Expert: Texas leaders need to expedite long-term energy solutions

Guest column

"Texas is an energy leader and no one wants to see that change." Photo via Getty Images

Soaring temperatures have arrived, and while Texans should be enjoying the return to normalcy, instead they're facing another energy crisis.

Many saw February's winter storm and severe power outages as a once-in-a-century problem, but these unusual events are becoming all too commonplace, despite the governor's directive to improve grid reliability. Last month, Texans were again being asked to conserve energy while lawmakers considered a slew of new regulations, some of which would cripple investments in renewable energy.

For three months following the storm, the Texas legislature debated how to prevent another energy crisis. We applaud our elected officials for resisting political pressure to wrongly blame and punish renewable energy, and we want to encourage them to continue with this forward-thinking strategy.

Texas is an energy leader and no one wants to see that change. We urge our representatives in Austin to take a comprehensive view of what went wrong during the winter storm and ensure that any new rules and regulations work in support of, and not against, the energy market as a whole.

Texas needs a long term, comprehensive plan – not just for preventing blackouts, but for a more sustainable state.

Hot weather in Texas is a given, but we're anticipating temperatures will continue to rise. A climatologist at Texas A&M University recently predicted that the state will see the number of 100-degree days double by 2036. Rather than take a step back, we need to move forward and prioritize renewable energy as well as other investments in sustainability to future-proof our state and our planet.

Prioritizing green energy will have a ripple effect on Texas' economy. As the country's leader in wind-generated electricity, Texas has already reaped the benefit of creating thousands of new jobs for the state. In 2019, it was reported that Texas had over 230,000 clean energy jobs. If our state leaders are committed to job creation, we want to see how they're supporting clean energy, as well as continuing to work on maintaining the grid in an effective, efficient way.

The energy market is complex and dynamic, but it’s a key player in our road to a sustainable future. 

Continuing to invest in renewable energy is one simple step our lawmakers can make to ensure our energy market is addressing the climate crisis — and that Texans aren't dependent on generators and gas-fired power plants which let the state down during Winter Storm Uri. This should be a priority. In a recent survey of 1,000 adults by OnePoll in May 2021 commissioned by Bulb, 74 percent of respondents stated Texas should continue to develop and invest in renewable energy and over half of respondents expressed that investing in more green, clean renewable energy is the most important environmental issue that needs to be addressed.

As we come out of the pandemic, we have a chance to do better, together.

Texas has had over $60 billion in renewable energy investment to provide low-cost electricity generation. And with the growing technology sector across the state, there'll be more opportunities for renewables in the future. Continuing to promote policies that pushed Texas to its leadership position will unleash even more investments and innovation, which is good for Texas, good for Texans and good for the planet.

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Vinnie Campo is the general manager for Bulb U.S., a new type of energy company that aims to make energy simpler, cheaper, and greener by providing renewable electricity to its members from Texas wind and solar. He is based in Texas.

In light of the recent winter storm that caused an energy outage across Texas, let's use this Earth Day to make changes toward renewable energy. Photo via Getty Images

Texas expert: Energy reliability and climate sustainability are not mutually exclusive

Guest Column

It's no secret that Texas has long been a leader in energy production, but it may surprise you to learn that Texas leads the nation in wind-powered generation, producing 28 percent of all US wind-powered electricity in 2019.

We're not just producing a lot of renewable energy, we're increasingly consuming it.

Contrary to the caricaturistic portrayal of Texans in mainstream culture, a recent study by the University of Houston revealed that 4 out of 5 Texans believe the climate crisis is real.

In an effort to reduce their carbon footprint, more and more households are making the decision to switch to 100 percent renewable energy. And this adoption isn't isolated to core urban areas. We're witnessing a diverse spread in smaller, more rural markets.

These reasons and more are why Bulb, one of Europe's fastest growing company that provides 100 percent renewable energy, chose Texas as its first home in the U.S. Less than a year after launching here, it's safe to say we made the right choice as we're experiencing even faster growth in Texas than we did in our early stages in the United Kingdom.

One of the many reasons Texans have rapidly adopted our simpler, cheaper and greener energy is because they no longer have to choose between being budget and climate conscious. Sadly, the progress the state has made could be knocked back following the recent winter storm.

After the nation witnessed Texas' massive outages during the winter storm, our state leaders understandably feel the pressure to "do something," quickly.

We share our leaders' determination in avoiding another crisis of this magnitude, but we fear that Texas may be heading in the wrong direction. In the mad rush to avoid another catastrophe, some regulators and politicians wrongly and disproportionately blamed renewable energy sources for the outages.

Numerous media outlets and energy experts have overwhelmingly refuted these claims. An AP fact check described the efforts to blame renewable energy sources as "false narratives." And, they're not alone in their conclusion.

According to Reuters' fact check, "These claims are misleading, as they shift blame for the crisis away from what appears, so far, to be the root cause...The state's woes mainly stem from issues surrounding its independent power grid. The cold weather affected all fuel types, not just renewables."

Determining what went wrong isn't a blame game. A proper diagnosis is essential to any problem solving. And a failure to conduct a thorough analysis could have serious consequences. Currently, a number of legislative solutions are floating around the state Capitol that would shift the blame and consequences to renewable energy.

These proposals would increase the financial burden on Texas consumers, many of whom are still recovering from the storm, and hamper new investments in renewable energy. Additionally, and perhaps even more concerning, they don't adequately address the root cause of the winter storm energy crisis, further exposing Texans to another meltdown.

Texas' leadership on renewable energy production is no small feat, and it didn't happen by chance. For two decades, our lawmakers have made strategic decisions that led to the advancement of renewable energy production, and it has paid dividends in terms of jobs, economic growth, energy reliability, sustainability and even the state's reputation.

We are at a critical juncture, but Texas doesn't have to choose between reliability, affordability and sustainability. We can offer reliable energy and green energy, stop another crisis before it happens again and move forward with renewable energy investments.

Continuing to promote policies that pushed Texas to its leadership position will unleash even more investments and innovation, which is good for Texas, good for Texans and good for the planet.

As we observe Earth Day, we would urge our leaders to consider the possibilities. Rather than turn the clock back, let's use this storm as an opportunity to innovate further.

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Vinnie Campo is the general manager for Bulb U.S., a new type of energy company that aims to make energy simpler, cheaper, and greener by providing renewable electricity to its members from Texas wind and solar. He is based in Texas.

Houston can be the renewable energy capital — it has all the ingredients. Photo via Getty Images

The key to making Houston the next renewable energy capital is collaboration

guest column

Will Houston become the renewable energy capital of America? It's entirely possible.

While the coronavirus pandemic has presented challenges to the city's 4,600 energy firms, Houston's energy sector is resilient and can rebuild by prioritizing new jobs in cleantech and renewables.

Earlier this year, the city announced its commitment to using 100 percent renewable energy for all municipal operations by 2025 as part of its Climate Action Plan, a strategic approach for how Houston's residents and businesses can reduce their carbon emissions.

Houston is well-positioned to implement many of the strategies outlined in the plan. Building optimization and materials management can be boosted by the city's powerful construction and engineering workforce. And while it may surprise some, Houston could soon rival California for the number of electric vehicles on the road. Texas has the second highest number of charging stations in the country and the city of Houston leads the state overall.

At Bulb, we're proud to support the city's energy transition efforts by providing people with affordable renewable energy. Houston currently has almost a fifth of Bulb members, the most of any city in Texas.

While switching to a renewable energy provider is one way to make an immediate impact in lowering carbon emissions, the work involved in creating a truly green recovery is complex and must involve many players.

With that in mind, here are three tips we're using to make the green recovery a reality for all Texans. If we can help other like-minded companies to thrive, it's a win-win for everyone:

1. If you build it (with them), they will come

We should ask all Texans about what they want from the future of energy. We regularly ask our members to weigh in on what we should build at Bulb through informal monthly chats, focus groups and usability sessions. We ask what kinds of tools would make it easy for our members to manage their energy use and what kind of investments in technology they would like Bulb to make?

When people engage with us, we ask for more. Texans are savvy about their energy and want to be a part of the process.

2. Provide clear, actionable steps

The climate crisis is often split along political lines, but the reality is that most Texans believe we should prioritize clean energy. In fact, a recent poll found that 60 percent of registered Texas voters support transitioning away from fossil fuels.

Renewable energy has gotten cheaper and cheaper, so if someone can save money while also protecting the state they love, they will. Start with this assumption and give people clear, actionable steps. You can switch to renewable energy in two minutes. You can refer your friends and family to increase your impact. You can talk about your impact in a simple way.

We discovered early on that when people can visualize the impact they're having by using your service, they're motivated to do more. In case you're curious, the average Bulb member reduces their annual carbon impact by 8.42 tons of carbon dioxide. That's the weight of nine burly longhorns.

3. Keep it hopeful

Climate change is inevitable but we can still lessen its impacts. And we cannot do it without hope. When people become overwhelmed with climate anxiety, they cease to act.

We try to inspire and encourage our members by giving them bite-sized ways they can make an impact and celebrating the small wins. The actions needed to dramatically reduce our emissions must ultimately happen at a structural level, but we need to have hope to play the long game.


If folks believe in what we're doing and ultimately go with another renewable energy provider, that's okay. The green recovery will be more successful when companies compete. And we truly believe there's room for everyone.

Think about how these ideas could play out in your business. Are there opportunities to engage with your customers more closely? Do you make it easy for them to sign up? Do you give them reasons to tell their community about you? Finally, do they understand how they're making a difference?

These are some of the actions we've taken since launching in Texas, and we hope they're helpful to you as well. Together, we're confident that Houston will continue to lead in energy, in new and unexpected ways.

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Vinnie Campo is the U.S. country manager for Bulb, a company that focuses on affordable renewable energy from Texas wind and solar.

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Texas university's new flight academy opens at Houston Spaceport

cleared for takeoff

The vehicles may not have “student driver” stickers on them, but Texas Southern University has moved a dozen planes into its new training facility at the Houston Spaceport, opening the way for student flyers to use the facility.

TSU previously reached a deal with Houston Airports and the City of Houston in 2023 to house its prospective Flight Academy at Ellington Field. At the time, TSU had a small fleet of nine planes for student use, but a $5.5 million investment from the city greatly expanded the space available.

The Flight Academy includes a 20,000-square-foot hangar that serves as a TSU satellite campus. The school now has a fleet of 12 Cirrus SR20 aircraft that were acquired last year through state and alumni funding. An additional 4,500 square feet is used as classroom and office space. An 8,000-gallon fuel tank will support flight training operations.

TSU first launched its Aviation Science Management program in 1986 and added a professional pilot program in 2016. The school is now part of the United Airlines pipeline program and has also forged relationships with Delta and Southwest.

“I want to commend Texas Southern University and Houston Airports for their leadership and partnership in advancing aviation education right here in our city,” Houston City Councilwoman Dr. Carolyn Evans-Shabazz in a press release.

“It connects our students to high-paying, high-demand careers in aviation and aerospace. This is how we grow a city in the right way—by investing in workforce development, aligning education with industry and making sure our residents are prepared to lead in the industries of tomorrow. Houston is already a global leader in aerospace and projects like this strengthen that position even further, especially here at Ellington, where innovation and opportunity continue to take flight.”

The City of Houston signed an agreement to continue funding the academy for five years.

Amazon launches ultrafast, 30-minute delivery service across Houston

Amazon Now

More than 20 years after it redefined fast shipping, Amazon is preparing to raise the bar on consumer expectations again by offering to fulfill customers' most urgent product needs in Houston and other parts of the world in a half-hour or less for an extra fee.

The company, which revolutionized online shopping in 2005 with two-day deliveries for Prime members, is rapidly opening small order-processing hubs in dozens of U.S. and foreign cities to cater to shoppers who can't or don't want to wait for cough medicine to relieve flu symptoms or tomatoes for tonight's dinner salad.

The ultrafast service, called Amazon Now, first launched in India last June. Amazon says 30-minute deliveries now are also available in urban areas of the United States, Brazil, Mexico, Japan, the United Arab Emirates, the United Kingdom.

The mini-warehouses devoted to Amazon Now are about the size of a CVS drugstore. They stock about 3,500 products for expedited delivery, including beer, diapers, pet food, meat, nonprescription medications, playing cards and cellphone charging cables.

“We know that customers love speed and always have,” Beryl Tomay, Amazon’s head of transportation, told The Associated Press on Monday. “What we see customers doing, when we offer faster speeds, are they purchase more from Amazon. And Amazon becomes more top of mind for that or other types of items as well.”

In the U.S., the company first tested Amazon Now in Seattle, the home of its headquarters, and in Philadelphia. Most residents of the Dallas-Fort Worth area and Atlanta now have access as well. The service is also live in Dallas-Fort Worth, Denver, Minneapolis, Phoenix, Oklahoma City, Orlando, and dozens of other cities, Amazon said, with New York City and others expected by year-end.

The service charges for Amazon Now start at $3.99 for Prime members, who pay an annual fee of $139, and $13.99 for non-members. A $1.99 small basket fee applies to orders under $15, Amazon said.

The company's bet on a need for speed also comes as some consumers are rebelling against rushed deliveries as they weigh the potential impact on the environment and the workers tasked with preparing orders at a rapid rate.

Amazon’s approach
A relentless focus on speed helped Amazon build a logistics and e-commerce empire. After it made two days the new delivery time normal, Amazon moved into one-day and same-day deliveries for its Prime members. This spring, the company began making 90,000 products available in one hour or three hours at an extra cost.

The scaled down and sped up microhubs that are designed to handle 30-minute orders represent another step in Amazon's pursuit.

Only a handful of people prepare orders from aisles of shelves in the 5,000- to 10,000-square-foot facilities, unlike the sprawling fulfillment centers storing millions of items where Amazon employs a mix of human workers and robotics to pick and pack orders.

Amazon tailors the product inventory to each location and uses artificial intelligence and other technology to analyze what customers buy, as well as when and how often. The most popular U.S. purchases so far include soap, toothpaste, mouthwash, toilet plungers, bananas, limes and wireless earbuds, Amazon said.

The competition
Amazon’s attempt to up the instant gratification ante provides direct competition to on-demand food delivery platforms like Instacart, Uber Eats, DoorDash and Grubhub, which don't have the scale of the e-commerce titan, according to independent retail analyst Bruce Winder.

“What Amazon brings is their prowess in supply chain,” Winder said.

These smaller companies said they don't see Amazon as a threat, though, citing the hundreds of thousands of items they are able to deliver to users' doorsteps by partnering with various merchants and restaurants.

“DoorDash has a mission to empower grocers and retailers and augment their existing footprint, not to replace them,” DoorDash spokesperson Ali Musa said in an emailed statement. “We win only when they win, which is how we can offer over half a million grocery and retail items in under an hour across the country.”

Amazon also is in a race with Walmart to become the retailer that reliably gets orders to online shoppers in under an hour.

For an additional $10 on top of standard delivery charges, shoppers can place Walmart Express Delivery orders from among more than 100,000 products that are guaranteed to arrive in an hour. Many customers, however, are receiving the items under 30 minutes, Walmart CEO John Furner told analysts in February.

Domino's cautionary tale
Companies have promised deliveries in 30 minutes or less before, but the landscape also is littered with failed attempts to break the speed barrier.

The COVID-19 pandemic produced a flurry of companies that promised 10- to 15-minute grocery deliveries from microwarehouses in dense neighborhoods, according to Sucharita Kodali, an analyst at market research firm Forrester Research.

But soaring operating costs, low customer loyalty and the drying up of investor money ultimately caused most to fail before the pandemic was over, analysts said.

Domino’s in 1984 pushed a guarantee that customers would receive their pizzas for free if they weren't delivered in under a half-hour. The company amended the “30 minutes or it’s free” policy after two years, providing only a $3 discount for late deliveries.

The promotion helped Domino’s win market share, but it ended up tarnishing the company's reputation. It dropped the guarantee in December 1993 after a string of crashes and lawsuits involving drivers racing to meet the deadline.

Brad Jashinsky, a retail analyst at information technology research and consulting firm Gartner, said he thinks Amazon should take the pizza chain's experience as a cautionary tale.

“You get in trouble when you start overpromising something like that,” he said.

Amazon won't be making any time guarantees and instead plans to keep customers who chose the 30-minute delivery option updated on the progress of their orders, Tomay said.

“There's no rushing either in our building workers or the gig workers,” she said.

Taking it slow
Kodali thinks Amazon will need a lot of people placing orders around the same time from the same or adjacent apartment buildings for the 30-minute service to be cost-effective.

Consumers may appreciate rapid receipt of products like toilet paper and batteries, but retailers and logistics experts said they also see some online shoppers, especially members of Generation Z, choosing no-rush shipping for products they don't need in a hurry.

Amazon for several years has invited customers to skip one- or two-day delivery and to receive their orders on the same day in as few parcels as possible. Consolidating orders into fewer packages by electing to have them delivered at the same time cuts down on boxes, shipping envelopes and fuel use, analysts said.

“The millennials who came to age in an era that was on fast delivery came to expect it de facto, whereas ... Gen Z is more accepting of a slower speed than previous generations before them,” said Darby Meegan, a general manager at Flexport, a supply chain and logistics company that fulfills orders for thousands of online merchants.

Still, Amazon executives have cited positive early results for Amazon Now in India, where they said Prime members tripled their requests for 30-minute deliveries once they started using the service.

Amazon Now also is attracting more repeat American customers, Tomay said.

“It’s in early days and time will tell,” she said. “I think that it will be interesting to see how it evolves.”

Houston company partners on AI-powered medical support for space missions

AI in space

Houston-based Aexa Aerospace has partnered with SpacePort Australia (SPA) to build medical AI solutions for space crews.

Known as The Hamilton Project, the collaboration aims to complete the training and refinement of a “deductive medical AI model” designed to aid and treat astronauts and space travellers. With limited to no real-time access to doctors on Earth during space missions, the project's goal is to create an AI model that would serve as a medical resource.

“‘The Hamilton Project’ is a sophisticated AI model, integrating academic and clinical knowledge in a unique way,” Aexa founder and CEO Feranando De La Peña Llaca said in a news release. “It is paving the way for future autonomous attending.”

The project is named after NASA flight surgeon Dr. Douglas Hamilton, who participated in 50 missions.

SPA, an independent research organization, will bring its practical medical knowledge and clinical experience to The Hamilton Project, which builds on Australia’s rural and remote medical training programs. SPA founder Dr. Gabrielle Caswell brings 20 years of remote medicine experience that SPA believes will help address the issues that could be encountered in space.

“Rural general practitioners in Australia practice ‘pre-cradle to grave’ medicine, including areas considered sub-specialities in most western countries: OBYN, paediatrics, trauma management, anaesthetics, general surgery, mental health and geriatrics,” Caswell added in the release. “This broad clinical skill set encompasses all stages and phases of human life. And importantly practitioners are also trained in the management of severe trauma. "It is anticipated that doctors and medical staff will become embedded into missions, and all these skills will be required over time, to create successful space economic zones.”

Aexa Aerospace’s previous work includes developing holographic medical devices that have been trialled on the International Space Station. Read more here.

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