Texas may overtake California in wind power

Christian Science Monitor via CBS News:

Out in the dwindling oil fields around McCamey, Texas, where rattlesnakes outnumber people and black-gold gushers once blew their tops, a new energy geyser is blowing — wind power.

More than 860 wind turbines today pinwheel where oil derricks once bloomed, cranking out pollution-free megawatts for wind developers like FPL Energy, a Juno Beach, Fla., utility with the nation's largest wind-power portfolio. In turn, that energy is transmitted to cities like Austin.

"We call our town the wind energy capital of Texas," says Sherry Phillips, McCamey's wind-centric mayor.

...

Back in Texas, King Mountain near McCamey was one of the biggest wind farms in the country with 215 turbines just completed in 2004, creating scores of new jobs and millions in tax revenue for the town. Now, hundreds of megawatts of new wind power are in development in other dry, wind-swept Texas vistas like Taylor County. A new offshore development near Galveston has also been approved.

This year, Texas could become the nation's leading wind-power state.

"We're about to pass California," says Jim Suydam, spokesman for the Texas General Land Office, which oversees state-owned lands. "We're having a little bit of a race."

There is a lot of story between the three dots.

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