Analyze

Strategic plans generated every four years include and highlight FERC motivations, goals, and emphasize key priorities the organization plans on focusing on. The newest FERC Strategic plan FY 2022-2026 demonstrates the organizations shifting focus on environmental implications and environmental justice. Compared to the previous Strategic plans from 2009 till 2022, there have been zero mentions of “environmental justice” or “environmental justice communities”. In the newest 2022-2026 strategic plan there were 24 mentions of “environmental justice” and 11 mentions of “environmental justice communities”. The newest strategic plan focuses on better examining greenhouse gas emissions by revising the analytical framework for evaluating effects of natural gas infrastructure. The newest strategic plan includes an outline to address energy security and reliability given extreme weather events, climate change and new cyber security threats. An additional priority includes improving participation in proceedings, including landowners, environmental justice communities, tribal nations, and members of the public. Their report also includes an emphasis on regulation and compliance with industry. 

The structure in which the FERC is funded is one of particular controversy, which was brought to court in 2016 by the Delaware Riverkeeper Network. The DRN alleged that the way in which the FERC was funded was inherently biased in favor of industry and violated the public's 5th amendment right. The FERC has an appropriated budget set by congress. The FERC raises revenue through the industry it regulates to reimburse and generate funding.  The lawsuit legally sided with the FERC giving the following reasons: the FERC budget has remained consistently the same, the FERC is statutorily required to eliminate under and over recovery of money, and the opposition failed ot prove it's case.

This organization works with the EPA, US Army Corps of Engineers, US Coast Guard, US Department of Energy, US Fish and Wildlife Services and other agencies on Environmental Impact Statements for new Infrastructure.

As of April 2022 the commissioners include, Commissioner James Danly, Commissioner Allison Clements, Commissioner Mark C. Christie, and Commissioner Willie L. Phillips, and Chairman, Richard Glick. Chairman and Commissioners are appointed by the President and confirmed by the Senate. Commissioners and Chair serve staggered five year terms and not more than three of the five commissioners, including the chair, can be from the same political party. Additional staffers include ~1500 employees (based on FY 2019). Staffers fulfill supplemental positions such as lawyers, engineers, economists, biologist, ecologist etc. The chairman and commissioners are at the top of the organizational structure. Administrative, Regulatory, and Litigation functions all follow. There are 13 specific departments such as the Office of Administrative Litigation, Office of Energy Policy and Innovation, Office of the External Affairs etc. all fall into one of the three functions.

FERC's mission According to the FERC government website: “Assist consumers in obtaining reliable, safe, secure, and economically efficient energy services at a reasonable cost through appropriate regulatory and market means, and collaborative efforts.” This organization as of April 2022 is operational.

Texas produces the highest quantities of crude oil, natural gas, and lignite coal in the United States, which, on top of its long history of legislative support for conventional energy industries, contributes to its reputation as a fossil-fuel state (EIA 2017). Nevertheless, Austin, the state capital, harbors a wealth of local residents and organizations invested in transitioning to clean-energy resources. Motivations behind these investments differ widely, however, ranging from concerns about public health and social and environmental justice to creating quality jobs and spurring economic growth. During preliminary fieldwork, I identified four unique-yet-overlapping collectives of clean-energy practitioners: 1) Austin’s public sector, 2) energy scientists and engineers, 3) energy business advocates and entrepreneurs, and 4) climate and social justice activists. Based upon initial fieldwork, these collectives appear to conceive of the risks, affordances, and the proper sociotechnical means of energy transition in divergent, if not conflicting ways. In this research, I ask if and how these diverse energy-transition imaginaries appertain to differences in conceptions of “good evidence” and the appropriate use of scientific research and knowledge in decision-making. By analyzing how different collectives of clean-energy practitioners determine the proper means of leveraging science in energy transition, I will gain an understanding of the data and evidentiary challenges entailed in city-scale energy transitions, and urban environmental governance more generally.

Swearingen’s (2010) account of the mainstream environmental movement in Austin documents which of Austin’s “green spaces” were successfully and unsuccessfully protected from development and from the deleterious effects of nearby industries. However, Tretter (2016) and Busch’s (2017) studies provide a necessary supplement, documenting how the Austin’s lesser valued spaces (which are mostly populated by communities of color) have been routinely polluted both by residential waste (location of trash dumps) and industrial off-gassing (Sematech and Motorola plants). It is unclear, however, from these accounts whether or not, or to what extent the Austin landscape has be marked by its energy system in particular.

During preliminary research, I witnessed numerous residents of various professions attest to the impact of Austin’s coal plant (Fayette) and natural gas plant (Decker) on Austin’s air quality. During my time in Austin I will be conversing with locals about the impact of Austin’s power generation on the local landscape as well as travelling throughout the city, observing the landscape, visiting energy production sites and Desired Development Zones.

According to a study by Environment America, Texas is by far the highest emitter of airborne mercury, with a total of 11,127 in 2010 (Madsen and Randall 2011). Ohio, the next highest emitter, produced 4,218 pounds. Texas has 6 of the top ten mercury producing coal-fired power plants in the U.S.

There is a strong correlation between the location of toxic development and manufacturing associated with Austin’s tech industry and the location of communities of color, both of which are predominantly found in East Austin. PODER has had appreciable success in combating these developments and enlisting the help of Austin’s liberal environmental elite to do so. The extent to which Austin’s environmental justice community and environmental sustainability community see eye-to-eye on this issue, however, remains a question for this research.

By the early 20th century, the unpredictability of the Colorado River was seen as the primary “natural barrier” to development, and the early entrepreneurs saw that the river was both the key and the biggest threat (Swearingen 2010). The rocky canyons and ravines that had been cut into the Edwards Plateau above Austin offered ample choice locations to create reservoirs for controlling the flow and supplying water and power to its developing urban areas. The first failed attempt to dam the river was undertaken as early as 1890. Austin’s elite business class arranged the financing of this $1.4 million dam through municipal bonds and hailed the dam as the engineering feat of the century. With the promise of electricity and a steady water supply, they were certain that it would bring Austin into modernity. However, this rhetoric did not hold water. In 1900, the first rise of the river since the dam’s construction completely destroyed the dam, caused $9 million in property damages, and killed 47 residents (Busch 2017). A few more private dams were built over the years, but these too would all succumb to the river’s turbulence. The first long-lasting infrastructural development to enable Austin to break free of its liquid boundaries wasn’t achieved until 1911 when a steel bridge was constructed followed by a trolley line. While the bridge rendered crossing the river less risky, and therefore successfully enabled the development of Austin’s southern neighborhoods (Swearingen 2010), this did nothing to help control the river and secure the water supply in times of drought. Developers were well aware that Austin’s growth would depend on an extensive system of dams, but there was simply not enough money to finance such an endeavor. Thus, a truly adequate system of water-management infrastructure would have to wait until the shift in economic philosophy that inspired the New Deal. Lyndon B. Johnson, a native Texan that quickly learned to master New Deal politics, managed to garner federal funds for the construction of numerous dams north of Austin, along with many other important infrastructural projects (Bush 2017). Two of the most important dams were the Tom Miller Dam (completed in 1940) and the Longhorn Dam (completed in 1960). These infrastructural successes garnered Johnson much fame and recognition and launched his political career (Sansom et. al 2008).

Today, Austin is a site of energy technology innovation. Austin Technology incubator has a strong energy focus, providing “niche management”. Pecan Street provides a means for incubated technologies to test and verify their innovations. From their website: “Pecan Street is the only organization or company that combines expertise in the ‘Internet of Things,’ high-velocity data acquisition, big data analytics, and lean product development to drive disruptive innovation for water and energy.”

Pecan Street Inc. is a local 501(c)(3) that specializes in producing, analyzing, and sharing data on energy and water consumption practices as well as verifying new “smart home” technologies, electricity pricing, electric vehicle infrastructure, solar energy tech, and energy storage tech. On their company website, Pecan Street Inc. brags about having the largest utility consumption data port in the world and claims to “provide access to the world’s best data on consumer energy and water consumption behavior.” Their data source is a group of over 1000 volunteers that live in the Mueller community, a mixed use residential and commercial zone with its own microgrid that has the highest density of solar panels-plus-electric vehicles in the state of Texas. It was for this reason that the Mueller Community was chosen as one of the Austin locations for a federally funded experiment in energy storage. The project, named Austin SHINES, was co-funded by the DOE’s SunShot Initiative (during Obama’s administration) and the Texas Commission for Environmental Quality to test the efficiency of solar-plus-storage systems at different scales (household, residential/commercial, and utility scales). On October 4, 2018, Pecan Street posted a blog announcing that they had finally “crossed into the Big Data realm. With the acquisition of a few new project servers, [they] have surpassed one petabyte of data storage availability at Pecan Street.”

            According to their website, the data produced at Pecan Street is helping develop technology that can actually increase grid stability while also increasing its efficiency and capacity to incorporate distributed renewable energy resources: “Distributed storage, automated demand response, improved lighting ballasts, power supplies and grid control products can all mitigate or eliminate existing electricity challenges if they are developed using data that details the issues correctly.” Critical data scholars, however, have argued that data always require the presence of human experts to animate them (Gliteman 2013). But how, if at all, is this analytic commitment altered by the development of the “internet-of-things,” where humans are able to set parameters on smart-technology and smart-contracts, running on blockchain, so that these devices respond to data by themselves in real time?