Tag Archives: wind energy

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Let the wind keep blowing

Hey, it’s been windy lately.

You know what? The wind has produced at least one amazing positive result: an increase in megawatts, meaning electricity, meaning less use of fossil fuels.

http://dallasmorningviewsblog.dallasnews.com/2014/03/a-beneficial-blow-wind-energy-surpasses-10k-megawatt-mark.html/

The Electrical Reliability Council of Texas announced that on March 28, it passed the 10,000-megawatt barrier for the first time ever. Texas, which has been the leader in wind energy in the nation, set the record nationally.

We’re No. 1!

I get that not everyone is enamored with wind energy. It’s expensive to generate electricity from all those turbines planted all across our High Plains plateau. However, the more electricity created by wind, the less of it is created by fossil fuels that, last I heard, remain a finite source of energy. The stuff is going to run out eventually.

The wind? We’ll have it forever and ever.

It’ll keep blowing, sometimes at great velocity. It’ll annoy the daylights out of us, blowing dirt into our motor vehicle air filters and wafting its way into our homes.

But as ERCOT notes, wind can heat and cool our dwellings with a virtually infinite energy supply.

Let it blow.

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‘Energy independence’ gets a little closer

Let’s look back about, oh, two years.

Gasoline prices were rocketing skyward. The U.S. government was under fire for failing to do more to encourage domestic oil exploration and production. Republicans across the land were lampooning the Democratic president for his abject failure to draw us closer to the day when we wouldn’t have to depend on foreign sources to run our industries and fuel our vehicles.

Now comes word that the Gross Domestic Product grew at an annual rate of 2.5 percent, which is greater than what economists predicted. The cause of that spike in GDP growth? Domestic oil production.

http://thehill.com/blogs/e2-wire/e2-wire/319649-booming-oil-production-boosted-gdp-estimate-white-house-advisers-say

Interesting, don’t you think?

Domestic oil production is at a 17-year high, according to White House economists. Are they being objective? Well, no neutral observer has questioned the numbers.

There’s plenty of anecdotal evidence in West Texas to make the point. The Permian Basin boasts the lowest jobless rate in the state. The reason? The huge demand for oil-related jobs.

I’ve been talking to friends and acquaintances with business interests in the Midland-Odessa area and they all say the same thing: You can’t get housing there; hotel rooms are booked up; those high-rise Midland skyscrapers, the ones built in the 1970s that went vacant when the oil industry crashed in the mid-1980s, have filled up again with tenants.

But don’t rely on that kind of chatter. There appears to be plenty of hard evidence of a turnaround.

All of this bodes pretty well for the United States as Americans watch with intense interest in developments in the Middle East. Egypt looked on the verge of exploding once again. Syria remains a serious question mark for the United States. No one can predict with any certainty what will happen in a region of the world from which we still get a lot of our oil.

Meanwhile, the pump jacks are still working hard here at home. North Dakota is becoming the next “Texas” and/or “Alaska.” Reports indicate an oil field discovery there that will dwarf the reserves known to lie under the Saudi sand.

And I haven’t even mentioned all the “alternative energy” sources being developed, such as the Panhandle wind farms.

Why are the critics so quiet these days?

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Why doesn’t POTUS come here?

A headline in the National Journal online edition asks: Why won’t Obama visit North Dakota?

It’s a valid question, given the oil boom that’s changing North Dakota and beginning to change the nation’s energy strategy.

http://www.nationaljournal.com/energy/why-won-t-obama-visit-north-dakota-20130825

But I can answer the question posed by the headline and the article written by the Journal’s Amy Harder. He won’t go there for the same reason he doesn’t come to West Texas. There’s no political advantage for the president.

What’s more, West Texas is resuming its own energy boom, in the Permian Basin, not to mention the growth of the wind-energy industry throughout the Panhandle.

Presidents, though, are the supreme political animals. Democratic presidents quite often don’t bother coming to regions of the country where they lack popular support. That would be, um, West Texas and North Dakota.

Conversely, do Republican presidents spend a lot of time visiting places such as, say, the Bay Area of California, or Boston, or the Pacific Northwest? Hardly.

Frankly, I think quite a few West Texans — not to mention North Dakotans — would appreciate a presidential visit to talk up the industries that are fueling our manufacturing might and keeping our vehicles on the road.

And I also believe a Democratic president could get a warm welcome here. Do you remember the reception another very high-profile Democrat — one William Jefferson Clinton — got when he came to Amarillo in 2008 to campaign for his wife, then-U.S. Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton, as she sought the Democratic Party presidential nomination? The Civic Center’s Grand Plaza Ballroom was packed beyond capacity.

The nation’s energy future is, indeed, changing, as the National Journal article points out.

A presidential visit would be a welcome event to call attention to the hard work that’s under way out here in Flyover Country.