T. Boone Pickens building largest wind-power project in United States
Overdue.
Mesa Power, controlled by billionaire investor Boone Pickens, ordered 667 wind turbines from General Electric Co. to begin a $10 billion wind-farm project in Texas that will be the nation’s largest.
When completed in 2014, the Pampa Wind Project in northern Texas will be capable of producing 4,000 megawatts, the company said. That’s enough power for about 1.2 million average U.S. homes…
Abundant wind, open land, federal tax credits and rising electricity prices have made Texas the largest U.S. producer of electricity from wind. Mesa’s Pampa Wind Project would almost double that generating capacity…
“We’ve had a great response to this project,” Pickens said in the statement. “Landowners and local officials understand the economic benefits.”
Landowners leasing to the project will earn on average $20K/year from each wind turbine on their property.
And just to back up this kind of growth:
Spanish power company Iberdrola, the world’s largest renewable energy operator, said it plans to invest $8 billion in the United States between 2008 and 2010.
The Bilbao-based firm is aiming to have a 15 percent share of the wind power market in the US by 2010, it added in a statement.
It had a wind power production capacity of 2,400 megawatts in the US at the end of March and it expects to reach 3,600 megawatts by the end of the year, the statement added.
The Oil Patch Boys will have to find someone more impressive than timorous political mice and Know-Nothing nutballs to try to halt energy projects that turn a profit.
And...we should understand that the same wind surveys that kicked off the wind energy boom in Texas were performed in New Mexico. The state and a couple of governors have known we are capable of being net wind energy exporters for a decade and more.
If they had considered building new industry, new income, new jobs for New Mexicans to be more important than maintaining PNM's guaranteed profit patch - well, maybe, folks like T.Boone Pickens and Iberdrola might be building in New Mexico.
Posted: Tue - May 20, 2008 at 09:44 AM