Texas must develop 2,000 megawatts of renewable energy by 2009, enough to meet the needs of 1.2 million homes. Other states have similar plans with the RPS ranging from I percent to 10 percent of electric capacity by 2010. The Clinton administration's RPS plan calls for 7.5 percent of the nation's electric generating capacity to be supplied by renewahles by 2010. Many energy leaders believe that most of this RPS requirement will be satisfied with wind, biomass and biomass-based waste products. This reasoning is based on cost, scale of systems and available resources.
Wind power offers the least cost for generating capacity.
Wind Powering America aims to double U.S. wind energy capacity by 2005, and double it again by 2010. By 2020, Richardson expects wind energy to be a major commercial power generation technology. I believe we will see rapid change in the way electricity is produced and marketed over the next five years. The era of large power plants with big transmission lines is over. We will see smaller on-farm, community type generators with electric power fed into a local grid.