Every June 15th, the world marks Global Wind Day. For most people it passes without notice but for those of us who have spent careers building out the American power system, it is worth a pause, because few technologies have delivered more for working families, rural communities, and the broader United States economy than wind power energy.
Wind energy is among the cheapest sources of new electricity we can build. It is homegrown. It cannot be embargoed, taxed at a foreign border, or held hostage by a hostile government overseas. Every turbine turning across our great land is an American asset producing American power for American consumers.
Onshore wind made that case first. Texas leads the nation in wind generation, and the benefits of that development land squarely in places that need them most. Lease payments arrive in the mailboxes of farmers and ranchers. New tax revenue funds rural school districts, hospitals, and county roads. Steady jobs stay in small towns that have watched too many opportunities leave. This is rural economic development at its finest.
Offshore wind is now writing the next chapter, and it is an American manufacturing story. The first American-built offshore wind vessel rolled out of a Texas Gulf Coast shipyard and headed to the Atlantic. The first American-built offshore substation was assembled on our own shores. Welders, fitters, machine operators, and union crews are building a domestic supply chain that did not exist a decade ago.
The need for all energy resources is accute. Electricity demand is climbing faster than it has in a generation. Data centers, reshored and advanced manufacturing, and a growing population all need power, and they need it now. No serious person believes we meet that demand by taking energy options off the table.
We need all energy resources working together, and we need to get government out of the way. Instead of being targeted by weaponized government bureaucracies, wind should be allowed to compete.
When every resource competes on cost and performance, natural gas, solar, storage, nuclear, and wind together, consumers come out ahead. Affordability, reliability, and abundance are not competing goals. They are the product of a generation mix broad enough to deliver all three.
On this Global Wind Day, our message is simple. Keep wind in the mix. Let it compete. An America that builds more energy of every kind is an America that stays affordable, stays reliable, and stays free to power its own future.