WHY AN OIL & GAS BILLIONAIRE WANTS WIND

How a Conservative Billionaire Is Moving Heaven and Earth to Become the Biggest Alternative Energy Giant in the Country; Philip Anschutz wants to turn his 500-square-mile cattle ranch into the world’s largest wind farm…

Gabriel Kahn, June 29, 2015 (Pacific Standard)

“…[In 2006, a] buyer was prepared to pay roughly $50 million for [the 500-square-mile high-desert [Overland Trail cattle ranch] in south-central Wyoming where the wind blows so fiercely people have to brace against it just to stay upright…[Owner Philip Anschutz] had become one of the richest men in America—with a fortune of nearly $12 billion—by figuring out an abundance of ways to churn wealth out of real estate, from oil wells and railroads to sports arenas and cattle ranches…[T]he market for wind energy was growing …[A]long the ridges of the Overland Trail Ranch are some of the only Class 7 winds in the nation…[and they start in the morning and gain force just when demand is peaking. With the TransWest Express transmission system to take wind-generated electricity straight from Wyoming across Colorado, Utah, and Nevada into a substation on the California-Nevada border] wind had all the markings of another Anschutz triumph…” click here for more

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