Texas gives green light to lots more wind power

AUSTIN, Texas - Texas officials gave the go-ahead Thursday to the nation's largest wind-power project, a plan to build billions of dollars worth of new transmission lines to bring pollution-free energy from gusty West Texas to urban areas.

Texas is already the national leader in wind power, and wind supporters say Thursday's move by the Public Utility Commission will make the Lone Star State a leader in moving energy to the urban areas that need electricity.

"We will add more wind than the 14 states following Texas combined," said PUC Commissioner Paul Hudson. "I think that's a very extraordinary achievement. Some think we haven't gone far enough, some think we've pushed too far."

"People think about oil wells and football in Texas, but in 10 years they'll look back and say this was a brilliant thing to do," added Patrick Woodson, vice president of E.On Climate & Renewables North America, which has about 1,200 megawatts of wind projects already in use or on the drawing board in Texas.

Some environmentalists and landowners have launched protests against wind turbines from Cape Cod in Massachusetts to Idaho and Texas' South Padre Island, complaining that wind turbines spoil the view and threaten migrating birds.

But the turbines are already in West Texas, a sparsely populated region also pockmarked with oil drilling and exploration equipment. And this project will build only transmission lines.

Expected to be finalized later this year, the approval represents a middle ground between five transmission scenarios ranging from $3 billion to $6.4 billion. The PUC had been asked by the Texas legislature to select the best transmission plan.

"It is expected that the new lines will be in service within four to five years," The PUC said in a statement.

Backers called the move a critical expansion of the "renewable energy superhighway," predicting it will spur wind energy projects, create jobs, reduce energy costs and reduce pollution.

$4 more a month on bills
Texas electric customers will bear the cost over the next several years, paying about $4 more per month on their electric bills.

Tom Smith, director of the Texas office of the consumer advocacy group Public Citizen, called that a small price to pay for clean energy.

Smith called Texas' current transmission lines a "two-lane dirt road" compared to the "renewable energy superhighway" the plan would build. "We have all these wind plants up and operating. What we're asking for is the superhighway to get the energy to the cities," Smith said. "This will send signals to manufacturers all across the world Texas is ready to be a world-class player in renewable energy."

State officials note the rate increases could be several years away, and the payments would be no different than the current system of paying for new transmission lines from power plants.

Wind power also benefits from a 2-cents-per-kilowatt-hour tax credit. The credit is set to expire in December, and wind backers have urged Congress to enact a long-term extension.

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