I Like Wal-Mart More and More Each Day…

The big-box retailer is taking the right steps to reduce their carbon footprint, this time using Texas wind to power their stores:

Wal-Mart has signed a contract to help power hundreds of its stores using wind energy, one of the largest investments in the field by a U.S. retailer.

The four-year agreement with Duke Energy is expected to provide up to 226 million kilowatt-hours of power each year to about 360 stores and distribution centers in Texas, about 15 percent of the total electricity used. The company said the purchase will result in the reduction of about 139,000 metric tons of carbon dioxide, the equivalent of what 25,000 cars would emit.

Euro Wind Companies Blowing By U.S. Rivals

Without a price on carbon emissions to make wind energy more cost-effective, U.S. wind companies are being outgunned by their European rivals who’ve been able to thrive under their continent’s cap-and-trade regime. Spanish companies like Iberdrola have already gained a foothold in the U.S. and are looking to expand even further during the economic downturn.  BusinessWeek reports:

Despite a troubled investment climate due to the weak economy, the U.S. wind sector looks set to continue growing—and European companies are likely to increase their role. Tough carbon dioxide emission restrictions forced the Old World’s utilities to embrace clean technology before their U.S. counterparts, giving them a crucial head start.

Their first-mover advantage was buttressed by generous local government subsidies, particularly in Spain and Portugal, that helped make wind energy profitable at an early stage. Now, flush with cash from their European operations, both Iberdrola and EDP have launched aggressive plans to invest billions of dollars in new wind farms across the U.S. by 2012. [...]

“Under current market conditions, the big players such as Iberdrola Renovables and EDP Renovaveis will consolidate in the booming U.S. market,” says Eduard Sala, senior analyst at Emerging Energy Research (EER), a consultancy based in Barcelona and Cambridge, Mass. “Players without finance could be forced to sell, with the large, experienced companies filling the void.”

What was that about climate legislation ruining the U.S. economy? Looks like not having a cap-and-trade mechanism is starting to put us at a competitive disadvantage.

A Good Ole’ Fashioned Revival in Texas

Proof of wind energy’s positive social impact, from deep in the Texan Bible Belt (even the superintendent’s named Mr. Bible!):

Millions of dollars in new tax revenue generated from the wind power boom sweeping rural west Texas have helped fund a rash of school building projects, the first signs of an expected economic revival.

“It’s the greatest thing that has happened here,” said James Bible, superintendent of the Blackwell Consolidated Independent School District, where the shell of a new school is rising, financed mainly by tax revenue from windmills. “It’s like day and night for the school districts.” [...]

Wind investment has provided a solid tax base allowing school districts to sell bonds to raise education funds even though land values were capped for 10 years as an incentive for developers.

“We wouldn’t even have considered the bond issue before the wind farms came in,” said Guy Nelson, superintendent of the Highland Independent School District in Roscoe. “It has stabilized the county. People who would have left are staying.”

The Good News and Bad News for Wind

Via Earth2Tech:

An [American Wind Energy Association] spokeswoman tells Earth2Tech that while Germany still has more installed capacity than the U.S., an estimated 22,000 megawatts to our 17,000 megawatts as of 2007, the U.S. is windier and is producing more actual power. Add to this estimates that the U.S. will add another 6,000 megawatts of capacity this year to Germany’s 1,600, and the U.S. should be able to solidify its spot as the global wind leader by the end of 2008.

But all of that explosive growth could come to a screeching halt if Congress doesn’t provide the industry with some regulatory certainty. And this means extending the tax credits far longer than one year, which was the length of the proposal voted down [this week]. With Congress heading into a long August recess on Friday, it doesn’t look like we’ll see a definite extension any time soon.

T. Boone’s Onto Something

We’re #1! We’re #1!

The American Wind Energy Association is expected to release a survey next month that says the US has become the world’s leading wind producer, and that the industry expects rapid growth to continue in places like Texas, the Great Plains and California.

And as Grist points out, more wind energy production has meant more jobs:

The hype is very real. Reliable correspondents from the American Wind Energy Association’s massive June conference in Texas report that everyone was talking about a shortage of trained and experienced people. I believe that “we need people yesterday” was the exact phrase. So while “the answer” may not be blowing in the wind, a zephyr of new jobs is sweeping down the plains. Turbines are sprouting like wildflowers after rain in Texas, California, Iowa, Minnesota, Washington, Oregon, Colorado, Illinois, and Oklahoma.

Texas Companies Bid To Build ‘Renewable Energy Superhighway’

There is no shortage of companies who want a part of the $5 billion project to transmit 18,500 megawatts of energy from rural wind farms to cities in Texas.  Without the new transmission lines, Texas wind energy will be all dressed with nowhere to go.

From the Dallas Morning News:

Oncor, the power transmission subsidiary of Dallas-based Energy Future Holdings Corp., joined five other Texas-based transmission companies in a single bid on the $4.9 billion wind power transmission lines authorized last week.

Calling the project the Renewable Energy Superhighway, Oncor and its partners face competition from nearly a dozen other submissions made by Thursday’s deadline to show interest in the project.

Oncor would be the biggest player in its consortium bid, investing $2 billion to build more than 1,000 miles of transmission line. The remainder of the work would be divided among Electric Transmission Texas, AEP Texas Central Co., AEP Texas North Co., the Lower Colorado River Authority Transmission Service Corp. and Sharyland Utilities LP.

The Windmills Turn, Less Coal is Burned, Deep in the Heart of Texas!

For renewable energy to compete with coal and gas, we need to improve our electricity grid. Right now, it’s much too difficult to transport the electricity generated by rural wind and solar energy farms to more populated areas where energy use is high.

But Texas is making sure it can capitalize on its abundant (and renewable!) natural resource–wind energy:

Texas, headquarters of America’s oil industry, is about to stake a fortune on wind power.

In what experts say is the biggest investment in the clean and renewable energy in U.S. history, utility officials in the Lone Star State gave preliminary approval Thursday to a $4.9 billion plan to build new transmission lines to carry wind-generated electricity from gusty West Texas to urban areas like Dallas. [...]

Texas is already the national leader in wind power, generating about 5,000 megawatts. But wind-energy advocates say the lack of transmission lines has kept a lot of that power from being put to use and has hindered the building of more turbines.

A national overhaul of our antiquated electric grid is still in order, and it never hurts to have a huge oil state like Texas to show us the way.

Wind: 20% By 2030?

Wind energy could provide us with a fifth of our energy needs by 2030, an Energy Department report finds. The AP reports:

Two decades from now Americans could get as much electricity from windmills as from nuclear power plants, according to a U.S. government report that lays out a possible plan for wind energy growth.

The report, a collaboration between the Energy Department research labs and industry, concludes wind energy could generate 20 percent of the nation’s electricity by 2030, about the same share now produced by nuclear reactors.

Such growth would pose a number of major challenges, but is achievable without the need of major new technological breakthroughs, said the report released Monday.

This level of wind energy production would be a major step towards reducing greenhouse gas emissions:

If wind energy’s share of power production grows to 20 percent, natural gas consumption is expected to decline by 11 percent and coal consumption by 18 percent in 2030, said the report. As a result carbon dioxide emissions linked to global warming would be reduced by 825 million metric tons a year.

“This is the equivalent of taking 140 million cars off the road,” said [Randall Swisher, executive director of the American Wind Energy Association.]

While this kind of growth is possible, it won’t be a breeze:

It would require improved turbine technology, “significant changes” and expansion of power line systems and a major expansion of markets for wind energy to accommodate an annual growth rate of 16,000 megawatts of electricity a year beginning in 2018, more than five times today’s annual growth.

Wind Is In (With the Right Support)

The answer to our country’s growing energy needs is blowing in the wind. The American Wind Energy Association released its latest report on the status of wind industry, which had a banner year:

Installed U.S. wind energy capacity grew nearly 45 percent last year to 16,800 megawatts, or about enough to serve 4.5 million homes, as interest in low-carbon power grew, an industry group said on Wednesday.

Texas remained the top state in both total wind power capacity, which reached with 4,446 MW, and new wind power capacity, the annual report from the American Wind Energy Association said.

But the report emphasizes the fact that wind energy growth is directly related to the availability of the Production Tax Credit (PTC)–the one that the U.S. Senate failed to extend a few months ago. Without the PTC, the wind industry will continue to go through the cycles shown by the graph at the top of this post. From the report:

Despite tremendous progress, wind power’s future remains uncertain… Unstable federal policy (that is, the expiration and extension cycles of the federal production tax credit, the primary incentive for wind power today) has led to costly boom and bust cycles for the industry (note the years 2000 2005). Conversely, consistent availability of the credit dramatically spurs growth (see years 2005, 2006 and 2007) and, along with it, thousands of new jobs and billions in new investment.

Congress must move quickly to extend the production tax credit and other renewable electricity tax incentives. With 116,000 jobs and $19 billion in clean energy investment at risk, the credits are a critical element of a long-term federal policy to support this vibrant, fast-growing industry. Americans, by an overwhelming majority, understand this need and favor such government support.

“With the right public policy, (wind) will be a growing and affordable part of our long term plans,” Dick Kelly, the president and CEO of Xcel Energy Inc., told Reuters.

But with the wrong policy, the wind industry won’t reach its full potential.

Wind Energy’s REALLY Blowing Up These Days

Video of the day, via TreeHugger:

TreeHugger eases our minds:

There’s a safety mechanism that usually slows down the blades during high winds. It was obviously defective on this one.