A Mighty Wind in Texas

Funny...considering that the private interests in those areas of prevailing winds in Texas, are also the interests that controlled the oil deposits...or who depleted the groundwater (and top soil) to the point of near exhaustion. So it's these "folks" who will be granted free "transportation" to market out of the pockets of the hapless majority of unwitting (and not wealthy) Texans--who will also be called on to pay for the electricity, as well as subsidize capitalization by those private interests in order to erect the wind powered generators....who also also wield considerable control over the state and local governments? Who will then pay for replacing the wind harvesters that are destroyed by gale winds and tornadoes?

--A Texas refugee

Texas knows oil and energy.

With peak oil arrives peak tax revenue, peak jobs, peak energy. NERC stands ready to sponsor transmission solutions.

Governments, Large utilities and large corps. see no money in local renewable energy grown on farms by farmers. Windfall profits are in store for a generation of PV solar & wind including the supporting transmission infrastructure.

Large corps know windfall profits have no risk if states and feds tax the public for capital investments that future public will support with taxes continuously to include a fuel and maintenance escalation clause enforced by law.

Texas wins wind generation and transmission revenues, Texas jobs, Large corp & utility control. California wins wind generation transmitted from Texas NIMBY.

The personal available local low cost energy alternative is local renewable corn. States encourage conversion of corn to ethanol and beans to methanol to generate revenue. Correctional facilities await the thirsty abuser.

Wind power? How do we mount micro-turbines in the eaves of the state legislatures to harness all that hot air?

Over here in Illinois we have one of those political paradoxes as well.

Our U of I completed a study showing MUCH greater productivity of land (gallons of eventual ethanol per acre of product) if some type of Switchgrass is grown and used instead of corn (like a sugarcane grass, but a different species)...but the big bull in that china shop is Archer Daniels Midland, a major Illinois company and supporter of - the source of government programs and subsidies - so we're about to have a round of state 'assistance' to build ethanol plants that are designed to turn corn into fuel.

Thinking this through, however: that takes the same corn away from present markets for the corn as, well, corn. Food and feed and other corn products will have a competing market they don't need...and yet we are STILL paying farmer-subsidy program million$ to land owners to NOT farm corn on their land...

I wonder how long it'll take elected officials to figure out they need to invest in privately held land-holding companies that buy land in order to NOT farm it, so they can cash in on the subsidy set-aside program - oh yeah, they already do that part...just like the pay-you-to-keep-trees-and-not-cut-them-down subsidy...

Then they just need to meet the requirement to plant some kind of grass - and keep it mowed - to stay in the program...oh yeah, they already do that part...

Now they could potentially make sure the grass they plant and mow is the right kind of switchgrass, so that bio-mass can be shipped to a more intelligent state with a subsidy for building bio-mass ethanol plants to produce fuel from switchgrass?

(Follow the bouncing ball...that leads to the money...)

And the next obvious question, how do I get in on some of these profits?