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Comment by blunte | Hacker News Reader

Texas has 29 million people.

Texas is big, and is very dependent (unfortunately) on private transportation. Lots of cars, lots of roads, lots of lanes.

Texas is freaking hot for 5 months of the year. Texas can get surprisingly damned cold for 4 months of the year in some heavily populated parts (Dallas/Fort Worth for example). Texas uses heating and air conditioning because it can.

Texas pumps a lot of oil and gas. Texas has a lot of windy areas, some of which now have large wind farms. Texas could have a lot of solar, but I'm not sure how that's developing.

Point is, it's about as reasonable a metric as the frequently (stupidly) promoted articles talking about "the most stolen car". Per capita, and per capita per day per degree of climate outside comfort range, and on top of that, per mile of distance between homes and offices, I imagine Texas is not out of line.

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Yeah. Grew up in California. Large swathes of homes in California don't even have an AC. Whereas have family in Houston and their summers are brutally hot and humid. Couple that with the fact that Texas seems to have more energy intense chemical, and related, industries and to me it's not surprising that Texas uses more energy than California.

Grew up in coastal SoCal, and I'm still here. The houses here weren't even built with insulation. That said, climate change has been making it worse here. >90°F (>32°C) temps used to be extremely rare when I was growing up, but last year we hit the century mark a few days (~38°C). Obligatory: can't for sure blame AGW but more extreme events are likely.

Just installed the window-mounted air conditioners today for this summer, because of the Texas-like combination of heat and humidity today finally made it uncomfortable.

That said, don't discount California's efficiency rules and culture in our lower energy use, either. Or the fact that urban density is higher here so you don't lose as much energy to transportation.

First paragraph reminds me of what I read on Australia, uninsulated houses and slatted surface seem very common there as well.

I grew up in Virgina without air conditioning. Living in coastal California now, summers are actually nice, but you won't die in most parts of the South without AC.

Have you been to parts of the south other than VA? I spent summers in FL and it's tolerable but many of the other states aren't.

Georgia is incredibly hot and humid for much of the year and while you won't die from it, you might just lay in a pool of your own bodily fluids wishing you were. The same can be said for South Carolina, Alabama and Mississippi.

Heat index in northern VA was 105 a few weeks ago.

You might not die but you might want to.

More than half of the energy consumed in Texas is for industrial use, according to the EIA, while residential use—which in terms of sheer BTUs is the most in the nation, even as our per capita usage is relatively low—accounts for just over 13 percent.

but does 'industrial use' count office AC?

No, office AC is commercial. The energy reporting used here is to group it into residential, commercial, industrial, and transportation. Residential is houses and apartments. Commercial is stores, office buildings, theaters, etc. Industrial is factories, refineries, ports, mines, oil rigs, etc. Transportation is well, transportation. The article breaks down Texas's usage as: industrial >50%, transportation ~25%, residential 13%, commercial ~10%.

Which makes it odd that most of the discussion here is about climate and residential and commercial AC, neither of which are particularly significant factors. What's using most of Texas's energy are the chemical plants and refineries.

Texas is not the largest or the most populous or the most climatically challenged state. For a place that loves superlatives, it doesn't have those justifications for its energy use. They're sucking all the oxygen out of the room in more ways than one.

Texas is not only a net exporter of energy [1], it is the top energy producing state and 6th in consumption per capita [2]. It produces 41% more energy than it consumes. Is that justification enough?

[1] https://www.eia.gov/todayinenergy/detail.php?id=32272

[2] https://www.eia.gov/state/?sid=TX

No. How are they producing it?

no because that energy is fossil fuel based

"Texas accounted for the largest total amount of wind and solar generation in the United States in 2016" [1]

[1] https://thinkprogress.org/renewable-energy-just-passed-a-maj...

It's the second most populous state and unlike the first most populous state, is very climatically challenged.

That's a moronic statement.

Texas is the second largest state by land mass.

Texas is the second largest state by population.

Texas has 3 of the most populous cities in the country.

Texas has the 2nd largest port in the country.

Texas is the 4th hottest state.

Texas has the 2 largest refineries in the US (refineries use tons of energy to process their feedstock liquids).

Come to Houston and live thru June, July, August, September, or even October without your AC running almost constantly. Seriously. You'll be better educated from the experience.

The largest and most climatically challenged state is Alaska. But their population of 742,000 people (more than _one_ per square mile!) can only burn so much energy.

It all interacts. Being top of a single metric (I wouldn't be at all surprised if the inhabited part of Texas is larger than the inhabited part of Alaska) is pretty meaningless.

If we use some less "straw" metric than yours we can get meaningful comparisons. Let's try something like degree days * population and do the comparison. Let's try industrial output per BTU or KW-H. Let's try energy produced vs energy consumed.

Point is, conversation is more informatve if one isn't trying to make some kind of political shot just because one doesn't like Texas or Texans.

> They're sucking all the oxygen out of the room in more ways than one.

That's rude, please stop it.

But it is the largest and most populated state which is also "climatically challenged".

"For a place that loves superlatives, it doesn't have those justifications for its energy use."

Native Texan here, that's a load if one was ever spouted. We have plenty of climate challenges, from huge droughts just like what California recently broke out of (we broke out of our own three years earlier) to nasty winters (I've had snow on my birthday in summer) to we're sitting smack on the tail end of Tornado Alley, we've got the largest Gulf Coast area which has had hellaciously bad storms (1900 Galveston Cat 4 anyone) even with massive jettys and breaks. Houston is one of the worst-polluted area in the country as far as air quality goes, Los Angeles air is cleaner! Oh, then we've got wildfires much like California!

The energy expenditure alone on rebuilding places hit by tornadoes is one you aren't ever seeing come out of New York.

Did you know in Texas that they fly helicopters over your property in order to assess tax value? Imagine the energy expenditure there.

I can tell you don't live in Texas.

That it's so car dependent is entirely a choice though, not some inherent feature of geography.

Could you elaborate on why you think it's entirely a choice? You seem to be implying that the choice to be (or not be) car dependent in Texas and the choice to be (or not be) car dependent in a state like Pennsylvania (for example) are equivalent.

I mean it's a choice in terms of transportation planning at the state/regional/local levels, obviously for individuals it's not really much of a choice.

Individuals would have the choice if their state government made the choice to make public transportation a priority over the less efficient, more damaging, "everyone should just gas up every day" model of industry.

Alas, that choice is not on the table, because the very powerful Texas energy monopolies would never allow public transportation to become a thing, nor would they allow cities to be designed to be anything less than a haven for car users.

Texas is massive. Dallas and Houston are four hours apart by car. There's an Amtrak route and you can also take a bus.

There is no Amtrak route between Dallas and Houston. I wish there was, as I would've taken it on several occasions (even if it were slow), but there isn't.

FWIW, I've been doing LA <--> SF many times a year for over a decade and I haven't taken Amtrak _once_. Every time I've checked, it's been a 12+ hour trip due to a long stop in Santa Barbara. It's not functionally an option to travel between LA and SF when you can pay pretty much the same amt and fly in a quarter of the time door to door.

Yeah, SF-LA is slow, though that's also a lot longer route to begin with. LA-SF via the coast (which is what Amtrak does) is 420 miles, and goes through some mountainous terrain with a lot of curves. Houston-Dallas is only 240 miles and flat. There used to be train service on the route that took about 6 hours, but it was discontinued in the 1970s.

One place in California where I do find Amtrak convenient is San Diego to LA. It's a 3-hour trip by train, which is roughly what it takes to drive on average, and a lot less frustrating (driving can take anywhere from 2 to 5 hours depending on traffic).

Yes, and Los Angeles and San Francisco are five hours apart. Most people don't drive those on a regular basis though, as I'm sure is the case for Texas.

Driving between Houston and Dallas is a lot easier than LA to SF. Far, far fewer bottlenecks along the way.

Coastal Texas is hotter during the day and at night than the Congo in June, July, August, and September. You will die without air conditioning. Easy to get heat stroke just walking down the side walk for 15 minutes.

they even make note of Texas fairing pretty middle of the pack on a per capita basis. if they normalized for some sort of temperature metric I'm sure Texas is very average - weather in the state is brutal at both ends of the year.

> weather in the state is brutal at both ends of the year.

It should be mentioned, though, that the remedy to the brutal summers can be just as brutal. I'm sure that I'm not the only person who expects summer colds because of constant transitions from the sweltering-hot outdoors to the icy-cold air-conditioned tundras that every business maintains.

(Also, I'm sure parts of Texas get severe winters, but I've never seen one in Fort Worth. (Or did you mean something different by 'both ends'?) The main thing that I see here is that houses are built with no effective insulation, so that, during the winter, a perfectly manageable temperature outside can render the inside frigid.)

EDIT: I'm sorry for downvote whining, but, just to be clear, this isn't just a "the weather, amirite?" post; while I agree that living in Texas without AC is probably unbearable, I also think that there's no need to crank ACs to the levels at which businesses (and buses!) set them, and I can't imagine that this aggressive cooling doesn't have a significant energy impact.

I know that I walked into my sons high school during the summer to visit the office (DFW) and the whole school was so cold that the admins where wearing sweaters and long pants. This is a massive high school for 3000 plus students, 4 Gyms, etc. I can't imagine what it costs to cool it and the extra expense of keeping that cold when no one is there.

I agree with you that homes in Texas are insulated very poorly. Interesting enough Demilic is headquartered in Grand Prairie and is one of that largest suppliers of spray foam in the country. With the heat in the summers and some of the cold spells in the winter you would think they would have a better building code.

It seems the strategy is to find cheaper sources of power while not making an effort to build better buildings to save power.

This isn't snark: building codes are regulation and Texas is an independence-loving state, even when that isn't particularly sensible or doesn't lead to good outcomes for life in general.

Mandating better insulation in homes might add a little up-front cost. It'd also do wonders for energy consumption.

Let people choose, they might say--well, housing is a good situation where you might not really have any choice at all (if no one's building houses with proper insulation), or be well-informed enough to make an informed choice, or whatever, and that's exactly the place where regulation is a net benefit for the society in question.

Schools are notorious for lowest bidder construction without a thought about operating costs. I saw one building that ran ac and heated the cold air up to the desired temperature. Stupid. But cheap to build.

They probably don't have sophisticated control systems in place to partially shut down the AC on the campus. If it's like my modern LEED certified office building once 7PM hits it gets pretty hot.

Transitions between hot and cold temperatures don't cause colds. Cold viruses cause colds.

You get summer colds because more people congregate in close quarters when the weather outside is unbearable, making virus transmission easier.

Transitions between hot and cold temperatures cause runny noses, and runny noses cause nose touching - which does cause colds.

Yeah, fully agree about the aggressive cooling. This has been studied: https://www.nytimes.com/2015/08/04/science/chilly-at-work-a-... (this article links to the actual study).

I grew up in Houston - until the last decade or so there has always been one cold as hell month during the year. I remember Februaries where the high temp during the entire month was in the 30s.

my point being that you have to condition your air pretty much year round if you live north of Galveston, unfortunately.

Humans should really stop living in stupid places if they need to cause climate change to do so

Canada apparently has pretty high per capita energy use for the same sorts of reasons: big and in their case insanely cold half the year.

so the excuse of an inefficient state is that it is inefficient?

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