California demand for wind power energizes transmission firms
LOS ANGELES: A firm controlled by Philip Anschutz, the billionaire entertainment and pro sports magnate, will soon build the largest wind farm in the United States to serve utilities in California, where officials have set ambitious green power goals.
The US$ 5 billion project, however, will be constructed 700 miles away in Wyoming, a state better known for coal mines and oil fields. The vast distance between the two states provides a different Anschutz- owned firm with another big opportunity: a US$ 3 billion project building transmission lines to deliver the power – one of a dozen similar powerline projects by other companies across the West.
In all, about 5,700 miles of transmission lines are in development with the goal of delivering renewable energy to California from other states, according to the Western Interstate Energy Board. Such investments are an outgrowth of an emerging paradox of California’s well-known political bent toward aggressive environmentalism.
Green power advocates and state officials want more wind power – but California conservationists increasingly oppose more wind farms as an environmental blight on the state’s pristine desert landscape. Those conflicts are pushing wind farm development to other states, creating new opportunities for wind power and transmission firms to deliver electricity to California’s nearly 40 million residents.
“It’s the right project, in the right place, at the right time,” said Bill Miller, chief executive of the two Anschutz- owned companies – Power Company of Wyoming LLC and TransWest Express LLC.
Though wind power is surging nationally, the future of wind farms in California suffered a major blow last year when regulators completed an eight-year process designed in part to identify locations for new renewable energy projects. The US Bureau of Land Management, the California Energy Commission and state and federal wildlife agencies sought to balance green power development with preservation of scenic vistas, Native American tribal lands and critical habitats for threatened species such as the desert tortoise and the Mohave ground squirrel.
But the solar and wind power industries have argued that the resulting plan unfairly favors land conservation over projects needed to wean California off fossil fuels and combat climate change.
The California Wind Energy Association estimates that only 2 GW of additional wind power can be developed here, a figure its executive director, Nancy Rader, called ‘a stretch.’ California will need about 15 GW to meet its goal of deriving half of its power from renewable sources by 2030 – and far more if the state succeeds in a separate effort to promote electric vehicle adoption, according to state estimates.