On Texas prairie, wind power is resurgent

ROSCOE, Texas (Reuters) – Fewer people curse the ever-present breeze that sweeps the treeless West Texas landscape these days, where the flat horizon has been overtaken by hundreds of wind turbines that produce electricity for distant city dwellers and new income for rural residents.

“Now we love the wind,” said Max Watt as she signed her name on the side of a 98-foot-long turbine blade to commemorate the opening of wind farm about 200 miles west of Fort Worth. “We say, ‘blow, blow, blow.’”

Wind farms like this one, owned by a subsidiary of German-based E.ON AG, are transforming the rural area’s economy as well as its otherwise featureless horizon.

Watt and her husband own land in Nolan County where three E.ON turbines are now spinning, sending electricity to nearby cities and a steady stream of cash into their pockets.

While permits to build new cleaner-burning coal plants languish before state utility commissions due to pollution concerns, demand for wind power is resurgent. Electricity from windmills generates no heat-trapping greenhouse gases and is pumping cash into rural community economies.

Reuters UK