Michael Giberson
… Texas does the non-carbon thing in a pretty big way, too.
Tom Fowler, at NewsWatch: Energy, pulls together some numbers. Among his points (edited and slightly rearranged):
- Texas leads the nation in greenhouse gas emissions; and
- If Texas were a country, it would rank seventh in the world in greenhouse gas emissions.
But also:
- Texas is the nation’s top wind-power producing state [as also noted here at KP a few days ago. -MG] , avoiding over three million tons of carbon dioxide (CO2) annually;
- The Electric Reliability Council of Texas (ERCOT) expects to have 4,500MW of installed wind generation capacity – roughly 7% of peak demand – by mid-2008;
- The potential for solar power is also among the highest in the country, with high levels of direct solar radiation concentrated in West Texas*; and
- Texas has an abundance of biomass energy resources.
*Translation: It sunny out there.
Texas will never aspire to be the “Persian Gulf of solar energy,” but it will darn-well be proud to be the “Texas of solar energy.”