Unrealistic energy policy is not limited to Washington, D.C. Numerous states clamor for "green" status - picking energy-supply winners and losers and rushing to judgment in the ongoing and unsettled debate on greenhouse-gas emissions. Environmental groups have virtual veto authority over cleaner coal-fired power plants, nuclear facilities, and oil refineries, which can meet an exponentially larger portion of energy and electric demand than the heavily subsidized renewable energies. ...Consumers deserve energy realism, not fanciful plans to replace fossil fuels with renewables. When misguided environmental theory dictates energy policy, the result is high prices, unreliability, and inadequate supply.

I don't have the benefit of a $58 million marketing campaign, but I'm willing to throw down my own five-point proposal, culled from years of writing about, researching and discussing the issue with energy experts, including Pickens. My plan begins with the idea that energy is really about economics. The solutions, therefore, must make economic sense. That doesn't mean consumers won't have to pay more - we will. And providers must be able to make reasonable returns. Subsidies are fine to develop technology, but we can't sustain businesses that aren't profitable without them, which is why I'm skeptical of wind power.

It won't happen overnight. Building those lines won't be quick or cheap. It's expected to be at least five years before the lines could be built and ready to flow with electricity. Construction costs could run $2 million per mile for large, high-capacity lines. Customers served by ERCOT, the power-grid operator for the majority of Texas' electric service, would pay the costs over several years through a fee estimated to be $4 on monthly electric bills.

The truth about wind generation is that without abatements and subsidies, it is more expensive than current generation. It also takes the same amount of backup generation to operate if the wind is not blowing. Pickens owns thousands of acres north of Pampa. Not one wind-generation unit is to be constructed on his property.

Texas has become enamored of its own wind. We now have the biggest wind-generating capacity in the country, and we're building more. But the reason isn't because we're motivated by environmental concerns - that's just feel-good marketing to rally the green crowd and woo the La-Z-Boy environmentalists. Wind power is an open trough of government subsidies, tax credits and state mandates. Taken together, it's a massive corporate welfare effort that means big money for the wind-power developers and big costs for the rest of us. Ironically, at a time when Texas extols the virtues of free markets for electricity, it's investing heavily in the most subsidized form of power.

It's hard to grasp, though, how parts of the plan would be implemented. Assuming all the rights to millions of acres could be acquired and the wind farms built, there's still the problem of wind itself. It doesn't always blow. A recent study by Cambridge Energy Research Associates found that wind power is least available between June and September, the peak months for electricity consumption. When the turbines are becalmed, we'll need other power plants - primarily gas-fired ones, which can be started more quickly than other types of generation - to meet demand. What's more, someone has to pay for building transmission lines to carry the power from the prairies. Guess who? In Texas, the cost of new transmission lines is born by consumers, not the generators.

The large wind farms just to our north on the Kenedy Ranch are under construction and the owners expect to have 250 wind turbines generating enough electricity to power some 90,000 homes by the end of this year. ...While the privately owned Kenedy Ranch is the site of wind farms under development by private corporations, the government continues to prop up the industry through subsidies in the form of tax credits. In other words, wind farm development likely would be a less attractive business venture without help from the government.

Much has been written about the merits or demerits of wind energy as a viable source of electricity generation for meeting the growing needs of electricity consumption in the United States. No matter which side of the debate one comes down on, one issue is crystal clear. Trillions of taxpayer dollars are being poured into the wind energy corporations' coffers to enhance the return on investment strategies with a guaranteed commitment by federal, state and local governments for a 10-year period. According to a recent report by the National Renewable Technology Laboratory (DOE), wind energy could account for 20 percent of the nation's electricity by 2030. To reach this target, wind turbines would have to produce 300,000 MW of power or 1,000,000 MW installed capacity. The 500,000 plus wind turbines would cost the taxpayers between $5-7 trillion.

We like the idea of wind power because it seems natural and clean. Windmills, after all, are part of our pastoral vision of Americana - power, nostalgia and patriotism rolled into one. What's not to like? Only the economics. Wind power, despite the government's best efforts to create a market, continues to be dogged by the same problems it always has: high costs, limited reliability and bad location. No wind, after all, blows forever, and when it does, it's not blowing where people need power. Even now, West Texas wind farms sit idle, awaiting new power lines to take high-priced power to the people.

[L]et's take a closer look at the wind business to figure out why America isn't already running on free wind power. One reason of course is that Americans are spoiled and want the power to be on all of the time. ...That is a problem when the wind doesn't blow all of the time.But more importantly, if you do the math, the investment in this part time power plant alone, neglecting transmission, profit, and operating overhead, is $13,000 per home. I say part time, because we must remember that someone has to own the backup power plant that isn't making any money when the wind is blowing. Solar in some ways is even worse when it comes to the massive arrays and land necessary to place them on. And like wind, solar is not full time, science has not figured out how to keep it from getting dark at night. I am certainly not against technology, just so long as we get the whole story. Like ethanol, we can burn our food supply, but not without repercussions.

Wind energy proponents extol wind as free, safe, and clean, but these characterizations miss the point. Energy users expect reliability, and challenges dot the path from wind to electric grid to energy consumer. For wind turbines to produce power, the wind must blow. Because the wind does not blow constantly, wind turbines produce a fraction of their potential generating capacities. Furthermore, winds blows the least during the summer months when electricity is needed the most. ERCOT relies on just 8.7 percent of wind power's capacity when determining available power during peak summer hours. Also, due to wind's intermittency, those relying on wind farms must rely on conventional power sources to back up their supply. Wind's variability and its lack of correlation with peak demand highlight a major challenge for wind energy ...Wind energy also comes with legitimate environmental concerns.

"One windmill will not put out much noise, but when you put a cluster of them together and get the blades all spinning at the same rate, then it begins to emit noise -- enough that our radar can 'hear' the noise." You could tell the radar to ignore that frequency, but if there's a thunderstorm with the same frequency, it also would be ignored. "The use of wind energy has become a big problem not only in the meteorological world, but also to the military community as airplanes could fly low under a wind farm and one would never know the difference as to whether they are looking at false returns from the wind farm or an enemy plane."

The opportunity to leave a lovely legacy of untouched mesas and unscarred precious land lies in the hands of our government and local commissioners. This mind-boggling decision is being foisted on Texans because of a crass lack of legislation regulating what could result in more destruction than an atomic bomb. Every ridge in our beloved land will soon be covered by Godzilla-like machines replacing every bit of nature with industry. What will be left for our future generations?

Now that wind is big enough to be a real part of Texas' electricity mix, the state is coming to grips with one of wind power's biggest problems: the power flows only when the wind blows. ...Nuclear, coal- and gas-fired plants run almost all the time. As efficient as wind turbines have become in recent years, they still need the wind to work. And reliably predicting just when the wind will blow is still tough, despite plenty of fancy technological advances. ...This problem is only going to get bigger for Texas. The state has 4,600 megawatts of wind power. If wind blew all the time, that would be the equivalent of more than three nuclear plants. The state now is considering additional wind farms that could boost that figure ten-fold, say Texas' grid operators. That is, when there's a breeze.

If anyone wants to see what these windmills can do to ruin a beautiful view, try taking a quick trip up IH-20 and Highway 84 between Sweetwater and Snyder. That used to be the highlight of my drive from Dallas to Lubbock, to see the beautiful ridges and hills off to the southwest. It has now been ruined with hundreds of massive windmills. ...I would hate to see it ruined because a few folks see a way to make a little money for a few years.

During the past few weeks, the developers of these proposed wind energy generation facilities, Babcock and Brown and PPM, have made statements at public meetings and in the media insinuating that the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service, Texas Parks and Wildlife and environmental groups have vetted and approved their plans to install more than 500 wind turbines ...Nothing could be further from the truth. ...USFWS, TPWD, the Nature Conservancy and Environmental Defense have all sent letters either to the developer or to the Public Utility Commission of Texas, pointing out potential problems or requesting a full environmental assessment prior to construction.

The Texas Hill Country, home to the world's largest remaining bat colonies, has been the focus of proposals for wind energy projects. We are deeply concerned about the potentially serious consequences to Hill Country wildlife - ironically, from an energy source commonly promoted as "green." ...While we feel it is the private landowner's decision whether to participate in wind energy development, overarching concerns for wildlife create a need for caution. Development of wind energy in areas of high wildlife usage, such as certain Hill Country and Gulf Coast sites, should be avoided until credible scientific documentation of threat levels and solutions has been gathered. ...The environmental consciousness demonstrated by AES SeaWest in the Hill Country must be emulated throughout the wind-energy industry. Companies that put wildlife at risk cannot claim to produce "green energy."

San Antonio and Texas are facing an unprecedented need for new power supply. Even with aggressive energy efficiency, additional power will be needed to keep our lights on and our economy competitive in the face of rapid growth. Based on ERCOT projections, the state will need at least 30,000 megawatts of additional power - the equivalent of 24 million homes - by 2025. And that is before taking into account any retirements of older and less efficient plants. ...A new era of low and no carbon energy generation is about to begin and Texas is in the lead. Let's do it right and do it now.

For all the benefits that wind power could bring, it's important to understand the very real impact these industrial wind power projects would have on this sensitive area. Roads and turbine construction would fragment more than 60,000 acres of undeveloped habitat. Each windmill covers more than an acre of airspace as its 100-foot blades spin, and each turbine requires 1,000 tons of concrete to anchor it to the ground. This project would include more than 21 miles of new electrical towers to support the high-voltage transmission line. More roads, more cranes, more impact.

The Coastal Habitat Alliance, which is fighting a massive wind farm proposed for the Kenedy Ranch in South Texas, has raised some troubling, not terribly well-studied problems with wind power - namely it may take a toll on wildlife. As it happens, the Kenedy Ranch is smack dab in the middle of one of the most important corridors for migratory birds in the U.S., a sort of feathery superhighway. ...the Alliance's demands are pretty simple - before the PUC grants a permit to build the 21-mile, high-voltage power line, they want a study commissioned on the impact to the birds, bats and bees.