In Giant, the 1956 film epic about Texas, there’s a scene where James Dean as Jett Rink examines a showing of crude oil swabbed up by the windmill pumping water for his dry West Texas farm. A few scenes later, the windmill is converted into a cable-tool rig and brings in an oil well. Maybe that never happened in real life, but it’s an interesting image of two great Texas resources—oil and wind.
Windmills were as vital as the plow and the branding iron in settling Texas and other arid regions of the West during the 19th century. Without mechanically drilled wells and windmills to pump water, settlements would have been limited to areas near surface water sources, leaving large dry sections of the US Midcontinent and Southwest unsettled. Windmills also aided development of railroads that connected the Eastern US to the West by supplying water-stops for steam locomotives.
In 1854-1920 more than 700 companies manufactured tens of thousands of windmills in the US. Many were erected in Texas primarily to water livestock. As cattle sales changed from per head to per pound, ranchers put up even more windmills and stock tanks to prevent cattle from “walking off” weight in search of water. Back in the 1960s when I was a peach-cheeked youth hustling jugs on a geophone crew, those stock tanks were an unofficial job perk for cool swims while the seismic weight-truck was being repaired.
Renewed interest
The spread of electricity to rural areas since the 1930s essentially ended the need for windmills. But high energy prices have renewed public interest in wind power. And once again Texas is at the forefront in redeveloping that energy resource as the state with the most cumulative wind-power capacity installed—4,356 Mw, according to the American Wind Energy Association (AWEA).
Other states with large installed wind-power capacity include California, 2,439 Mw; Minnesota, 1,299 Mw; Iowa, 1,273 Mw; and Washington, 1,163 Mw. “Shattering all its previous records, the US wind energy industry installed 5,244 Mw in 2007, expanding the nation’s total wind power generating capacity by 45% in a single calendar year and injecting an investment of over $9 billion into the economy,” said AWEA, a national trade association of turbine manufacturers, wind project developers, utilities, and other interested parties.
Wind projects accounted for 30% of the new power-producing capacity in the US last year, enough to provide the equivalent of 1.5 million homes with electric power. Wind farms now span 34 states with 16,818 Mw of capacity. These modern windmills are expected to generate 48 billion kw-hr of power, in 2008, just over 1% of total US electricity, powering 4.5 million homes.
Tax credit for wind
Last year was “the third consecutive year of record-setting growth, establishing wind power as one of the largest sources of new electricity supply for the country,” said AWEA Executive Director Randall Swisher. That growth was “driven by strong demand, favorable economics, and a period of welcome relief from the on-again, off-again, boom-and-bust cycle of the federal production tax credit (PTC) for wind power,” he said.
The PTC provides a per-megawatt tax credit on the sale of electricity generated by wind power. Congress has let the PTC expire several times, only to renew it retroactively. The PTC is due to expire again in 2008, but wind power advocates want it extended for 15 years to provide “more certainty” to sustain investments in wind energy. By reducing the use of natural gas and other fossil fuels to generate electricity, modern windmills will serve customers “even in regions with low or no wind resources,” AWEA said.
The oil and gas industry generally has accepted a policy of sustainable energy that makes use of all available energy resources. However, John Westwood, managing director of UK consultancy Douglas-Westwood Ltd., said the oil and gas industry already is competing with the wind industry for materials and personnel for offshore operations, primarily overseas. Some $16 billion is expected to be spent on installation of 4.5 Gw of new wind-power capacity in Europe over the next 5 years, up from 1.1 Gw today. The UK will be the biggest market, with 2.4 Gw of new capacity forecast in 2012. “Serious amounts of steel are heading offshore,” said Westwood. “Offshore wind and oil and gas are competing for the same resources and with onshore wind power.”