Royalties paid to landowners in rural places like Texas are helping deter opposition to wind power
few years Dewey Engle, an 81-year-old retired highway worker who lives on the outskirts of Tahoka, a small farming town in west Texas, has acquired a new view from his back porch. Dozens of wind turbines hum 300ft over the cotton fields behind his bungalow. Some people might be disturbed by the sudden arrival of such monstrous machines practically in their garden. Mr Engle says that his only problem with them is that they are not on his modest patch of farmland, so he does not get any royalties.
Curiously, America’s renewable-energy boom has been strongest in Republican-controlled states like Texas. Democrat-controlled places like New York have policies intended to attract investment, for example pledges that state governments will buy only green power. But Texas has lots of wind and sun and rather fewer Nimbys. President Donald Trump, who has spent a small fortune trying to fight a wind farm within sight of his Scottish golf club, evidently cannot stand turbines.
What precipitated this boom? Federal policies have helped—wind has benefited from a production tax credit for decades, though it will expire in the next few years. A solar-investment tax credit will continue. But local policies have helped, too. Texas has its own electricity grid, which is managed by, a state utility.
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