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- BG Reads 8.30.2023
BG Reads 8.30.2023
BG Reads | News - August 30, 2023 🗞️
August 30, 2023
In today's BG Reads:
Leading News
🏗️ 1,470 steps for a site plan per McKinsey & Co. Council presentation
⚡ Texas narrowly avoided a power emergency last week. What happened?
⚖️ Ex-Proud Boys leader stares down decades in prison today for Jan. 6 case
From Bingham Group
🎙️ BG Podcast Ep. 213: Discussing Mckinsey and Co.’s city of Austin Development Site Plan Assessment(Also available on Apple Podcasts and Spotify)
[AUSTIN METRO NEWS]
Council hears plan to overhaul site plan review process (Austin Monitor)
Few who have dealt with the city of Austin’s site plan review process would dispute that it’s cumbersome, time-consuming and expensive.
But consulting firm McKinsey & Company, which analyzed the process and then outlined improvements for City Council at Tuesday’s work session, has offered statistics demonstrating just how convoluted the process is.
For example:
The Austin Land Development Code includes 1,800 regulations, eight technical criteria manuals and 12 building technical codes;
There are 1,470 steps from start to finish for a site plan review; and
Eleven departments and more than 250 staff members are involved in the review process.
And in other Austin Metro News:
➡️ Parks board to take an (ever-so-brief) pause on Zilker Park plan (Austin Monitor) -> FULL STORY HERE
➡️ Semiconductor supplier Schunk Xycarb plans big expansion to keep up with Samsung, other chipmakers (Austin Business Journal) -> FULL STORY HERE
[TEXAS NEWS]
Texas narrowly avoided a power emergency last week. What happened? (Houston Chronicle)
It’s been an eventful few days for the Texas power grid. The state’s power grid operator asked Texans to conserve energy use on four consecutive afternoons as electricity demand was expected to surpass supply, warning of the potential for emergency operations — in which it would deploy a series of tools to try to reduce demand, among them rolling blackouts, and call upon other available sources of supply — for the first time since the winter freeze of February 2021. Conservation may ultimately have played a part in helping the Texas grid make it through without the need for emergency conditions to be implemented. But experts say significant contributions also came from other factors, such as Texas’s rapid build-out of industrial-scale battery storage and timely rainfall.
In a statement, Electric Reliability Council of Texas spokesperson Trudi Webster said past conservation efforts have seen approximately 500 megawatts of demand reduced from the grid.
Wind improvements, rain in parts of the state and additional reliability tools helped the grid operator get through peak times in the past week, Webster said.
On Friday, batteries contributed 1,175 megawatts of electricity when it was most needed, right as the gap between supply and demand on the power grid reached its lowest point at 7:50 p.m., according to a tweet from Doug Lewin, president of Stoic Energy Consulting. One megawatt of electricity can power about 200 Texas homes during periods of peak demand, according to ERCOT. “There were a lot of batteries that have been installed over the last year and a half that hadn’t really been used. Those showed up. They showed up big-time,” said Michael Webber, a professor in energy resources at the University of Texas at Austin. On Thursday and Sunday, unexpected evening rainfall also cooled down parts of the state.
This cooling lessened the need for air conditioning and helped air conditioning operate more efficiently, cutting electricity demand by a few thousand megawatts, said Joshua Rhodes, a research scientist with UT Austin’s Energy Institute... (LINK TO FULL STORY)
OTHER TEXAS NEWS:
➡️ Texas Guardsmen spied on migrants via WhatsApp, mishandled secret docs (Army Times and Texas Tribune) -> FULL STORY HERE
➡️ Paxton's alleged affair takes center stage ahead of his impeachment trial, testing Christian support (Houston Chronicle) -> FULL STORY HERE
[NATIONAL NEWS]
Ex-Proud Boys leader stares down decades in prison for Jan. 6 case (The Hill)
The former leader of the Proud Boys, Enrique Tarrio, is staring down decades in prison at a sentencing hearing on Wednesday after being convicted of seditious conspiracy in connection with the Jan. 6 attack on the Capitol.
Prosecutors have requested 33 years in prison for Tarrio, the highest sentencing sought for anyone convicted in connection to the riot. Prosecutors said Tarrio influenced “countless subordinate members” of the Proud Boys and the general public in a conspiracy to forcefully stop a peaceful transfer of power following the 2020 election… (LINK TO FULL STORY)
OTHER NEWS:
➡️ Unclear how many in Lahaina lost lives as Hawaii authorities near the end of their search for dead (Associated Press) -> (LINK TO FULL STORY)
➡️ ‘A big f-ing deal': Dem convention delegates will stay within Chicago city limits (Politico) -> LINK TO FULL STORY
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