14 DAY TRIAL // The race to find new alternative energy sources is fully underway and some cities and even countries are seriously involved in the issue of cleaning up the air we breathe. In order to avoid being caught by surprise by the upcoming fossil fuel shortage, some people want to switch to ecological ways of producing electricity.
Hydroelectricity, produced by the gravitational descent of water that pushes turbines, wind power, harnessed by wind turbines that cause the rotation of magnets, which creates electricity and solar power, converted into electricity by solar cells, are the most known methods of producing clean energy, although they are yet to be developed on a large scale.
This is what the city of Houston, Texas, wants to do, as the City Council just announced that they negotiated a contract to ensure that a third of the city's power is generated by wind, in the hope of stabilizing a $150 million annual electricity bill.
If this solution works for the largest city in the state of Texas and the fourth-largest in the United States, with a population of over 2 million, that it could also work in other cities, or at least it could make officials take alternative energy sources seriously.
"It puts us in a definite leadership position," said Mayor Bill White, a former chief operating officer at the U.S. Department of Energy during the Clinton administration. "We are ahead of the curve." Indeed, they exceed the most optimistic expectations of other major cities in the US, thus giving a fine example of ecology at work.
Maybe this type of alternative energy won't be feasible in other regions, where climate conditions don't allow it, but it's a proof that some have found a possible road to rapid and sustainable development of these clean sources, while others are still wandering the forest.
Who knows, maybe they're expecting to find that road after they've cut down all the trees...