Al Braden Photographer

Texas wind power leads the country as a renewable energy resource - having reached over 30 GW in installed capacity covering all the major regions of the state. West Texas and Panhandle wind is highly developed and relies on the innovative CREZ transmission lines to bring the power east to major population centers. Gulf Coast and South Texas wind are growing rapidly. The opportunity for high levels of offshore wind power in the Gulf of Mexico is just beginning to be explored.

Utility solar is currently approximately 10 GW and projected to reach 20 GW by the end of 2022 as major projects come online - especially in the energy rich regions of West Texas. Peaking in the afternoon along with peak demand makes solar an ideal match for Texas electric usage. Innovative battery systems are beginning to be paired with solar and wind installations to provide both stability and storage.

The Texas electric grid is an island in the United States electric system, not significantly connected to the major eastern and western power systems of the country. It is vulnerable to shortages and disruptions within Texas as happened in the 2021 Texas Freeze - and it unable to export surpluses of renewable energy in times of high wind and solar production. The CREZ (Competitive Renewable Energy Zones) 345KV transmission lines were a large investment to bring more wind and solar power from West Texas and the Texas Panhandle with less line loss and congestion for the major cities of Central Texas. Much more expansion of the Texas grid is urgently needed as the renewable energy sources continue to expand in Texas. As of mid-2022, approximately 30 GW of wind and 10 GW solar are on line and both are growing at a very fast pace. Growth of offshore wind in the Gulf of Mexico and battery storage systems will require continued rapid expansion of the grid infrastructure in Texas.

Connect The Grid is a U.S. House Bill led by Congressman Greg Casar to build high power DC interconnections between Texas, the neighboring states and Mexico to allow import or export of electric power as needed. It would be a lifeline for ERCOT when supplies are short and a huge market opportunity for Texas renewable energy producers to export power to surrounding areas when supplies are plentiful. It's a Win-Win for the people of Texas when it gets enacted.

Over a trillion cubic feet of natural gas have been flared in Texas in the last decade - and reports of 10% of flares failing to light also contributes to a serious problem of methane emissions. Some responsible operators are reducing flaring - capturing more of gas for beneficial use, while many bad actors continue to waste this resource and dump wasted carbon into the atmosphere. Both responsible operators and environmental groups are pushing the Railroad Commission of Texas to enact realistic regulations to minimize flaring and methane emissions.

The Permian Basin totals approximately 86,000 square miles, making this vast area the most productive oil and gas region in the U.S. Fracking and horizontal drilling are reaching pools of fossil fuels previously untouched. Texas has over 187,000 oil and nearly 99,000 gas wells in production.

East Blackland Solar Project is a massive utility scale solar farm that will provide 144 MW-AC of locally produced solar power for Austin Energy customers as part of their statewide solar portfolio in excess of 1,000 MW. Its 489,600 solar panels cover 932 acres and can power approximately 27,000 typical homes. The geographic diversity of Austin Energy's portfolio helps mitigate weather and transmission congestion risks to provide reliable power for the city of Austin.

Fayette Power Project in Fayette County, TX produces 1600 MW from coal mined in the Powder River Basin, Wyoming, ranking as the 14th highest CO2 emitter among U.S. plants in a 2020 study. It is 1/3 owned by Austin Energy and 2/3 by the Lower Colorado River Authority (LCRA). It began producing in 1979 and is currently the subject of an active movement to retire it and move to cleaner sources of energy. In 2021 an impasse was declared in Austin's efforts to negotiate a shutdown of the plant. Organizing efforts are ongoing in Austin to close the plant, but the real limiting factor is the LCRA Board of Directors, whose members are appointed by the Governor of Texas. For U.S. coal plant statistics, see the report on the 100 Dirtiest Power Plants in the U.S. at https://findenergy.com/top-100-dirtiest-power-plants-in-the-united-states/

The Sand Hill Energy Center is a 480 MW natural gas combined cycle plant operated in Del Valle, TX by Austin Energy. It went online in 2004.

Power blackouts from Winter Storm Uri blanketed most of Texas – the entire ERCOT region – from February 14 to 20, 2021. Two out of three Texans lost power at some time and nearly half lost water either during the storm or due to pipes freezing. Over 210 Texans died - and storm financial losses are estimated in the range of $100 billion. To deal with the intense statewide freeze which led to many natural gas generators and pipelines going offline, in addition to icing wind blades and other power interruptions, the state grid operator ERCOT called for rotating blackouts. Due to lack of granularity in distribution circuits, that couldn’t be accomplished due to the number of critical circuits that needed to be keep online for medical and emergency services. Consequently, customers who were rotated off generally stayed off for a considerable time as ERCOT and the grid scrambled to bring plants back online and stabilize.

The Decker Creek Power Station produces 926 MW from natural gas. It was completed in 1978 and is operated by Austin Energy. Originally powered by fuel oil, the plant transitioned to natural gas. Decker Steam Unit #1 and Unit #2 are now closed as of spring 2022. They have been replaced by 600 GW of West Texas utility scale solar power. This will significantly reduce the air pollutants, especially NOx in the Decker area. The gas peaker units, which are not prominent in the phots, remain in service.

Oil and gas production is very high in Southeastern New Mexico's portion of the Permian Basin, centered around Carlsbad, Artesia and Hobbs.

Permian Basin operators are using 300 to 400 drilling rigs, roughly half of the U.S. total as the basin continues to be the hot spot for new oil and gas wells. Rigs vary in sophistication and complexity from simple straight well drilling of a few thousand feet to complex horizontal and fracking operations that drill multiple wells on a single pad.

Idled wells no longer in production are an environmental threat in Texas and worldwide. The Railroad Commission of Texas identifies about 7,000 orphaned wells in need of capping and cleanup. Estimates of up to 100,000 idled wells dot the state. The EPA estimates a range of 7 to 20 million tons of CO2 equivalent, mostly in the form of methane, leak from the nation's idled wells and pose serious environmental risks. These photos of idled wells are representative of the category of wells in question - though I have not researched status of each.

Severance of mineral rights and property rights leads to both drilling near existing housing units - and the willingness of many Texans to move next to oil fields. These photos demonstrate many suburbs near Midland and Odessa where the proximity is very close - emissions and all.

The oil and gas business requires vast fleets of trucks to service operations from drilling, to gathering crude oil to cleanup of wastes and removal of salt brine. Specialized trailers are designed for oil hauling, water, chemicals and fracking sand.

Pushing natural gas through pipelines requires extensive compressor stations throughout the oil field.

These combined cycle natural gas generating plants south of Odessa represent the newest and most efficient class of generators that have displaced coal as the dominant energy source on the Texas grid.

Gathering pipes in the oil fields bring crude oil from wells to tanks and separation facilities before it is further transported by truck, rail or pipeline. Over 415,000 miles of pipelines crisscross Texas.

Refinery operations convert crude oil into fuels and other products, the final step in the oilfield production. Most are located along the Gulf Coast, with some smaller facilities inland like the Navajo refinery in Artesia, New Mexico which process about 100,000 barrels per day.

Water is a critical resource in drilling and fracking wells. Vast amounts of water, mostly from aquifers, is sold for this purpose in the Permian Basin. The other end of the water cycle is waste water including fracking blowback, salt water from wells and other waste that is collected and pumped back underground in high pressure disposal wells that have been shown to contribute to increased earthquake activity in the oil fields.

The Webberville Solar Plant at Austin, TX, produces 35 MW of peak power for This gallery includes 45 photos of the Webberville solar facility that supplies solar electric power to Austin Energy under a 25 year contract. When opened, it was the largest solar project in Texas. Rated at 30MW AC, it is powered by 127,278 Trina PV modules with horizontal-axis tracking. Annual CO2 savings are projected to be 117 metric tons.

Austin's Mueller neighborhood has a very high concentration of installed rooftop solar PV cells. The area is part of a smart grid research group known as the Pecan Street Project. They work in conjunction with the University of Texas and Austin Energy to develop real time data on home energy usage.

Coal is delivered to power plants in Unit Trains that typically have 100 to 120 cars with a nominal load of 100 tons per car. This is roughly a day's supply for a major coal fired power plant. This is the beginning of a project to visualize just how much coal is used in Central Texas. These photos capture a coal train headed for San Antonio through the Austin area.

The 2,250 MW Martin Lake coal fired power plant in Rusk County, Texas is the third highest CO2 emitter among U.S. coal plants in 2020 at 15,767,335 tons CO2. It is owned by Vistra Corp of Irving Texas who own a fleet of toxic coal plants among their generation fleet. In 2021 they shut down the neighboring Liberty Mine which provided dirty Texas lignite to the plant and are now sourcing their coal from Powder River Basin in Wyoming. For U.S. coal plant statistics, see the report on the 100 Dirtiest Power Plants in the U.S. at https://findenergy.com/top-100-dirtiest-power-plants-in-the-united-states/

Sandow Coal Plant was a 1,137MW operation south of Rockdale, Texas that burned lignite coal fed by conveyor from the Three Oaks Mine. The power plant and mine are owned by Luminent who purchased them from Alcoa in 2007 as part of an anticipated coal boom in Texas. Rapidly declining prices for natural gas and renewable energy undercut the coal market and both the mine and coal plant closed in 2017.

Three Oaks Mine covered over 16,000 acres near Elgin, Texas, producing low grade lignite coal for the Sandow Power Plant in Rockdale. Coal was fed to the plant by a conveyor that reached across the countryside as the mine operations slowly chewed their way south away from the plant. The site is owned by Luminent who purchased the mine from Alcoa in 2007. The mine was closed in 2017 along with the power plant. Cleanup in ongoing and scheduled to be completed by 2023.

The Cuero, Texas area is a part of the Eagle Ford Shale formation, one of the most fracked areas on earth. The rural region north of Cuero used to be a peaceful ranching area, noted for quiet back roads and beautiful spring wildflowers. It was one of my favorite spring destinations - till fracking came in and turned it into an industrial landscape. Now everything is fenced and the fields off limits. Tanker and truck traffic makes the narrow roads a hazard. Boom and bust - oil takes its toll.

The Eagle Ford Shale is a massive formation stretching across South Texas from the Rio Grande to the Gulf Coast. It is the site of extensive well drilling and fracking for both oil and gas, with $30 Billion per year being invested. All of the wells, processing facilities and Gardendale Rail terminal in the photos did not exist in 2010. Night photos from NASA clearly show the bright glow of flaring from the entire region south of San Antonio.

The Sam Gideon Natural Gas Power Plant is operated by the Lower Colorado River Authority (LCRA) in Bastrop, TX. It began producing in 1972. Its three units have a combined capacity of 608 MW.

Stable, carbon-free base load power at the plant level, new nuclear construction continues to be a high cost option, even with generations of government subsidies. With 50 years of high level waste to deal with - now stored onsite at plants not designed for such a task - the U.S. Government continues to lack the political will to provide for the long promised safe waste disposal. A proposal for interim storage of the nation's nuclear power plant waste on the high plains of Texas near the New Mexico border is being contested by an unusual combination of the State of Texas, oil and gas industry and environment organizations.

An early source of electric power, hydro is largely operating at its practical potential - while in many areas water needs and environmental issues begin to take precedence. It remains an important carbon free contributor, and one that is often used to handle high demand periods. Hydro power stations can be either 'run of river' or fill intermittent demand. In today's world - especially in the drought challenged western United States - the water is now much more valuable that the electricity produced.

The Sugar Hill Cemetery in the shadow of the Martin Lake Coal Plant in rural Rusk County, Texas is a stark reminder that an original energy source used to build America was slave labor. In this section of the cemetery, outside the fenced whites only area, and with only first names given, are buried the bodies of an unknown number of slaves whose physical labor built the plantations and produced the cotton, sugar, tobacco and other crops and products that fueled the economic vitality of the early United States. For perspective, it is estimated that our current use of energy for food, mobility and 'stuff' for the average American is the equivalent of 60 humans worth of effort.

Midland, Odessa and Andrews are hubs in the Permian Basin oil and gas industry.

Texans came together at the capitol in Austin, February 11, 2007 to protest the planned construction of 18 new coal plants in the state. Within weeks, Kohlberg, Kravis, Roberts & Co., (KKR) bought out TXU, and cancelled the plans for most of the plants.