Passage 6 A Rosy Future of Wind 127
风力发电 《经济学人》

[00:00]A report from the Department of Energy said
[00:04]that America could build enough wind farms to provide 20% of
[00:09]the nation's electricity by 2030. Pickens，an oilman,
[00:15]plans to call for America to meet this goal by building wind farms
[00:21]throughout the windy corridor that runs up the country
[00:25]from Texas to the Dakotas. It would cost $1 trillion to build them,
[00:34]plus another $200 billion to connect them to places
[00:38]where the power is most needed,
[00:41]which lie inconveniently far away from the corridor.
[00:46]That is a staggering outlay, but it would free up American natural gas,
[00:52]which now generates 22% of the country's electricity,
[00:57]to be used for motor vehicles.
[01:01]The idea is that Americans could switch to natural gas vehicles,
[01:05]and the country could stop importing so much oil.
[01:10]As a bonus, says Mr. Pickens, the industry would create jobs
[01:15]and revitalize rural America.
[01:19]He points to the west Texas town of Sweetwater to prove his point.
[01:25]Ten years ago it was just one more struggling speck on the prairie.
[01:30]Its only excitement was an annual rattlesnake round-up.
[01:35]Then the wind industry started to take hold in west Texas and the panhandle.
[01:41]Locals initially worried that the turbines would be too noisy.
[01:47]They also worried that they would destroy the vast horizon.
[01:51]Other west Texans are less fascinated of the original view.
[01:56]"The landscape is an eyesore," counters a man from Groom.
[02:01]In any case, the turbines look nicer as the benefits accrue.
[02:07]In 1999 the state's wind power capacity was just 180 megawatts.
[02:15]Today Texas leads the nation with almost 5,000. Most of that
[02:20]is concentrated in the north-western quarter of the state.
[02:26]The economic impact on Nolan County, which encompasses Sweetwater,
[02:31]will be $315m this year. Wind has brought more than 1,000 new jobs to the town.
[02:42]This boom has made an impression on Texans.
[02:47]Wind power accounts for 3% of the state's electricity,
[02:51]compared with 1% nationwide. But the tax credit
[02:56]that has been driving its growth is about to expire.
[03:01]And then there is the question of the creaking grid.
[03:05]The state is mulling a plan
[03:07]that would enable the transmission of 17,000 additional megawatts
[03:13]at a cost of $6.4 billion.
[03:18]Building wind power capacity will not be an easy task.
[03:24]But there is an emerging agreement in Texas that it is worth the trouble.
[03:28]That is where Mr. Pickens can make a difference. His plan is undeniably quirky.
[03:37]Its emphasis on natural gas is strange, for one thing:
[03:42]America does not have many natural gas vehicles.
[03:46]But if Mr. Pickens wants to use his own fortune to sell the general public
[03:51]on the idea of wind power, that is all to the good.
[03:56]No one can accuse him of being a soft-headed tree-hugger.