Summer Reading II: The Great Texas Wind Rush

I have just finished reading The Great Texas Wind Rush written by journalists Kate Galbraith and Asher Price. Both authors have spent a good bit of time over recent years tracking the story of wind power in the state, in the process writing a number of articles for Texas newspapers and magazines. Galbraith, although she will soon be leaving Austin and the Texas Tribune for new ventures in California, has established herself as an accomplished Texas journalist dealing with energy and environmental issues. So too has Asher Price, whose articles on the environment and related concerns regularly appear in the Austin American-Statesman. Published by the University of Texas Press, on first glance one might consider the book to be current events. What attracted my attention as a Texas historian is the fact that it is predominately a history book dealing with events that transpired during the last four decades. Galbraith and Price detail the history of wind power in Texas from the early days of self-generated electricity on the part West Texas farmers before rural electrification in the 1930s up to the modern era of mega-wind farms scattered across the state. The primary area of focus in this volume falls squarely on West Texas because this is were where the Texas wind power industry began, grew over the 1980s and 1990s, and where it predominates today. The authors do note that in recent years the Gulf Coast has also become an important area for Texas wind generation. 

This book is the result of exhaustive library research along with a significant number of interviews. In fact, interviews form the bedrock of sources for this volume. The authors talked on the record to over seventy-five people who have been involved in Texas wind power from the 1930s until the present day. Their research is also based on extensive use of the online New Handbook of Texas and the growing bibliography about wind as a national energy resource. In that regard, Galbraith and Price highlight as their background the work of the distinguished Texas historian T. Lindsay Baker, who knows more about windmills on the frontier than any other person today.

The authors present a very even-handed and balanced discussion of wind power without engaging in polemics, taking care to offer the reader all of the pros and cons surrounding the ongoing debate about the environmental, aesthetic, and economic issues associated with wind farms. They clearly establish that wind power depends economically on a partnership between private initiative and governmental support, the latter coming in the form of tax abatements and favorable legislation that encourages development of new facilities. In that regard, the authors acknowledge the support of Texas governors Ann Richards and George W. Bush as important motivations for the development of the Texas wind power industry. 

This book also drives home the point that much of the viability of wind power depends on the availability of transmission lines to the urban areas of Texas where the electricity is needed. Transmission lines can be just as expensive and controversial in their construction as the wind farms themselves. All in all, this book marks an important milestone in writing about the history of Texas because wind power has become a inescapable reality for the state. 

Click here for the University of Texas Press