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Comment by IChangedCareers | Hacker News Reader

Texas runs its own power grid. Not the same interest as NY and CA in particular. They are probably actually cleaner than both combined?

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Why would you just plain guess at TX being cleaner than CA, the clear leader among all US states on climate issues, without bothering to look it up? Careless and lazy.

Because Texas has a lot of wind power (so much that the price sometimes goes negative at night) and because, although California gets a lot of its power from renewable energy, most of that is imported (WA hydro) while in-state production remains dirtier.

Don't get me wrong: I live in CA and would be happy never to set foot in Texas again, but this responds to your specific statement.

why is hydroelectric power not "renewable"?

I'm merely saying while California consumes a lot of energy from renewable sources, most of the energy generated in the state is dirty.

In the specific case of hydro, California has, for all intents and purposes, none. There is some pumped hydro storage (as far as anyone can tell, all the reasonable candidate sites are in use) but actual generation comes from WA which has plenty of water flow. This also means that WA deals with the environmental problems of these generator dams, and California does not.

California does have some wind and solar of course, in additional to its hydrocarbon plants. But lots of gas peakers.

For pollution in general, California might be a leader for policies enforcing cleanliness.

But for clean power generation, they're not the leader, Vermont is [1]. California is ranked #8 (Texas is ranked #22). This is based on a ratio of the power consumed, not raw power generation total.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_U.S._states_by_electri...

I'm not sure why Texas would be particularly clean, it has abundant quantities of coal and natural gas. It also has an abundance of wind, but I'd be surprised if its wind power production is even a tenth of its combined fossil fuel power production.

> but I'd be surprised if its wind power production is even a tenth of its combined fossil fuel power production.

Surprise!

http://electricitymatch.com/blog/customer-choice/texas-elect...

From a pure electricity standpoint, they're doing pretty good. It's almost all zero carbon or low carbon (NG) generation.

https://www.eia.gov/state/?sid=TX#tabs-4

Of course the real problem is their oil industry. They export a shit ton of oil, and they are extremely well connected to every aspect of state politics.

Texas gets about a quarter of its power from coal. That's a lot lower than some states, but "almost all zero carbon or low carbon" is a bit generous. That's also way, way higher than California.

New York generation is almost entirely gas, nuclear and hydro.

It's one of the cleaner states.

Probably.. but at this point it's really not just about the emissions... it's now also about economics. Renewable energy is set to be a massive industry -- worth trillions and create millions of jobs globally. No state should want to be left behind.

Texas ranks #1 in the US for wind energy capacity and biofuel production. It ranks #2 for employment in the renewable energy sector. It is hardly set to be left behind.

That's awesome.. but when you look at the numbers that actually matter on a macro level Texas ranks 44th. #notThrowingShadeJustFacts

Regardless, we got a lot of work to do as a nation :-/

Source: https://energy.gov/maps/renewable-energy-production-state

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