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Kate Galbraith covered energy and environment for the Tribune from 2010 to 2013. Previously she reported on clean energy for The New York Times from 2008 to 2009, serving as the lead writer for the Times' Green blog. She began her career at The Economist in 2000 and spent 2005 to 2007 in Austin as the magazine's Southwest correspondent. A Nieman fellow in journalism at Harvard University from 2007 to 2008, she has an undergraduate degree in English from Harvard and a master's degree from the London School of Economics. She is co-author of “The Great Texas Wind Rush,” a book about how the oil and gas state won the race to wind power.
The Texas commissioner of agriculture on the "catastrophic" devastation he's seen from the worst one-year drought in recorded Texas history, what the feds and state are doing and what needs to happen to cope with a potential multiyear drought. Full Story
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As the Central Texas utility struggles to retain electric customers, its new general manager, Becky Motal, announced that four senior positions have been eliminated and said staff reductions "may be necessary." Full Story
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A number of cities are making more money than usual from selling water this year because people are using more water to compensate for the lack of rain. But rates in many places are going up, to fix broken pipes and fund new supplies. Full Story
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DAY 26 of our month-long series on the effects of new state laws and budget cuts: 23 of the state's 94 parks face reductions in staff or operations. Full Story
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Are the drought and record heat due to climate change? Scientists hedge, especially on the drought question, but there's no question it's been getting hotter in Texas — and it's going to continue to do so. Full Story
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The cost of building several thousand miles of transmission lines to carry wind power across Texas is now estimated at $6.79 billion, a 38 percent increase from the initial projection three years ago. Full Story
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Gov. Rick Perry often emphasizes that he favors diversification of energy sources — and the record mostly bears him out. Wind farms and gas drilling have proliferated under his tenure, and he has tried to make building coal plants easier. Full Story
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Forests of enormous electric wind turbines now rise across West Texas — a far cry from the smaller, water-pumping windmills that covered the land a century ago. In Lubbock, a museum called the American Wind Power Center traces this change, juxtaposing old and new. Full Story
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As the Department of Agriculture focuses on biofuels, it is pulling out of wind and solar research. For the tiny Panhandle hamlet of Bushland, this means the end of a wind program that has operated for 35 years. Full Story
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With Texas facing dramatic population growth and constraints on its water supplies, interest in the use of sewage — or "reclaimed water," as those in the industry prefer to call it — to provide for a variety of water needs is growing. Full Story
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