Less regulation allows Texas to move forward in wind power

See How Texas became tops in wind power by Ryan Maye Handy of The San Antonio Express-News. Excerpts:

"Texas today is by far the nation’s wind energy leader, accounting for about a fourth of the nation’s installed wind power generating capacity."

"The study by the Southern Legislative Conference, a public policy forum for Southern states, suggests that Texas, in part, moved so rapidly into wind power because its grid is not connected to other states, so it does not come under the jurisdiction of the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission. That allowed transmission projects needed to bring power from remote wind farms to population centers to move ahead without going through the federal permitting process, opening markets for wind energy developers."

"wind is projected to provide nearly 7 percent of utility-scale power generation in the U.S. this year, up from 6.3 percent in 2017, according to the Energy Department."

"In Texas, meanwhile, wind-generating capacity has surpassed coal as new wind projects come online and coal plants shut down. The state’s grid manager, the Electric Reliability Council of Texas, said in November that coal-generating capacity had slipped to 19,800 megawatts, making wind the second-largest power source in the state after natural gas.

Texas’s own minimalist approach to regulation helped wind get there, according the report by the Southern Legislative Council. In Texas, state, county and local governments have no regulatory power over where a wind project is located — that is up the landowner and developer — which in turn speeds siting, the report said

The state also made smart policy decisions, according to the report. In 2005, Texas chose to get ahead of renewable energy development by creating Competitive Renewable Energy Zones, where transmission lines were extended to help support wind power development in isolated regions of the state."