Hurricane Beryl, a powerful storm that struck Houston in July of 2024, left a mark not only on the city's people and infrastructure, but also on their carbon footprint. In the wake of the hurricane, widespread power outages forced many households to rely on backup generators leading to an increase in emissions from power generation. By analyzing data from various sources, including power outage reports and household energy consumption patterns, this article aims to quantify the net increase in CO2 emissions during the eight-day recovery period following the hurricane. This analysis highlights the environmental challenges posed by natural disasters and the need for more sustainable solutions in disaster preparedness.
Our model indicates the environmental cost of the natural disaster resulted in an 83% increase in CO2 emissions from HurricaneBeryl during the eight-day recovery period from Houston-area households.
We estimate that there were 587,260 metric tons of CO2 (mtCO2) emissions due to home generator usage during Hurricane Beryl and the eight-day recovery period. This was an 83% increase and almost doubles the baseline amount of CO2 emissions (320,476 metric tons) that would have been created in a normal eight-day period in Houston from power generation for households.
We used the official outage reports from CenterPoint as reported by the Texas Tribune for the basis of our model. We used two data points per day. We limited our scope to the eight days of hurricane recovery from 10am Monday morning, July 8th to the morning of July 15th when CenterPoint reported all customers had been restored.
To determine baseline emissions, ERCOT’s annual power generation report by type was used as a reference for the proportions of power generated. Based on 2023 numbers, we focused on power from gas (45.54%) and coal (13.82%) only, because solar and wind produce no emissions and emissions from nuclear power is negligible. Based on ERCOT data as reported by Rhythm, an energy company, average energy consumption for Texas homes is 1300 kWh per household or 43 kWh per day.
Not all homes have generators and our assumption for the percentage of homes with generators (31.3%) was used as a reference number and based on a recent survey by Texas Trends of people who either bought generators or checked on their generators prior to Hurricane Beryl as part of their preparation. The survey included a cross section of Houstonians and was based on more than 2700 responses.
Anecdotal reports from users on public forums suggested that not everyone was operating their generators for all 24hrs in a day without power. For example, some people stated that they would turn on their generators during the evenings for AC while they slept, and kept it on for most of the day, but turned it off for a few hours and simply avoided opening the fridge or freezer during that time. Turning the generator off when they left the house was also a likely scenario. Users cited the need to control costs as the most common reason for turning off generators. We used the assumption of an 80% usage (run time per day) rate for home generator usage, but this could be an understatement.
Our assumption was that home generator load varies between 50% to 100%, considering that there is a minimum load necessary to run the generator. For the focus of our model, we decided to calculate based on a 75% load. The decision to use a 6500-watt generator was made because it is the most popular size on the market and appropriate for most homes.
Since generators put out different amounts of CO2 emissions based on the fuel type used (Diesel, Natural Gas, Gasoline, and Propane), we broke down the proportion of generator types by market share. Since there are significant regional differences for generator types throughout the country, based on infrastructure (such as natural gas lines) and fuel availability, our assumptions for the market share of generators were based on internal knowledge of the generator market for the southern Texas market.
We calculated the number of households running generators from the 31.3% reference and broke down the type of generator by market share proportion (diesel, natural gas, gasoline, and propane). We calculated the number of hours without power based on CenterPoint’s outage report and the assumption of an 80% usage rate. We calculated the CO2 emissions from generators by type in metric tons based on the CO2 emissions from fuel consumption per hour for the respective fuel types.
To calculate baseline emissions during a normal eight-day period, we took the pounds per kWh of emissions based on type (gas, coal) multiplied by the number of kWh produced by Houston households over an eight-day period multiplied by the proportion of power generation by type (45.54% and 13.82%, respectively).
Not all of CenterPoint’s 2.6 million customers without power were households, many were businesses, but we were unable to identify the breakdown between different types of customers. Businesses require much larger generators to stay open and are more likely to have generators if essential to their business, grocery stores being a prime example of this. These factors result in a greater amount of CO2 emissions from their use and therefore our estimations for net emissions could be an understatement; however this is balanced by the fact that many office-based businesses remained closed without power and implemented work-from-home policies during the recovery and therefore were not producing emissions from generators.
The aftermath of Hurricane Beryl serves as a stark reminder of the environmental consequences that can accompany natural disasters. While generators are often essential to households during natural disasters, we should not lose sight of the substantial increase in CO2 emissions that comes from their use. Our reasoning that there was an 83% increase in household CO2 emissions during the eight-day recovery period underscores the need for more resilient and sustainable energy solutions in the face of future storms. As we continue to experience more frequent and severe weather events, it becomes increasingly important to consider the broader environmental impacts of our disaster preparedness strategies.
The Hidden Cost of Natural Disasters - Accompanying Charts
Disclaimer: Numbers were based on publicly available data. Where no such data existed, assumptions were made based on internal industry knowledge.
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