7 August 1 -7, 2024 dallasobserver.com DALLAS OBSERVER Classified | MusiC | dish | Culture | unfair Park | Contents and have since trended down.” Gutierrez does not believe the university is under any “outsized pressure” to be trans- parent about the days leading up to and fol- lowing the pro-Palestine encampment, especially because many of the institutions in Texas established themselves in opposi- tion to the students. After a similar protest took place at UT Austin, Texas Gov. Greg Abbott said the “protesters belong in jail.” Still, Gutierrez believes he has a right to have his questions answered. “This is a public institution. Texas tax- payers are paying for UTD to exist. And just to see how they go out of their way to hide public records through these exorbitant costs, to keep information away from stu- dent journalists, alumni and affected indi- viduals is deeply disheartening,” Gutierrez said. “You want to be able to see this free and fair information provided to the general public and yet campuses like UTD go out of their way to prevent that information from going out.” ▼ WEATHER WHO TURNED OUT THE LIGHTS? TEXAS LEADS COUNTRY IN WEATHER-RELATED POWER OUTAGES, STUDY FINDS. BY EMMA RUBY O ver 600,000 ONCOR customers lost power — some for nearly a week — beginning on May 28, when a gnarly storm blew through Dallas and downed a significant number of trees and power lines. It was the second-worst outage in ONCOR’s 112-year history, a spokesperson told the Ob- server. But for many long-time Texans, the delayed power restoration was a lot more of the same old. We’re seeing it now, in Houston, where 35,000 CenterPoint customers remained without power more than a week after Hur- ricane Beryl blew through town, cutting off the lights for nearly three million house- holds. And we saw it in 2021, when an esti- mated 70% of ERCOT customers lost electricity for days thanks to an unusually powerful winter storm. Climate Central, a nonprofit research group that studies climate change and its impacts, recently determined that when it comes to states managing to keep the lights on during extreme weather events, Texas comes in dead last. Between the years 2000 and 2023, Texas reported 210 weather-related power out- ages, outpacing runner-up Michigan by 53. Fifth-place Ohio recorded only 88 outages in the same time period. And because the study stopped in 2023, Texas’ tally doesn’t even include the May 28 or Hurricane Beryl outages. “Many types of extreme weather are be- coming more frequent or intense because of human-caused climate change. These events put stress on aging energy infrastruc- ture and are among the leading causes of major power outages in the U.S.,” the study states. “The nation’s electrical grid wasn’t built for the present-day climate.” The study found that of all major power outages — outages affecting at least 50,000 customers — across the U.S. in the first two decades of the 2000s, 80% were caused by extreme weather events. Over half of those outages are caused by severe storms, a fifth are caused by winter weather and 14% are attributed to hurricanes. It’s Getting Hot In Here While extreme heat accounted for only 3% of the outages, it’s a growing concern for cli- mate experts across the Lone Star State. In May, Victor Murphy, climate services pro- gram manager for the National Weather Service Southern Region, told the Observer he was concerned about the growing de- mand for energy that extreme heat and “burgeoning” population growth across the state are producing. At the beginning of summer 2024, Murphy was “confident” the statewide demand for power would result in new records being broken. “The question is by how much? And will ERCOT be able to handle it?” Murphy said. “Hopefully, they can.” The Climate Central study found that since 2012, every single U.S. region has had at least one major outage coinciding with extreme heat conditions, which increases electric demand as customers attempt to cool down. (When we spoke with Murphy again re- cently about the unseasonably cool(ish) temperatures coming to the North Texas through the end of July, he said the region has been lucky, so far, with the heat. ERCOT supply and demand has remained promis- ing into the summer.) Wikimedia commons Experts are concerned about Texas’ long- term electricity supply. >> p8 Hold on to your stethoscopes! West Coast University-Texas has been nominated as a Best University in the 2024 Best of Dallas awards. VOTE FOR US!
