The conflict between President Barack Obama's vision and Texas' reality boils down to a mix of politics and industry. While Obama has staked his economic recovery agenda on creating millions of green jobs, Texas depends on carbon dioxide jobs. Texas Republicans, out of power in Washington but still ruling Austin, oppose much of the Democratic energy agenda. Gov. Rick Perry says the policies would "have a devastating impact on the use of fossil fuels" and put "downward pressure on jobs, on our ability to create wealth."

Not in my backyard. That was the sentiment of residents Thursday night when LCRA hosted an open house on the campus of Tally Elementary School. Several hundred residents looked at maps and renderings of proposed transmission lines that might run through Kerr County to a proposed lift station north of Kerrville.

Jack County commissioners received official notice Monday of a new wind energy project during a regular meeting of the court. Representatives from Gamesa Energy were present to detail Senate Wind LLC and lay the groundwork for a request for a re-investment zone. ...Larry Guyton, who owns property in the Senate area, approached the court with concerns about the new project. He said he was representing seven of his neighbors who, because of the lack of notice of the Gamesa presentation, could not attend the meeting.

Some residents who live along one of the proposed paths are concerned about how the power lines will affect the appearance of their natural landscape. Some also are concerned about the preservation of historical sites in the area. Oncor Electric Delivery is one of 13 entities that will be part of this transmission line project, as 850 miles of the project falls in their coverage area. Company officials held area public meetings recently to explain the project. They said feedback was important for them, and they would take that under consideration in choosing routes for the lines.

The Lower Colorado River Authority plans to build, own and operate about 600 miles of new and rebuilt existing transmission lines and facilities ...The project is one of the system improvements deemed necessary by the Electric Reliability Council of Texas and ordered by the PUC to be constructed to meet the mandate of Senate Bill 20, that requires energy production in Texas include 5,000 megawatts of renewable wind generation by 2015.

Predicting that a debate among constituents on property rights versus preserving Gillespie County's scenic beauty would be non-productive, county commissioners are ditching their quest for legislation to let them decide whether wind turbines could be erected here.

US wind farms kill about 7,000 birds a year, according to a recent study. Other studies of individual wind farms suggest a higher toll on bats and birds, which crash into towers, blades, power lines and other installations. Estimates from a single wind farm in Altamont, California showed as many as 1,300 birds of prey killed each year - or about three a day. Such direct threats to wildlife, and concern for habitats, have increasingly pitted conservationists against the renewable energy industry. A handful of wind power projects in the US have been shelved because of wildlife concerns.

If you want a wind turbine for your home, it better be quiet and on a patch of open land. If not, the city won't allow it under the latest draft of the city's wind energy ordinance. The proposed changes, which the City Council will discuss Tuesday, don't bring the sweeping reforms alternative energy advocates wanted.

Meanwhile, lawmakers are trying to pass House Bill 1273 and the bill says that money given by wind energy farms to wealthy districts need to be part of "Robin Hood." "Robin Hood" will then distribute the money through out other districts. Now some school districts in the Big Country can be heavily affected if House Bill 1273 passes.

Australian-based Babcock and Brown is looking for a buyer for its Kenedy County wind farm ...The company announced in February its plans to sell Gulf Wind, saying it will sell its assets over a two- to three-year period to reduce the company's debt level.

Iberdrola Renewables has completed development of a new wind farm near the Texas Gulf Coast that will supply renewable energy to CPS Energy customers. CPS Energy has a 15-year contract in place with Iberdrola to purchase 76.8 megawatts of energy from the Peñascal Wind Farm. ...The wind farm has been fitted with 84 Mitsubishi turbines with a total generating capacity of 202 megawatts.

The Electric Reliability Council of Texas Inc. added 535 MW of new gas-fired capacity in March, while generation interconnection requests for wind and coal projects surged ...As of March 31, ERCOT is now tracking 51,897 MW of generation interconnection requests for wind capacity, a 2,141-MW increase from 49,756 MW as of Feb. 28. Generation requests for coal projects jumped to 9,731 from 8,126 MW, while gas requests rose to 27,488 from 27,187 MW in February.

The Gillespie County Commissioners have decided not to pursue local wind farm regulation and will not hold a public meeting on the matter, according to County Judge Mark Stroeher. ...State Senator Troy Fraser filed legislation last month to allow the county commissioners to restrict wind farm construction and said his office immediately began receiving complaints from landowners worried that their property rights might be violated.

Property values are soaring in this West Texas community, and the reason is obvious. Looming on the northern horizon, hundreds of new wind turbines dot the once-barren hills. Ordinarily, much of the tax dollars generated by the turbines would go to the state's "Robin Hood" school finance plan, which requires property-rich districts to share their wealth with those less fortunate. But that won't happen in Sterling City, at least not if school officials have their way.

Perhaps the biggest mistake Texas power players are making during the current financial crisis is not implementing a capacity market to spur investment in new baseload projects, a group of panelists told a Gulf Coast Power Association conference Thursday in Houston. A substantial growth in wind generation in Texas has left a need for new baseload generation.

The Chestnut-collared Longspur winters in New Mexico and Texas, including parts of the Big Country, before migrating north to breed for the summer. The bird, however, has suffered a steep population decline, as have other species that follow the same migration pattern, according to a recent government report. The federal report says various factors - including energy production of all types, such as wind farms - have contributed to a 40-year decline in the national bird population.

Wind-farm developers, retail electric providers and others in Texas outlined their recommended approaches for dealing with overloaded power lines in areas with thousands of megawatts of wind farms, according to filings posted at the Public Utility Commission of Texas Thursday. Such congestion forces the curtailment of wind-turbine operations, so parties want to establish a system for priority dispatch of power generated by wind-turbines in the "competitive renewable energy zones" in Texas.

His company purchased 687 wind turbines from General Electric for $2 billion that can produce 1,000 MW and will be delivered in 2011. But there aren't yet any transmission lines from his wind park to the Texas grid to deliver the electricity to the Texans. Initially he was going to build the transmission lines himself, but now that's "questionable," he said during a stop in San Francisco Wednesday, part of a tour to promote his alternative-energy plan. A transmission line to the west or east from the Texas Panhandle, he told members of the press, is "a little bit big for us."

Construction on a $300 million San Patricio County wind energy facility will move forward on schedule after a compromise between the wind farm's owner and the Federal Aviation Administration was announced Monday. The project was in jeopardy after the FAA objected to 81 of 120 proposed sites for 109 wind turbines because of potential interference with a sombrero-shaped radio beacon that pilots can use to determine their proximity to Corpus Christi International Airport.