摘要: |
If recent past is prologue, don't expect Texas bureaucrats to hold a housewarming party for prospective developers lining up for a proposed Gulf of Mexico offshore wind lease sale. During the recently concluded regular Texas legislative session, state lawmakers passed measures that will make wind and solar projects more costly and less attractive to developers. Clean energy advocates, however, breathed a sigh of relief when a corresponding shower of bills they say would have utterly capsized renewables in Texas failed to get enacted. The legislature has cooled on renewables just as Texas leads the nation in onshore wind and solar power generation. It would seem the state's powerful oil and gas lobby and its legislative allies see wind and solar as getting too big for their britches and needing to be reined in. Ironically, one of Texas' leading oil producers, Pioneer Natural Resources, recently teamed up with Florida clean energy company NextEra Energy Resources LLC to build a 140-MW wind farm on a portion of the land it has under lease in west Texas. The generated power will be used primarily to electrify Pioneer's drilling and production operations. |