Entries Tagged 'Texas' ↓

Texas, with environmentalists like T. Boone Pickens (official site) is building wind turbines. Click Here. In Texas, when they find that they have wind in their backyard, they want to use it to make money. In Massachusetts and New Jersey, when someone finds wind in his backyard his neighbors say ‘Hold on there, Cowboy. What you think you’re doin? You think this is Texas or somethin?’ Just ask Mike Mercurio.

Massachusetts, with Environmentalist Liberals like Ted Kennedy, is not building wind turbines. Cape Wind is swinging like an albatross, like NJ’s Offshore Wind Farm. Maybe they are worried they’ll find Jimmy Hoffa’s body swinging from the nacelle.

I’m glad the Texans are doing something right. And I’m not proud of Kennedy or Jon Corzine. Makes me almost wish I was a Texan.

“Adapt or Die” says Gary Yohe, economist at Wesleyan and co-author of the UN study on climate change, on Marketplace this morning. Growing seasons will lengthen, rainfall patterns will change.

Some people are in denial. George Bush, Dick Cheney, and their cheerleaders. Others are adapting. You can see solar panels on homes in California and New Jersey. Their visionary owners have no electric bill; their solar powered roof top power plants will pay for themselves 8 or 10 times during their 40 year life-span.

We see wind farms in operation from Jersey to Texas to California. More are on the horizon. Power without pollution. Wind Power. Solar Power. No greenhouse gases, no radioactive wastes, no mercury. Clean Energy.

If Vestas, harnessing the wind to produce 30% of Denmark’s electric power, may be the Apple Computer of wind power, GE is the IBM, legitimizing the industry with Arklow Bank as IBM did when they introduced their PC in 1981.

Evergreen, First Solar, and Sunpower may be leap-frogging each other for “best” solar panels. Meanwhile BP, the energy company that sees itself moving “Beyond Petroleum,” manufactures solar panels in factories in Maryland, Spain, Germany, and India, for sale in Home Depot.

The best example of adapt or die can be seen in the auto industry. Honda and Toyota offer hybrids with low emissions, good mileage, and great performance. Ford and GM are still pushing gas guzzlers. Big SUV’s are only profitable when they are sold, not while rusting on dealer lots. Wall Street is voting with its “Market Capitalization” and Main Street is voting with its wallet.

Clifford Krauss, writing in yesterday’s Times, points out in
With Coal Plans Cut Back, Texas Faces Energy Gap [Link to article here ] that the recent TXU deal - in which the energy firm made a commitment to withdraw applications for several coal-fired plants, doesn’t necessarily address Texas’ projected consumption.

Environmentalists and some state officials see an opening for renewable energy in a state that is already the national pacesetter in wind energy production. About 4 percent of the state’s power is now produced by wind and other renewable sources, and state officials say they expect a quadrupling of wind power generation in the next 20 years.

“Wind has the potential to help fill the shortfall,” said Jerry Patterson, the Texas land commissioner, whose responsibilities include leasing state lands for wind energy development. “Every day that passes, renewables make more economic sense.”

Texas now produces 2,800 megawatts of energy a year from wind, enough to serve 500,000 homes. Mr. Patterson said an additional 2,000 megawatts would come online by 2009. Most of the production now occurs in the blustery Panhandle, but two offshore farms are in the planning stages and should be online by the beginning of the next decade.

Still, few experts think enough renewable power can be developed quickly enough, given the lack of transmission capacity and high costs. Natural gas, which provides nearly half the state’s electricity, is set for another surge because gas plants can generally be built faster than nuclear or coal facilities.

That Texas currently gets 4% of its electricity from renewables is striking; Popular Logistics is trying to find out if that’s solely the result of energy “market” forces - it’s hard to think of our current energy situation as a real market, complete with vigorous competition and invisible hands- or if Texas has been subsidizing renewables all along.

However, perhaps Texas should take heed of the Naval Postgraduate Center’s recommendation for making the power grid in Iraq more robust: widespread decentralized use of solar power. The current administration, ever keen to take advice from military professionals, hasn’t publicly commented on the Navy’s proposal to put a PV panel on every Iraqi roof. A copy of the report is available from The Project on Government Secrecy at the Federation of American Scientists.

Krauss’s skeptical experts are probably correct, if one assumes little or no subsidy for renewables, and a focus on large-scale “farms.” But the Navy “Solar Eagle” proposal is for a decentralized system (a chicken in every pot, a PV panel on every roof), principallybecause decentralization and redundant connections are what make networks robust and resistant to attack - and reduce the need for transmission capacity, as more power is generated at or near the site of production. (One of the reasons, we’re told, that the Internet was designed the way it was. Just ask Mr. Gore).