July 18, 2007, 9:45PM
Windy city
Houston plays to native strengths with wind energy deal for city buildings.
Years after the twin gales of Hurricanes Katrina and Rita, Houston is still rocked by turbulence: natural gas prices that nearly doubled after the disasters and last year cost the city $150 million to power its offices, street lamps and water utilities.
This week the city turned the elements to Houston's advantage, with a deal that stabilizes energy bills by requiring that 30 percent of city electricity come from wind farms. The prescient, market-driven solution makes use of this area's natural strengths.
Under the complex deal brokered by Mayor Bill White, city government will pay a wholesale, fixed price for wind energy supplied by the General Land Office. This means that even if wild weather disrupts natural gas delivery, city power prices won't rise.
And if the wind doesn't generate enough juice on a given day — electricity can't be effectively stored — Houston's provider will send power from another source and give Houston renewable energy credits.
By varying its power sources, the city has done more than anchor its monthly bills: It will slice carbon dioxide emissions by as much as 300,000 tons annually. This places Houston in the vanguard of a national trend in which state and local governments are pre-empting Washington in fighting greenhouse gases.
After oil prices tanked in the 1980s, Houston rebounded by varying its petroleum industry with petrochemical refineries and other businesses. Mixing up its power-generation sources with wind — which in Texas is plentiful — also plays to our local strengths.
The deal, approved Wednesday, places Houston as far and away the country's lead city in wind energy use. That status will pay its own dividends.
Though Mayor White, Bill Clinton's deputy energy secretary, campaigned for local office on the theme of fuel efficiency, this deal will be his first in this area to merit national attention.
Adding steam to the initiative, White's office in recent months has hired a respected technology consultant as Houston's first sustainable growth officer and in May unveiled its "Power to the People Campaign" to push energy efficiency — complete with a Web site, a five-point plan to cut domestic fuel waste and a district-by-district giveaway of 10,000 fuel-stingy compact fluorescent bulbs.
All of these actions, sustainable growth chief Cris Eugster said, explicitly support a plan: "How do we make Houston the energy conservation capital of the world?"
Only a few years ago, this goal might have seemed hopelessly against the grain for Houston, culturally and practically. But today the need for energy diversity is undeniable.
Texas' abundant wind has become the most promising renewable resource available. And local governments, not Washington, are taking the lead in answering citizen demand for less reliance on fossil fuels.
Houston's wind deal shows that being energy capital is compatible with being a leader in smart energy use. It's an ambitious but achievable goal, and as Houston pursues it, the whole country can gain from its leadership. |
