Farouk Shami on energy "Coal is the past, Texas is the future"

Everything is bigger in Texas, including the capacity for clean energy. Coal fired power plants once had their use in our age of ignorance. However, now that we realize the damage of coal, from the filth that its burning brings to the desecration and destruction of our "mountains' majesties", Texas, always out in front with the biggest and the best of everything,- including progress and innovation, seeks better. Texas, proud and able, naturally turns away from an energy source that pollutes our majestic state, wreaks havoc with our unique natural environment, and harms the health of our citizens.

Texas is blessed in having the room and the resources to allow it turn from harmful fossil fuels like coal to clean and safe alternative energy sources such as wind, solar, and geo-thermal power. Within the state there is enormous potential for generating power from the clean natural wind that blows eternally in the vast expanses of the Great Plains, on the Gulf Coast, and and within the mountains of the Trans-Pecos.

Even with its other great resources, Texas early recognized that we must look beyond fossil fuels for true long-term energy security and wind energy research began at Texas A&M as early as 1970. Technology currently being developed, and proceeding at amazing speed, will make even lower wind speed viable for producing clean and valuable energy. Already, in Texas there are over a dozen major "wind" farms throughout the state producing clean power, including the world'd largest wind farm in Roscoe, Texas, whose 100,000 acres of turbines are sited on various properties and producing income for dozens of landowners. Unlike fossil fuel burning, wind farms preserve essential natural resources, requiring no water, and produce no harmful effects. Wind farms are an ideal opportunity for Texas farmers to gain additional income while aiding the health of the planet by renting space to place turbines to produce entirely clean power within their fields, plowed or fallow, all the while keeping the environment healthy and pristine.

The valuable jobs created in producing energy from wind turbines are located all over the state in the innumerable facilities, large and small, that are producing turbines, the workers that are needed to erect them, and those needed to maintain them in good order. There are jobs created by clean wind power in everything from design to producing the smallest to the largest parts to trucking to assembly to delivery and final siting. Wind farms can be a boon of job creation in the rural areas where they are essentially located.

Texas has long recognized that neither the planet nor its inhabitants can forever tolerate the unhealthful fossil fuels of the Past and is acting now to produce clean and renewable energy for its Future. Texas clearly understands that the Future has come.