New Mexico is No. 1 in wind growth
When you visit Portales, it is hard to miss the dozens of historic windmills on display at the Dalley Windmill Museum on the Roosevelt County Fairgrounds.
For 30 years, Bill and Alta Dalley went throughout the Great Plains collecting the largest private collection of windmills in the nation. These windmills remind visitors of wind energy’s long history of providing power in Eastern New Mexico. Today, the same incredible wind resource that turned those windmills is powering much larger wind turbines, fueling unprecedented job growth and private investment in Eastern New Mexico.
Last week, I was in Dora, 20 miles south of Portales, touring the Roosevelt Wind Farm and the adjacent future site of the Sagamore Wind Project. Sagamore will be the largest wind farm ever built in New Mexico. The project represents nearly $1 billion of private investment in Eastern New Mexico, and it will create up to 300 construction jobs and as many as 30 full-time operations and technician jobs. Local public schools in Dora and Portales will receive more than $80 million in funding from tax revenue generated over the lifetime of the project.
That unprecedented level of private sector investment and job growth is what every new wind project can and will bring to rural communities throughout Eastern and Central New Mexico. Over the last few years, New Mexico has seen a significant increase in construction of utility-scale wind farms. The Sagamore Wind Project will join the El Cabo Wind Farm in Torrance County and three new large wind farms in Curry County.
Last week, the American Wind Energy Association released its Annual Market Report at the Roundhouse. American Wind Energy Association chose to release their report in Santa Fe because, in 2017, New Mexico’s wind energy industry grew faster than any other state’s. More than 3,000 New Mexicans worked in wind energy jobs last year. And we still have so much more room to grow. American Wind Energy Association’s report finds that new wind projects in development or under construction right now will double our state’s current wind production capacity.
The hundreds of new jobs and the major economic impact these wind projects will create in rural New Mexico are exactly why I led a bipartisan effort in the Senate three years ago to pass a multi-year extension of wind production tax credit. That pro-growth tax policy encourages companies and investors to build major wind projects in New Mexico.
With our year-round wind and predictable solar resources, New Mexico should be the epicenter of the rapidly growing clean energy economy. As consumers and major companies like Facebook demand cheaper, cleaner and more reliable power sources, our state stands to benefit and become an even bigger leader in this booming energy sector. We should be doing everything we can to meet our state’s full potential as a wind energy powerhouse. ?
We need to invest in job training programs like the North American Wind Research and Training Center at Mesalands Community College in Tucumcari, which is training New Mexicans to be wind technicians — the second-fastest growing job in America.
We must also build new transmission infrastructure that will encourage private companies to build new wind projects in New Mexico. The $1.6 billion SunZia Transmission Line Project running through Southern New Mexico will be the key to connecting many utility-scale wind and solar projects throughout our state that are in the development stage to the grid. Once it is completed, SunZia will deliver renewable energy generated in New Mexico to major energy markets.
If we make the right choices now, we will attract billions of dollars of private investment to our state and create thousands of new jobs in our rural communities. I’m proud of how far we have come, and I will keep fighting for policies that move New Mexico’s energy economy forward.
