Energy expert: Why Houston's 100-degree days matter more than 5 years ago
guest column
If you are a Houston native or have lived in the city since the 1980s, you likely remember when a 100-degree day was so rare it made the local news. There were heat advisory warnings, with special attention to the midday hours, because the heat exposure carried with it risks like dehydration, heat stroke and extreme exposure to UV rays.
In this new era for our city and state, 100-degree days are becoming more common. Our local weather forecasters still report on the occurrence, but we are no longer able to restrict our activities as heavily.
The climate has changed rapidly, and Texans are navigating our collective response to the increased heat that has serious implications for our health, energy supply, economy and regional life.
Houston Has Always Been Hot, But This Heat is Different
Houston has expanded exponentially in the last few decades, doubling its population from roughly 1.4 million in 1976 to 2.4 million today. When we account for the growth in the surrounding suburbs, the population boom nearly quintuples.
Houston and the surrounding suburbs now total nearly 7 million people, a huge population increase that brings greater demand for energy. This demand impacts our infrastructure, energy availability, consumer costs, workforce productivity and water supply significantly. With these additions comes more asphalt and fewer trees. With less tree cover and green space, heat gets trapped, increasing temperatures in the city.
We are not just inheriting rising temperatures; we are also building hotter cities.
100-Degree Days and The Texas Grid
I have written before about our grid capacity, changes facing Texas, and the strain that we have seen on the grid. While redundancies in the Texas grid are improving, the pace of this change continues to pose challenges for our area.
The extreme heat has now made air conditioning mandatory for a greater percentage of days during the calendar year. AC units (large and small) are no longer cycling on and off as they are designed to run; instead, most systems are running continuously to meet the needs of Texans.
Daily activities and devices, including remote work, the AI boom, physical exercise, children’s playtime, charging multiple devices, and streaming entertainment, require much more cooling than in previous generations, producing a much larger demand on the grid.
Additionally, the way Houstonians live at home has also changed. Homes across America are much larger on average than they were in the 1980’s. Also, with the rise of remote work, there is a greater need for all-day electricity in each individual household. These factors, combined with the exponential increase in the number of devices and appliances used in households, significantly affect energy demand in our region.
Of course, we’re also seeing massive usage of electricity from large business users (warehouses, data centers, and more), including empty office buildings as return-to-office is slower than expected post-pandemic.
Heat is Not the Only Culprit
As Houston is a coastal city, we not only have to contend with 100-degree temperatures, but humidity also adds an extra layer of complexity to our climate. Thanks to the humidity, temperatures stay elevated for longer periods, meaning everything is retaining heat at a higher rate and for longer than ever before.
The heat never really leaves us anymore, as we don’t have cooler nights to help balance these very hot days. The compounding effect of extreme temperatures and high humidity makes energy demand higher in our region than in places like the New Mexico desert.
Economic Impact on Our Region
Extreme heat hits Texans’ wallets long before a weather alert ever pops up. When temperatures stay above 100 degrees for days at a time, air conditioners are basically working overtime, which sends electricity bills climbing.
And the harder those systems run, the more wear and tear homeowners end up dealing with, usually at the worst possible time, like the middle of July when a boom of AC units decide to quit at once. Meanwhile, roads, transformers and other infrastructure are all under more stress than they were originally built for.
There’s also a much bigger ripple effect that people don’t always think about. When it’s dangerously hot outside, construction crews, energy workers, landscapers, and other outdoor industries simply can’t operate the same way, which slows productivity and raises safety concerns.
Cities are also spending more money on cooling centers and heat-related emergency response, and over time, all of those rising costs have a way of showing up somewhere, whether that’s insurance rates, utility costs or the price communities pay to keep up with extreme weather.
The Opportunity for Houston
Texas is becoming a real-time test case for what happens when extreme heat, rapid growth, and massive energy demand all hit at once. While problematic, it also creates a huge opportunity for Houston and the Texas energy sector to lead. If there’s any place equipped to determine what the future of energy resilience looks like, it’s the city that already powers so much of the world’s energy conversation.
And the solution isn’t just “create more electricity.” It’s about building a smarter, more flexible system overall with better grid technology, battery storage, stronger infrastructure, more efficient building, and energy systems that can handle these extreme weather swings without everything feeling stressed at once. The reality is that a lot of what Texas figures out over the next few years could become the blueprint for other cities and states across the country.
Houston is already testing some of these smarter resilience strategies, such as microgrids, stronger substations, and more flexible energy systems designed to keep critical facilities running during major storms or outages. The goal is simple: build a grid that can take a hit without everything feeling strained all at once.
Going Forward
Hotter days are here to stay. We can’t stop our lives amid the extreme heat, so we have to find ways to adapt and we have to do it quickly. If there’s one thing Texas has always done well, however, it’s innovate under pressure. The communities, companies and energy leaders that move fastest now won’t just be responding to the future, they’ll be helping define it.
———
Sam Luna is director at BKV Energy, where he oversees brand and go-to-market strategy, customer experience, marketing execution, and more.