Dan wrote: We see that Texas has almost twice the wind energy of California and that the total of what's been built from Jan 1 2005 to March 31, 2008 and the present contruction is 9 times larger for Texas than California. Yet, I've read may posters here say that it's the manipulation of the big powerful energy companies, not market forces, that determine what gets built and what doesn't.
So, my question is why is California so much more under the thumb of Big Oil than Texas? It follows from that arguement, right, since Texas has built and is building about 6 GW of wind power since 2005 and California has only managed less than 700 MW. Several factors come into play here. Texas is almost a third larger (62%) than California. Texas has much less land set aside as parks/recreation areas. As best as I can figure it, California has something like 15 times more land set aside for national parks, recreation areas and wilderness than Texas does. Beyond that the California Coastal Commission protects strictly regulates construction along the entire 840 mile coastline. Furthermore, unlike Texas, a large swath of land is too mountainous for wind farms to be practical. Except for Half Dome of course. A third factor is the number of bird kills at the Altimont wind farm. The windmills are located along a migratory route and in the hills that are home to the world's highest density of nesting golden eagles; they kill hundreds of eagles a year along with thousands of other birds. > > > Now one might argue that California's photovoltic initiative means that > large scale (GW) installations of solar photovoltic power is just being > done instead of wind, but as we see at > > > http://tinyurl.com/4pwbhf > > California has installed a lot more wind energy than solar over the last 5 > years or so. In fact the record total of solar energy capacity over the > past year in the US has been less than 150 MW....which is about 10% of the > first quarter of '08 for wind. > > And, the big wind symposium will be held right down the road from me...in > Houston the first week in June. > > So, my question is, given the fact that California is far more liberal > than > Texas, how did this happen? > > Dan M. > > (Yes, this post is tounge-in-cheek, but I think it is a valid use of the > reasoning that the use of alternative energy is determined by whether an > area is dominated by Big Oil). If you think its valid reasoning, the tongue isn't to far into the cheek. You make it sound like Ca's alternative energy production is pretty wimpy, but they are by far the largest producers of non-hydro alternative energy in the nation; more than three times as much as Texas in 2006. < http://www.eia.doe.gov/cneaf/solar.renewables/page/prelim_trends/rea_prereport.html > You also might be interested in these guys: <http://www.nanosolar.com/blog3/ > Doug _______________________________________________ http://www.mccmedia.com/mailman/listinfo/brin-l
