Nuclear Weapons Plant Going "Green"

The picture above (from the website nukewatch.org) is of Pantex -- the plant where all United States nuclear weapons are assembled (and out-dated nukes are dismantled). The plant is in the Texas Panhandle, just a few miles from Amarillo.

For years now, this huge nuclear weapons plant has sucked up a significant portion of the electrical energy produced in this area. It looks like that is going to change soon. Acting on instructions from the White House for government agencies to develop homegrown energy and cut carbon pollution, the Pantex plant will break ground for a huge new wind farm in just a few days.

The wind farm will save the plant (and the federal government) about $2.8 million dollars each year in energy costs -- and that money will be used to pay for the construction (which means it won't add to the budget deficit or the national debt). It will cover about 1500 acres, and will produce  about 47 million kilowatt hours of energy each year (enough energy to supply the needs of about 3,500 homes). It will also reduce the amount of CO2 emissions by more than 35,000 metric tons each year (the equivalent of removing 7,200 cars from service).

I'm still not thrilled to have a nuclear weapons assembly plant near the city where I live, but if it has to be there, I'm at least glad they are making an effort to be a good neighbor -- by producing their own energy from a renewable and clean resource, and by lowering the pollution their energy use is responsible for. Pantex is going green -- and that's a good thing.

T. Boone Takes His Ball And Goes Home

Last year at this time, T. Boone Pickens was bragging about building the world's largest wind farm here in the Texas Panhandle. Toward that effort, he ordered 600 wind turbines from General Electric. It looked like the Panhandle would finally be able to put one of it's natural wonders to good use -- an incessant wind.

It looks like that dream may now be dead. Pickens has cut the order for turbines in half. He now only wants 300 of the General Electric wind turbines, and NONE of them will be erected in the Texas Panhandle. He will be using them on smaller wind farms in Minnesota and Canada.

Pickens said he is doing this for two reasons. The drop in natural gas prices, making it cheap to run plants on gas and the lack of transmission lines in the Panhandle. That's a giant load of horse manure!

The truth is that gas prices rise and fall all the time. They may be cheap right now, but it won't be too long before they rise again. As for the transmission lines, they are in the final stages of being approved right now and would probably be well on the way to being finished before Pickens could start building his wind farms (delivery of the turbines is scheduled for 2011).

Let's look at the real reason he's fleeing the Panhandle. He wasn't just planning to build a wind farm. He wanted to use the same land and right-of-way to ship Panhandle water from the Ogallala aquifer to the Dallas-Fort Worth area. He was going to construct a 9 foot in diameter pipeline to ship thousands of gallons of precious Panhandle water every day.

Frankly, this scheme would have sucked all the water from the Panhandle in just a few years, making this semi-arid area a real desert, but he would have made a ton of money off of it (probably more than the wind farm would have provided). But Panhandle legislators got wind of his plans and acted to stop the theft of water from the Ogallala aquifer.

That's the real reason he's sending the wind farm somewhere else. If he can't suck the Panhandle dry of water, then he won't build his wind farm in the desert he would have created.

He's like the neighborhood kid who wasn't allowed to be the quarterback -- he's taken his ball and gone home. Good riddance!

Panhandle To Get Second Wind Farm

Many have been asking for electricity to be generated in cleaner ways and using renewable resources, instead of building more dirty coal-burning plants. It looks like Texas is jumping big-time into this market. Soon, Texas may be the nation's leading producer of electricity from wind energy.

And they couldn't have found a better area to do it in -- the high plains of the Texas Panhandle. If there's one thing the Panhandle has plenty of, it's wind. There are few days without wind on the high plains.

Last June, I told you about the Mesa Group's plans to build a wind farm in four counties of the Panhandle (Gray, Hemphill, Roberts and Wheeler). They said this huge wind farm should produce about 3,000 megawatts of electricity. This is slightly more than the energy produced by the nuclear plant at Comanche Peak.

Now, a second wind farm is being planned for the Panhandle. TXU is teaming up with Shell WindEnergy to build a wind farm in Briscoe county southeast of Amarillo. This one will also produce around 3,000 megawatts. Adding a new wrinkle, the group says they are considering the use of compressed air for those few days when the wind doesn't blow in the Panhandle.

This sounds like a good deal for everyone. After they get back their initial investment, the power companies will have plants powered by a very cheap renewable source. Farmers and ranchers will have a new source of income that won't pollute their land. Electric consumers will get the electricity they need without any accompanying pollution. New jobs will also be created for Panhandle residents to build and maintain the systems.

I commend both groups and wish them success. This is the kind of forward-thinking that Texas needs.

Panhandle To Get Largest Wind Farm In Nation

A few days ago, we learned that a proposed wind farm to generate electricity in the Gulf of Mexico will not be built. The proposed builders said they had determined that the plan was just not economically viable. But just the opposite conclusion has been reached in the Texas Panhandle.

Oilman T. Boone Pickens and his Mesa Group have spent the last 9 months investigating the feasibility of a huge wind farm in the Panhandle. They believe the renewable energy wind farm is viable, and they're planning to build what would be the largest wind farm in the nation.

Yesterday, Mesa Group met with 250 landowners in Gray, Hemphill, Roberts and Wheeler counties to explain the proposal. Mesa is offering the landowners a $4500 payment for each wind turbine, plus 4-5% of the electricity's value as it is sold. Mesa claims these are among the most generous terms in the wind farm industry.

The group wants to put about 2000 turbines across nearly 200,000 acres of Panhandle land. These turbines would produce between 2000 and 4000 megawatts of electricity (the equivalent of 1-2 nuclear power plants the size of Comanche Peak).

Mesa says it will cost about $6 billion to build. This would include the cost of building transmission lines to connect it to the state's power grid. Most of the expense is the cost to build and maintain the system. The fuel to power the system (wind) is both free and renewable. Even better is that it produces no pollution or greenhouse gases.

I know there will probably be opponents to the plan, but I think it's a good idea. It will be a financial boon to the landowners and the Panhandle in general. It will supply a lot of the much-needed electricity Texas needs as its population continues to grow. And it will do it without polluting the clean air of West Texas.

Sounds like a win-win situation to me.