Blow Ye Winds, Heigh-Ho

There is a lot of wind here today, and my doors and windows are open enjoying the cool breezes. In Houston, a city that most of us associate with dirty air, there is a conference just ending on wind energy. The prospect of ending the dirty crew that promotes oil is a wonderful one.

We have a whole industry spoiling the air and our economy, it is time they were replaced with clean energy, and hopefully clean developers of that energy. On my local news there are ads for windmills now. That would be something beautiful to have.

Texas has a lot of wind. Yeh, all kinds of windy power. Power by fossil fuel has been dominating the landscape too long, it is a power that is overdue to be ended.

Texas leads the nation in wind power, with 5,300 megawatts on line, enough to power more than 1.5 million homes, according to the Department of Energy.

In addition to BP and Shell's wind operations, Houston is home to Horizon Wind Energy, a wind developer that was acquired by Portuguese energy giant Energias de Portugal, as well as the wind development offices for international investment firm Babcock & Brown.

UH to help test wind blades
Munich, Germany-based Siemens, the third-largest wind turbine manufacturer, has maintenance staff and a training facility in Houston.

And the University of Houston is part of a consortium that will operate a wind blade test facility planned near Corpus Christi.

Houston Mayor Bill White noted Monday the city is already one of the largest public purchasers of wind power.

"Our goal is that Houston will not just be the energy capital of the world, but for renewables and energy efficiency," White said.

The renewable and alternative energy business could have a bigger impact on Houston than almost any other city, said Tom "Smitty" Smith, head of the Texas office of Public Citizen and a longtime wind energy advocate.

The largest biodiesel refinery in the U.S., the GreenHunter Energy plant, formally opened Monday at the Ship Channel and eventually will produce 105 million gallons a year.

The oil and gas industry is also one of the largest users of solar energy, Smith said, using photovoltaic cells to power everything from remote oil field monitoring equipment to certain systems on offshore production platforms. So there's already a familiarity with the technology, even though it hasn't reached the same scale as wind.

And if the U.S. develops law governing greenhouse gas emissions, as is widely expected, the city could take a leading role in the development of the carbon-trading markets that likely would follow. Houston is already home to many energy trading businesses that are heavy players in existing markets in which industries and speculators buy and sell emissions permits.

The leashed power of wind is exciting. Solar power, wind, tidal energy, clean sources of power grow in their attractiveness daily. One major consideration is simply that there is no nation, no place, that can dominate in production of wind, sun, tides. While Texas has wind farms already in operation, and they are growing along the East coast, no one can monopolize this resource.

While the blowhards working for the continuation of oil's rule continue trying to drill in ANWR, seems like the ground may have washed or blown away from under them. We don't have to mortgage our well-being to dirty fossil fuels. We have everything to gain from developing the world's resources without despoiling it any further.

The windmill is a part of Western scenery. It has a welcome place in returning to an attitude of using without abusing our earth.

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It's not too late to plant a garden, or even just some pots on the porch or in the window, and grow something as nice as this.



From the garden, in this case, from a package of seeds that is still half full. Go ahead, have an elitist salad you grew yourself.