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Houston, Texas, to be world leader in renewable energy?

How Houston can remain the world’s energy capital: Embrace wind and solar now, Culture Map, 24 Jan 12, BY  MICHAEL SKELLY, When I first moved to Texas in the late 1990s,renewable energy was considered a quaint notion which would never amount to much of anything. Around that time in Houston, wind and solar energy weren’t really on anyone’s radar. It seemed like everyone in town was either working for Enron or wanting to work there, and everyone else was focused on a new dot.com. In our generally wide-open city, there was no particular aversion to clean energy, just more of a “huh?” factor.

But over the past decade, Houston has emerged as one of the leading cities for the renewable energy industry. Almost every major wind company in the U.S. has a significant presence in Houston, includingDuke, Shell, BP, NextEra, Pattern, and EDPR (formerly Horizon Wind). These companies account for well over half of the of the wind turbines installed in the United States. ….

As it turns out, Texas now leads the country in wind energy, and is moving along in solar. In 2011, according to the Electric Reliability Council of Texas(ERCOT), 8.5% of the electricity consumed in the state came from wind energy. And as everyone knows, with our hot, muggy summers, we are voracious consumers of electricity, making 8.5% a LOT of electricity.

On a really blustery day, we get almost 30% of our electricity from wind. This is up from right around 0% a dozen years ago.  We got here through a combination of a slight push from the state that started with Gov. Bush, federal tax incentives, tremendous wind resources along our coast and in West Texas, and a business friendly environment. Houston companies were a big part of this multi-billion dollar build-out….. http://houston.culturemap.com/newsdetail/01-24-11-how-the-worlds-oil-capital-can-be-a-center-for-renewable-energy/

January 25, 2012 - Posted by | general

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