The US has an enormous base of coal power plants that are being fed increasingly marginal coal. The good people of Texas wisely shut down plans for several new coal plants there, fearing the ratepayers would get stuck for the cost of remediation when more stringent emissions requirements came along and when the environmental costs were forced back on the polluters. Unfortunately, Arkansas is allowing one such plant to move forward. Some of the estimates even included possible use of local lignite as a fuel.

Wind is so preferable on all grounds other than raw cost when environmental impacts are externalized. Ironically, the wind industry in Arkansas is going from triumph to triumph. One manufacturing project in Fort Smith with Mitsubishi will now proceed given the resolution of patent disputes. Unfortunately, the entity responsible for grid inter-ties and transmission has been stymied by the corporate profit interests of Entergy, who wish to sell cheap electricity from coal plants and oppose money spent from ratepayer funds being used to upgrade transmission lines from wind power in west Texas owned by others.

Pickens appears to be the proud owner of a great many GE wind turbines for which an adequate transmission infrastructure remains lacking. Hopefully, some new stimulus money could help to further upgrade transmission paths from the Texas panhandle to the eastern US grid. Texas has always stood alone with its own grid. Typical of Texas.

As the Dutch said while fighting the Spanish: "It is not necessary to have hope in order to persevere."