GE Energy Financial Services, a unit of General Electric, recently announced that it is expanding its wind energy portfolio by agreeing to invest in a 209-megawatt project under construction by Airtricity Inc. in West Texas. The announcement was made earlier this month at Universal Studios California at GE's "Green is Universal" exhibition, a celebration of GE customers' improvements in operating and environmental performance.
GE Energy Financial Services and a subsidiary of Wachovia Corp. are each investing in a $300 million Roscoe Wind Farm in Mitchell, Nolan and Scurry counties. Construction of the Roscoe project began in March and is scheduled for completion by the end of this year in Roscoe, Texas, 45 miles southwest of Abilene in a cotton farming area. The Roscoe Wind Farm, the third wind project successfully developed by Airtricity in the United States, all in Texas. It will employ 209 one-megawatt Mitsubishi WTG turbines, with power sold to TXU Wholesale, a subsidiary of TXU Corp., under a five year contract.
The wind farm will annually produce power sufficient for 60,000 homes and will avoid 375,000 tons a year in greenhouse gas emissions, compared to equivalent fossil fuel generation. The project supports GE's ecomagination efforts by helping Texas, which leads all US states in installed wind power capacity, meet its renewable energy requirement to produce 5,880 megawatts of its power from renewable sources by 2015. Ecomagination is GE's initiative to help its customers meet their environmental challenges while expanding its own portfolio of cleaner energy products.
"With strong wind resources, West Texas is an attractive site for new wind farm development," said Kevin Walsh, Managing Director and leader of renewable energy at GE Energy Financial Services. "As we strive to grow our renewable energy holdings to $4 billion by 2010, we will continue to invest in quality wind projects, such as Roscoe, that take advantage not only of strong winds, but of strong partnerships with wind energy leaders such as Airtricity."
For more information, visit the GE Energy Financial Services site.
