HATING THE ENVIRONMENT CAN'T SAVE OIL:

The Texas power grid -- which, uniquely, only serves Texas -- has shuddered and occasionally broken in recent years under the weight of extreme weather, a growing population and aging infrastructure. But so far, the grid has held up this summer. In fact, ERCOT has only asked customers to voluntarily reduce electricity use once during the heat wave. 

And that's due in large part to another record Texas has shattered this summer: Solar and wind farms set a new high water mark for renewable energy generation -- 31,468 megawatts -- on June 28, helping offset the 8,000 megawatts knocked offline at ailing natural gas and coal-fired plants. "Wind and solar are giving us a big enough buffer that even when we have a handful of power plants go offline, it isn't causing disruptions," Dan Cohan at Rice University in Houston told The Washington Post.

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