Texas is biggest wind power generator in country and growing fast.
During a recent trip to central Texas, I discovered that the easiest way to gather my bearings when lost was to see which way the wind was blowing. Every time I spotted a Texas flag (which was pretty much everywhere I went) it would be whipping in the wind, and that wind was always coming steadily from the north.
Consequently, Texas has become the country’s largest and fastest growing generator of clean wind energy. According to this article in the New York Times, wind energy now accounts for more than 3 percent of the state’s electricity and is growing fast. Even famous oilman T. Boone Pickens is getting into the act, with the development of a $10 billion wind farm in Texas. Once built, it will be the largest wind farm in the world.
There are a number of quite interesting issues underlying this rapid growth in wind power in America. First, a common theme of this site is the importance of getting the cost of alternative energy generation close to that of burning fossil fuels. Until that point, there will always be a demand for unclean energy. While giving tax breaks to wind farms helps, transformative change will be resisted until fossil fuel generation is more expensive than clean energy generation.
Which brings us to the next interesting issue, which is that the majority of wind projects being built in Texas (over two-thirds) are owned by foreign companies. While it is good to see that the federal government is not using protectionism to keep out foreigners (like they do with Brazilian ethanol), it is disconcerting that our domestic companies are either disinterested or incapable of taking the lead on wind energy development. As we discussed here, leadership is required to ensure that domestic companies have the ability to innovate and the means to develop meaningful wind energy production.
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