, some of which may have more than one well, and 158 producing gas wells.

However, the number of drilling permits issued by the Texas Railroad Commission, which regulates the state’s oil and gas industry, has reached 1,132 as of February. In just one year, the output of crude oil, condensate and other liquids nearly quadrupled to 3.9 million barrels.

And the boom has just begun; the UTSA study forecasts that 5,000 more wells could be drilled by 2020.

So far, no regulatory agency has begun comprehensive air monitoring in the Eagle Ford area, meaning there’s no baseline to measure any increased pollution.

Models for other regions of the country show drilling and related emissions can increase ground-level ozone significantly and the sheer volume of drilling that’s expected over the next decade, will require Alamo Area Council of Governments (AACOG) to add a new category, for drilling and recovery, into its air pollution forecasting models.

The San Antonio Express News writes about the area:

The Eagle Ford shale covers a swath roughly 50 miles wide and 400 miles long, from Maverick and Webb counties sweeping north and east up to Leon and Houston counties, but not including Bexar County. Unlike other large shale formations that have recently been tapped, the Eagle Ford includes a good deal of oil, mostly along the northern reach.

Because oil prices are high and natural gas prices low at the moment, there’s more activity in the oil region at this time, industry analysts say.

Drilling has occurred in South Texas for decades, but the oil and gas trapped in the deeper, dense rock layers once were too expensive to reach. Advances in drilling technology, most notably hydraulic fracturing and horizontal drilling, have allowed an unprecedented amount of hydrocarbons to be extracted.

“Fracking,” as it’s known, forces millions of gallons of water, mixed with sand and a variety of chemicals, into shale formations, forcing open fissures to allow the natural gas and oil to escape. Horizontal drilling allows for one hole to be drilled vertically, then one or more pipes to branch out into the shale.

Together, these techniques have spawned a natural gas boom in the country, with some industry experts estimating a 100-year supply of a fuel that burns more cleanly than coal and could help push the country toward energy independence.

In other parts of the country the boom is well under way, and as drilling has increased, so have complaints about its environmental impacts, most notably drinking water contamination.  While it remains unclear whether fracturing has contaminated drinking water, the EPA last month agreed to study the entire life cycle of the gas production process, to determine how it can affect drinking water supplies.

While water has gotten the lion’s share of the attention thus far, air quality concerns also are increasing and seem to be the area of most concern to San Antonio as they look toward increased drilling activities in the region.  Let’s hope they can stay ahead of this new boom.

Related Articles

• Fracking Has Added Another Problem (fool.com)

Greg Harman of the San Antonio Current provides an update to his readers:

Though the nuclear discussion in city circles has cooled dramatically since CPS Energy extracted itself from a 50-percent share in the proposed doubling of the South Texas Project nuclear complex down to a mere 7 percent, the project’s key boosters have continued scrambling to make the project as attractive as possible to the U.S. Department of Energy and — more recently — the Japan Bank for International Cooperation. To pretty-up the massively expensive project (in the course of the local debate, it shot from around $8 billion to $18 billion), NRG and Toshiba have rounded back on Austin, hoping to win a change of heart from a newer mayor and council. Years back, the city, a 16-percent partner in STP’s Units 1 and 2, voted not to partner on the expansion, citing concerns for both likely cost overruns (how prescient) and the troubling question of how to dispose of the high-level radioactive waste that is left behind.

Click here to read the whole blog post.

One of these two reactors isn't working. And they call renewable energy unreliable!

South Texas Project has since announced it will extend its Unit 2 outage to repair a seal-housing gasket on a reactor coolant pump, which moves water through the steam generator.   The company has decided that, while the gasket’s condition is within operating criteria, STP will make the needed repairs, while they also continue to run unit 1.

A repair schedule is being finalized and restoration of the unit is projected to be completed sometime in November, but we here wonder if it won’t be even into December before it is repaired.

In the meantime, Austin Energy, which gets 27% of its energy from STP, and San Antonio’s CPS, which gets 38% of its energy from STP will be purchasing energy from other sources to make up for the loss from the STP outage.  Let’s hope we don’t have a major cold front come in before STP unit 2 is back online, or these energy companies could be looking at a lowered earnings projection for their final quarter.

This continues a banner few weeks for the nuke industry, who had to shut down Vermont Yankee because of a radioactive water leak and an unexplained transformer explosion at Indian Point 2, a reactor just 24 miles north of New York City, a known secondary target of terrorists on 9/11.

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By promoting cleaner energy, cleaner government, and cleaner air for all Texans, we hope to provide for a healthy place to live and prosper. We are Public Citizen Texas.

Related Articles

• Nuclear demand on hold (washingtontimes.com)
• Calif. nuke meltdown site finally set for cleanup (msnbc.msn.com)
• Deal to clean up LA-area nuclear accident site (seattletimes.nwsource.com)
• CPA fails its own candor standard (mysanantonio.com)

From the CPS web site.

CPS Energy Rising to Be National Leader in Green Power

CPS Energy’s renewable energy portfolio will increase by 30 megawatts (MW) with this week’s signing of a new 25-year purchase power agreement (PPA) with SunEdison, a global leader in delivering solar electricity. With the SunEdison agreement, CPS Energy now has 44 MW of solar generation under contract, solidifying its position as the leader in renewable energy resources among municipally owned utilities in the nation.  The contract moves CPS Energy closer to its vision of providing customers with 1,500 MW of renewable energy (wind and solar) by 2020.

“The market for solar energy continues to improve, and this agreement takes advantage of that,” said President and CEO Doyle Beneby. “In addition to more than 40 MW of solar generation, CPS Energy has rebates that incentivize the use of solar by homeowners and businesses, and a developing distributed-generation program. With 300 days of sunshine each year, it just makes sense that San Antonio becomes a hub for solar energy in the U.S.”

By fall of 2012, Maryland-based SunEdison is expected to complete installation of 120,000 single-axis tracking photovoltaic (PV) panels that will follow the sun throughout the day, generating a total of 30 MW at three locations across the CPS Energy service area. The three locations will be announced later this year, and construction is expected to begin in early 2012. The combined energy output of the three facilities is expected to be approximately 54,000 megawatt hours—enough to power about 3,700 homes.

“We are pleased to provide this long-term, renewable energy solution for our customers,” added CPS Energy Chief Sustainability Officer Cris Eugster.  “In addition to helping us meet our goal to provide 100 MW of solar generation by 2020, we’re also looking to SunEdison to be a key partner in transforming San Antonio into a national hub for solar energy.”

“SunEdison is committed to the growing Texas solar energy market, and we look forward to expanding our utility scale presence in the state in 2011,” said Carlos Domenech, President of SunEdison.  “Our development capabilities, financing power and execution track record enables municipal utilities, like CPS Energy, to benefit from economically viable solar solutions.”

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By promoting cleaner energy, cleaner government, cleaner cars, and cleaner air for all Texans, we hope to provide for a healthy place to live and prosper. We are Public Citizen Texas.

This ran in today’s Texas Energy Report, but want to give all of our Public Citizen Texas members and followers a taste if you’re not a subscriber to the Energy Report.

SMITTY: TWO CITIES TOOK OPPOSITE PATHS IN SELECTING UTILITY GM

An Op-Ed by Public Citizen’s Tom “Smitty” Smith.

The recently announced new general managers for Austin and San Antonio couldn’t be more different, and may have huge economic repercussions for both cities.

Austin has chosen Larry Weis, a “green” general manager from Turlock, California, Irrigation District. San Antonio’s CPS Energy has chosen Doyle N. Beneby Jr., from Exelon Corp. While Mr. Weis opposes nuclear power due to its costs, Mr. Beneby comes from a utility that has the largest nuclear assets in the country.

The process that each city underwent in selecting their new managers stands in stark contrast with one another. Austin announced its finalists over a month ago and invited the public to question the candidates.

CPS kept its candidates secret. In light of this lack of information, I am left to wonder what San Antonio’s fate will be given the recent track record of Exelon. Could Mr. Beneby signal the re-nuclearization of San Antonio or does he represent a future of renewable energy and green power?

Although San Antonio is still reeling from the trebling of cost of expanding the South Texas Nuclear Project, the CPS board has chosen someone from Exelon, which has tried and failed to buy NRG Energy, CPS’s partner in the nuclear expansion project, while simultaneously trying to develop another nuclear plant near Victoria.

While Exelon does have a mix of fossil fuel, hydroelectric, solar, landfill gas and wind generation sources, it only amounts to a meager 7 percent of its generation assets. The other 93 percent is nuclear.

Since the public was not privy to the public utility’s selection process, we are left to speculate what Beneby ‘s plans are.

Will the vision of Mayor Julian Castro and the legacy of former Mayor Phil Hardberger to turn San Antonio into a green city come true, or will San Antonio slip back into the nuclear spiral?

On the bright side, Exelon has a strategy to reduce, offset or displace more than 15 million metric tons of greenhouse gas emissions per year by 2020.  This is an amount greater than the company’s 2001 carbon footprint and equivalent to taking nearly 3 million cars off the road.

On the dark side, most reductions could be through more nuclear power. In addition, Mr. Beneby participated in Exelon’s City Solar, a 10-megawatt solar installation located on a 41-acre brownfield in a Chicago neighborhood – the nation’s largest urban solar power plant, and Exelon has long been known for its energy efficiency programs.

Mr. Weis, on the other hand, has strong green credentials. He has developed strong energy efficiency and renewable energy programs (Weis’ utility has 28 percent renewable energy compared to Exelon’s 1 percent renewable portfolio) and has voiced his concern about global warming and the costs of coal which could force Austin Energy to act sooner than later to shut down its coal plant due expensive pollution control upgrades at the Fayette Power Plant.

The good news is over the last five years, there has been a real collaboration between environmental groups and clean tech companies in Austin around the idea of using renewable energy, energy efficiency and energy storage along with smart grid development as a way to reduce pollution, costs, and the need to build new expensive power plants.

Mr. Weis is the driver to put really smart people from higher education, utility, and high tech industries together to make the products and create the systems necessary for the new clean energy economy and meet our energy needs while creating local wealth.

The choices could not be more different, but both new leaders have the opportunity to choose to develop their utility’s enormous renewable energy and energy efficiency potential and use their purchasing power to buy these services locally, thus creating wealth for their communities.

Or CPS’s Beneby can continue to invest in nuclear power plants built in Japan and create wealth for other nations.

The strange “tale of two cities” and their contrasting utilities will continue.

Tom “Smitty” Smith directs the Texas office of Public Citizen, a national consumer and environmental watchdog group.

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By promoting cleaner energy, cleaner government, and cleaner air for all Texans, we hope to provide for a healthy place to live and prosper. We are Public Citizen Texas.

Austin should be proud. Out of 19 cities studied in this report, our capital city was highly ranked on outdoor water ordinances and has an aggressive toilet replacement program. San Antonio has also set the bar high for effective and diverse water efficiency programs across the country. The cities surveyed were measured on: water pricing structure, water saving goals, toilet replacement, conservation funding, and outdoor watering. Though many cities and towns across the nation have made great strides to reduce water use, the report’s conclusion is that most cities are not doing as much as they could to efficiently use existing water supplies.

“The best and cheapest source of water is the one that’s already on tap,” said Ken Kramer, state director of the Sierra Club. “The key measure of success for any water conservation program is reducing water use on a per person basis and we recognize that takes time. In this report, we looked at some measures cities can be using right now to see if they are moving in the right direction. Our review makes it clear that while a handful of cities are working to maximize their water-use efficiency, most cities are doing little to make the best use of existing water supplies.”

As stated in the video Drop by Drop, both population increase and climate change are significant players in the reason behind our rapid water depletion. The population of Texas is expected to more than double by the year 2060, and the municipal and agriculture water demand will increase with it (Texas Water Development Board). What does this mean? It means that as consumers of water we have a responsibility to be aware of what we can do to conserve and how to hold our city accountable.

How to start? (1) Read the study; it is user friendly; (2) share it with your family, friends, and co-workers; and (3) act on it. Be a part of the ripple that will conserve our water. Don’t watch it go down the drain.

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By promoting cleaner energy, cleaner government, and cleaner air for all Texans, we hope to provide for a healthy place to live and prosper. We are Public Citizen Texas.

Today’s announcement that as a part of a settlement with NRG Energy, CPS Energy will withdraw its application for a federal loan guarantee for the South Texas (Nuclear) Project (STP) expansion and end further investment in the project demonstrates nuclear plants are too costly and too risky to build.

CPS Energy and the San Antonio City Council have signaled their desire to stop throwing good money after bad at STP, a message we hope will tell the U.S. Department of Energy that this plant is a poor candidate for federal loan guarantees. This debacle should show the federal government that nuclear loan guarantees are a fundamentally flawed and wasteful use of taxpayer money.

At $18.2 billion, the cost of STP has already tripled in just a year. When STP 1 and 2 were built, they ended up being six times over-budget and eight years behind schedule, and STP 3 and 4 look like they are on track to beat out that poor performance record.

Today’s announcement is a victory for the many citizens of San Antonio that have worked so hard in the last year to bring openness and accountability to the city’s participation in this project. We applaud CPS for wisely seeing the futility of wasting more time and energy on this flawed nuclear endeavor. We hope that they will be satisfied with the deal they’ve gotten and avoid the temptation to increase their ownership in the project. CPS has finally reached a settlement that shields San Antonio ratepayers from the financial risks of yet another nuclear deal gone wrong. Any future investment would throw that protection to the wind.

On Thursday, the City Council will vote on a proposed rate increase for CPS. The City Council should put a firewall in that proposal to ensure that no unauthorized money will be siphoned off to buy a bigger stake in STP.  San Antonio can’t afford to let this rate increase become a back door to continued nuclear investment.

We also have to wonder how NRG will move forward, without another clearly delineated partner in the project. Less than a month ago, NRG announced that if CPS “does not meet future obligations representative of its ownership interest in the site”, they “will wind down the project as quickly and as economically as possible.” We certainly hope that NRG CEO David Crane will remain true to that expressed intent to protect his shareholders from the next financial failure in a long historic line of overly expensive, poorly executed nuclear projects.

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By promoting cleaner energy, cleaner government, and cleaner air for all Texans, we hope to provide for a healthy place to live and prosper. We are Public Citizen Texas.

A resolution backing STP Units 3 & 4, possibly within the next few days, may be at least partly the outcome of a meeting Matagorda County Judge Nate McDonald and Bay City Mayor Richard Knapik had with San Antonio Mayor Julian Castro last Friday.

Whaaa–? The announcement seemed to be coming out of left field. After all the scandal and controversy of the last few months, a statement of support for STP expansion from San Antonio City Council is about the last thing I’d expect to see.  But before I had a chance to investigate, the intrepid Greg Harman of the San Antonio Current (who just this fall we gave an award to for “Best Environmental Journalist”) already had all the answers.

In a nutshell: rest easy my duckies, the Bay City Tribune’s announcement was just wishful thinking on the part of Matagorda County Judge Nate McDonald (who is no fan of us, boy oh boy), Bay City Mayor Richard Knapik, and Mike Reddell, the author of the article in question.  From Harman himself,

No such resolution is on the horizon for San Antonio, where the proposed expansion has fallen into deep disfavor after CPS Energy officials sought to cover up escalating cost estimates. The closest thing matching Reddell’s statements would be an expected CPS Energy Board of Trustees vote on whether or not to continue in the construction of two new reactors with NRG Energy, at all. However, that vote was delayed yesterday.

Harman’s article is well worth reading for the rest of the story on the Tribune’s journalistic integrity. Crazy story there, check it out!

Monday night CPS will be taking comments from the public on the proposed rate increase. This is short notice but we need a strong showing. We are at the end of a long struggle to have a major impact on how our energy company operates.

Please encourage your members to attend the meeting and give public comments at Villita Assembly Building, 401 Villita St at 6 p.m. on Monday, February 8, 2010.

Registration starts at 5 pm.

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By promoting cleaner energy, cleaner government, and cleaner air for all Texans, we hope to provide for a healthy place to live and prosper. We are Public Citizen Texas.

A critical court ruling today rang the first chime in what could be the death knell of the so-called “nuclear renaissance,” starting with the failed expansion of the South Texas Project (STP).

This afternoon’s ruling by 408th District Court Judge Larry Noll that CPS Energy can safely withdraw from the proposed STP expansion project without losing all its investment offers the utility and the city of San Antonio the cue they’ve been waiting for to exit the national nuclear stage. Combined with the NRG Energy CEO’s announcement during a shareholder and press conference call this morning that NRG would “wind down the project as quickly and economically as possible” if CPS withdraws or STP does not receive federal loan guarantees, this news marks a major blow to those who claim nuclear power is a viable alternative to fossil fuel energy. The expansion project calls for two new nuclear reactors at a site with two existing reactors.

slide 8 of NRG's "STP 3&4 Nuclear Project and CPS Litigation" presentation given at shareholder and media conference call Friday, January 29, 2010 8:00 a.m. ET

These events give credence to the contention made over the past five years by opponents of nuclear power that it is a needlessly expensive and risky way to meet future energy needs.. In less than a year, the price of the STP nuclear expansion ballooned from around $5 billion to more than $18 billion. Given this case study of nuclear power’s failure, we must call into question the federal government’s decision to increase federal loan guarantees to support oversized, untenable projects that are already proving too risky for private investors.

Public Citizen calls on both CPS Energy and NRG Energy to stop throwing good money after bad with their nuclear expansion plans and halt the project. Thankfully, San Antonio Mayor Julian Castro intervened by putting the project on hold before costs jumped too far out of San Antonio’s reach. Given the court’s announcement that the city’s interests are protected, we hope San Antonio will take the next responsible step and bow out entirely.

Statement of Tom “Smitty” Smith, Director of Public Citizen’s Texas Office

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By promoting cleaner energy, cleaner government, and cleaner air for all Texans, we hope to provide for a healthy place to live and prosper. We are Public Citizen Texas.

Main Plaza (in front of City Hall) — Rally & Press Conference

Two national coalitions, the Energy Action Coalition (EAC) and the Center for Community Change (CCC) join with Southwest Workers Union and local grassroots organizations to call on Mayor Castro to take real steps towards reducing energy consumption and generating good, green jobs for the City. Wearing green hard hats, young leaders of organizations from North Dakota to Florida, Washington to Arizona support the fight against expansion of the South Texas Project, to phase out coal and dirty energy sources, to create a comprehensive free weatherization program for low-income families, to invest in solar energy and for a job creation programs in the green energy sector.

“It is time to get San Antonio back to work in clean, green industries. We call on Mayor Castro to listen to the people’s voices and make San Antonio a leader in the transition to clean energy, and in the creation of green community jobs, developing a long-term, positive vision for the well-being of working families and the planet,” stated Guadalupe Alvarado, community leader of SWU.

The three organizations will present a letter to Mayor Castro requesting support for a Community Jobs programs, asking for a formalization of commitments expressed in Mission Verde, and supporting solutions to climate change that benefit the working-class people of the City. EAC and CCC support the community’s call for a green jobs program to help communities make homes more energy efficient while also providing needed jobs. Specifically, EAC and CCC support:

• Hire locally. At least 80% of employees used in all CPS and COSA efficiency and renewable programs should be hired from the local work force.
• Green jobs should be living wage jobs. Workers participating in efficiency and renewable programs should not earn less than 180% of the state minimum wage.
• Hire a diverse workforce. Historically disadvantaged or underrepresented people, including people of color, women, and low‐income residents of the city should perform no less than 30% of total trades & technical project hours.
• Create a highly‐skilled workforce. Resources for continuing education and certification should be made available to those coming into the industry
• Establish green job training programs in urban-center high schools as well as internship programs for young people.
• Create a sustainability and environmental policy program in ACCD as a pathway to green careers, ensuring that young people from our communities have the opportunity to participate in the new green economy as thinkers and visionaries.

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By promoting cleaner energy, cleaner government, and cleaner air for all Texans, we hope to provide for a healthy place to live and prosper. We are Public Citizen Texas.

The center will bring together sustainability education and the City’s green jobs ambitions by teaching students weatherization techniques and offering on-the-job training.  The project will “provide jobs that lift up the neighborhood“, offer “a 21st-century education in one of the poorest neighborhoods in San Antonio” and will give a new lease on life to a previously abandoned school building.  The center’s centerpiece is a zero-energy, solar powered house that students at Texas A&M built modularly for the 2007 Solar Decathalon competition.

The Mission Verde Center is an exciting step towards San Antonio’s vision of decentralized, local power and an accessible, inclusive green economy strong enough to lift all boats. As Greg Harman, environmental reporter for the San Antonio Current, put it

Community green-power centers like the Cooper Center, when hitched to a soon-to-be established city program expected to allow all income levels to receive loans for solar power and energy efficiency upgrades — loans which can in turn be paid off through the energy savings realized by the homeowner — have the potential to forever change the way San Antonio is powered.

Projects like this represent, in my opinion, one of the most exciting aspects of the climate movement.  In our switch to a cleaner,greener America, we have the opportunity to simultaneously tackle job losses, social inequality, public health, and environmental degradation. Kudos to the city of San Antonio for taking steps to create an inclusive green economy that would make Dr. Martin Luther King proud.

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By promoting cleaner energy, cleaner government, and cleaner air for all Texans, we hope to provide for a healthy place to live and prosper. We are Public Citizen Texas.

January 21st — an inaugural San Antonio networking event, an introduction to San Antonio’s green business community

January 27th –  green tradeshow workshop & show featuring members of Texas Green Network (Austin)

it would halt $10 billion in projects, including plans to build two new nuclear reactors at the Turkey Point plant near Miami and upgrade two new generators.

If the economy improves, FPL can ask for a larger rate increase at a later date — but for the time being, this is a major victory for consumers and anti-nuclear advocates alike.  Florida has seen the folly of forcing citizens to pay large rate increases and bear the long-term burden for risky investments in nuclear power — let’s just hope that the San Antonio City Council comes to the same conclusion.  They’re set to vote on $400 million in bonds to continue their stake in two additional proposed reactors at the South Texas Nuclear Project facility later this month.

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By promoting cleaner energy, cleaner government, and cleaner air for all Texans, we hope to provide for a healthy place to live and prosper. We are Public Citizen Texas.