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The path to low-carbon electricity generation in Texas will likely require the co-development and integration of both natural gas and renewable energy resources like wind and solar power, a new research report commissioned by the Texas Clean Energy Coalition has found. The white paper, prepared by the Brattle Group for the Austin-based nonprofit, states that despite perceived competition between natural gas and renewable energy resources in Texas, the reality is the two sectors can aid each other's growth and can eventually help Texas meet rising energy demand in an era of tighter environmental controls. "Low-priced natural gas and clean renewable resources are complementary, not competing, resources to displace other fuels over the long term. Coordinated development of both will lead to a win-win for Texas and the environment," Kip Averitt, chairman of the Texas Clean Energy Coalition, said in a statement announcing the results of the Brattle Group analysis. The report examined conditions across the Electric Reliability Council of Texas (ERCOT) territory, which has some of the nation's greatest wind power capacity and has undergone an unprecedented boom in natural gas production aided by hydraulic fracturing. Some have asserted that an abundance of inexpensive natural gas will displace renewable energy, thus keeping Texas from fully developing its extensive wind and solar resources. The Brattle analysis challenges that conclusion, asserting instead that "in the short run, low gas prices are extremely unlikely to change the fact that existing renewables will nearly always have priority over gas-fired plants since, due to the absence of fuel costs, their variable costs are lower than those of essentially all other resources." And longer term, the analysis finds, new gas-fired power plants may compete with wind and solar power, but such conditions will be predicated on fluctuation in coal and gas prices, shifts in federal and state energy and environmental poli

The path to low-carbon electricity generation in Texas will likely require the co-development and integration of both natural gas and renewable energy resources like wind and solar power, a new research report commissioned by the Texas Clean Energy Coalition has found. The white paper, prepared by the Brattle Group for the Austin-based nonprofit, states that despite perceived competition between natural gas and renewable energy resources in Texas, the reality is the two sectors can aid each other's growth and can eventually help Texas meet rising energy demand in an era of tighter environmental controls.

Population and poverty can be a very basic factor accountable for the environmental problems we are experiencing nowadays.

A national disaster warning: in up to five million years, this is the first time that the concentration of carbon dioxide in our atmosphere is approximately to reach 400 parts per million (ppm). Monday on The guardian reports, former NASA scientist James Hansen warned that levels over 350ppm would destabilize the earth's climate, but now we have far exceeded that figure with a record-breaking weekly average of 398.5ppm recorded. While in May 2013, researchers at the Earth Systems Research Laboratory in Hawaii expect we will hit the 400ppm milestone. Aside from many other issues like global fraud for example there are many else the government should give attention to. According to The Guardian, the US government has been monitoring atmospheric carbon dioxide levels at the Mauna Loa station located at an elevation of 11,115 feet since 1958. During the time when it was first ascertained, CO2 levels stayed at a manageable 316ppm, but in the past five decades population expansion coupled with the growth of industrialized nations hooked on fossil fuels and meat has saturated the atmosphere with heat-trapping gases. "I wish it weren't true but it looks like the world is going to blow through the 400ppm level without losing a beat. At this pace we'll hit 450ppm within a few decades," Ralph Keeling, a geologist with the Scripps Institution of Oceanography which operates the Hawaiian observatory, told The Guardian. It is as if it was a national disaster warning. This "sobering milestone" should be a wake up call for governments to support clean energy and slash emissions, said Tim Lueker, an oceanographer and carbon cycle researcher with Scripps CO2 Group.