Texas Does Carbon Big, and That's Not All...

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."