Wednesday, January 13, 2016

Green Texas

Decline in the price of oil - and therefore in the price of gasoline - has given millions of families more money in their pockets and and a bit of an uptick in their standard of living. The price of a barrel of oil even went briefly below $30 yesterday for the first time since 2003.  

The state of Texas is a huge producer of oil, of course, and also of natural gas. Since they have an abundance of cheap fossil fuels, Texas wouldn't need to produce much wind or solar power, right? Yet it does. "Texas is easily the No. 1 state in wind, with more than twice the capacity of California."

Solar power hasn't been used as much, but is positioned to grow about 600% in 2016. There's lots of sunshine in Texas and a growing population, but the key must be economics because . . "prices for solar panels have fallen over 80 percent since 2009." That's really big.

No comments:

Post a Comment