< Previous52 TE X A S E C ONOMI C D E V E L OP ME NT G U I D E high-caliber workforce, which allows companies like Wesco to innovate and prosper,” said Governor Greg Abbott. “As a thriving aviation and aerospace hub, Fort Worth is the ideal location for Wesco to continue to grow its operations and serve its customers. I am proud to welcome Wesco to Texas, along with the more than 200 jobs it is bringing to the region and look forward to working together to keep Texas the number one economy in the nation.” “Incora is a leading, global provider of innovative supply chain solutions, and the Dallas-Fort Worth area already is home to two of our offices and our largest, by volume, distribution center in the world,” said Incora Chief Executive Officer Todd Renehan. “Our new, larger office space in Fort Worth will allow us to bring our teams together to increase efficiency, encourage collaboration and support the future growth of our business. This centrally located site also will offer more accessibility and availability to our customers and colleagues across the U.S. and in Europe.” Not all headquarters projects in Texas are relocations. Some Texas companies want to grow where they are. State Bank of Texas (SBT), $1-billion asset full-service commercial bank headquartered in Dallas, announced in March it has finalized plans to build a new headquarters building in the Las Colinas Urban Center. Construction is expected to be completed mid- 2023. The building project was announced by Chan Patel, CEO and board chair of SBT. “We are tremendously pleased to be locating our headquarters in the vibrant Las Colinas Urban Center,” said Patel. “This investment further strengthens our commitment to the Irving/Las Colinas community and allows our business ample room to continue growing.” Representatives for PGA of America, Cushman & Wakefield, Adolfson & Peterson and Page gathered to celebrate the midpoint of construction for the new PGA of America corporate headquarters in Frisco, Texas. Photo courtesy of Adolfson & Peterson ConstructionU.S. Wind Turbine Database operated by the U.S. Geological Survey, Berkeley National Laboratory and American Clean Power reported 67,814 turbines in action as of January 2021, with a total rated capacity of 111,351 MW. Guess where you can find 16,292 of them? Texas, whose turbine tally comes to 24% of the entire nation’s total. Whether made by Siemens, GE, Gamesa or others, they’re clustered in bunches at major wind farms that especially like to locate in the Texas panhandle. Travel to the land around the towns of Brady and Eden and you’ll find four farms with a total of 382 turbines on four farms that include the Rattlesnake Wind Project (64 turbines and 160 MW) and the Heart of Texas Project (64 turbines, 179.9 MW). The state’s wind infrastructure also includes its share of wind power manufacturing facilities. The National Renewable Energy The data and the projects point to renewable power leadership in Texas. by ADAM BRUNS TE X A S E C ONOMI C D E V E L OP ME NT G U I D E 53 R E N E W A B LE S & U T ILIT IE S CONVERGENCE OF RESOURCES Photo: iStock54 TE X A S E C ONOMI C D E V E L OP ME NT G U I D E Laboratory’s Wind Prospector tool includes a data layer dedicated to the locations of U.S. wind turbine and component manufacturing and supply chain facilities. A quick check in spring 2021 found 11 facilities operating in the state. They include tower manufacturing sites from Broadwind in Abilene and GRI Renewable Industries in Amarillo; nacelle manufacturing sites from CB Gear and Machine in Houston and NGC Renewables in Fort Worth; and assorted other operations from Nacogdoches to Waco to Sweetwater. However, Powering Texas, an alliance of stakeholders “bound by a mission to educate and advocate for innovative, sustainable electricity generation in Texas, including the expansion of renewable wind energy,” reports 41 wind power-related manufacturing sites in the state. The group’s members include 44 communities, chambers of commerce and economic development groups from Port Corpus Christi to Lubbock, and include UT Permian Basin, as even the region known for its oil and gas knows where the future is. As reported by Reuters in February 2021, wind generates 20% of total electricity in Texas, natural gas supplies 47.4%, coal supplies 20.3% and solar supplies 1.1%. Among the facts assembled by Powering Texas: • Of the more than 120,000 wind energy jobs across the nation, Texas claims 26,000 (more than 21%). • The wind industry provides an estimated $192 million in annual rural landowner payments as well as an estimated $285 million in state and local taxes and other payments. Currently installed renewable energy projects in Texas will generate more than $4.7 billion in new tax revenue to local communities over their lifetime. • Corporate customers have signed contracts for more projects in Texas than any other state, accounting for 39% of all contracted capacity. “The volume of companies is also growing,” says Powering Texas. “Of the 29 companies that announced wind deals in 2019, 18 were first-time buyers of wind energy. A diverse group of companies are purchasing wind energy, including Facebook, Amazon McDonald’s, Walmart, General Motors, and more.” Here Comes the Sun “In Texas, we lead the nation in wind energy. By the end of next year, we will lead the nation in solar power,” said Texas Governor Greg Abbott in December 2020, noting the state’s ability to provide companies with reliable renewable energy to help them achieve carbon neutrality goals. Infographic data courtesy of Powering Texas56 TE X A S E C ONOMI C D E V E L OP ME NT G U I D E One example can be found in Houston, where First Solar announced in June 2020 it had signed a 15-year power purchase agreement with Dow, Inc., for its Gulf Coast operations. Dow’s Texas Operations is the largest petrochemical site in the western hemisphere. Under the agreement, First Solar will supply Dow with renewable energy from 75 percent of its 200- MW Horizon Solar project in Frio County, Texas. “Dow and First Solar share a common vision for a more sustainable planet and a long history of partnership,” said Edward Stones, Dow’s global business director for Energy and Climate Change. “Multiple raw materials, components, and derivative products produced by Dow contribute to the reliability and sustainability of First Solar’s module technology, including ENGAGE PV polyolefin elastomers. Now we are putting that technology to work in helping to power our operations in Texas and to reach Dow’s 2025 Sustainability Goal of obtaining 750 megawatts of our power demand from renewable sources.” In January, London-based Lightsource bp announced that its Impact Solar project located in Lamar County, 120 miles northeast of Dallas, had successfully completed construction and entered full grid- connected commercial operation. Through a long-term agreement, bp will sell the energy generated by the 260-MW project. The project represents an investment of $250 million in the Texas region, with 320 workers on site during construction. As part of its strategy to be a net- zero company by 2050 or sooner, by 2030 bp plans to increase low carbon investments to around $5 billion a year. This includes developing around 50 gigawatts (GW) of net renewable energy generating capacity — a 20- fold increase on the 2.5GW to date. “This project in Texas is a great example of how our joint venture with bp is furthering our shared mission to accelerate the implementation of solar,” said Kevin Smith, CEO of the Americas, Lightsource bp. “Since bp’s initial investment in the company in 2017 and our subsequent expansion into the U.S., the team has developed a pipeline of 8 gigawatts of large-scale solar projects at various stages of development in 20 states across the U.S. — with more than 2 gigawatts of executed power contracts representing almost $2 billion in near term projects.” As with wind, solar development is helping a lot more people than developers and off-takers. Impact Solar is on land that is leased to Lightsource bp from local landowners, providing families with a diversified source of reliable income for 25 or more years. “For many farmers, the revenue from leasing a portion of their land for solar as a new type of crop can help them continue with their farming business,” Lightsource bp said in a release. “With ranching or farming, there’s “In Texas, we lead the nation in wind energy. By the end of next year, we will lead the nation in solar power. ” — Texas Governor Greg Abbott, December 2020TE X A S E C ONOMI C D E V E L OP ME NT G U I D E 57 no guarantee of income. You make your own check out of dirt,” said landowner Gerald Cooper. “With solar, you’re guaranteed a check at the end of the year. I still enjoy farming, but solar has allowed me to enjoy it more because I don’t have the dread of the market dropping or of drought, which has been our biggest challenge.” “Our dad was born on the land, which has been in our family for over 100 years,” added landowner Joy Cooper. “With solar, we’re able to keep the land in the family. The number one thing is that we will still have a connection to the land, and we’re comfortable that Lightsource bp will be good stewards.” Stewardship in Texas means sustainability and economic growth are not mutually exclusive. In addition to helping bp achieve net-zero carbon emission goals, the 260-MW Impact Solar installation that went live in Lamar County in January 2021 is on land that is leased to Lightsource bp from local landowners, providing farming families with a diversified source of reliable income for 25 or more years. Photo courtesy of Lightsource bp58 TE X A S E C ONOMI C D E V E L OP ME NT G U I D E The Spindletop oilfield, discovered at the turn of the 20th century on a salt formation south of Beaumont, Texas, marked the birth of the modern petroleum industry. Eight years of drilling on Spindletop Hill paid off on January 10, 1901. The Lucas Gusher, as the unfolding phenomenon quickly became known, blew a stream of oil more than 100 feet high until it was capped some nine days later. The Spindletop oilfield would come to produce more oil in a day than the rest of the world’s oilfields combined. Companies that set up shop nearby included the Texas Company (later Texaco), Gulf Oil Corporation and Humble (later Exxon). Texas, to put it mildly, has never looked back. More than a century later, the Lone Star State knows no equal among petroleum producing states. As “The Capital of Energy Independence,” Texas leads the nation in petroleum refining and chemical products production and is a global leader in the closely allied petrochemical industry. Houston is known as “The Energy Capital of the World.” According to TIPRO, The Texas Independent Producers and Royalty Owners Association, Texas led the nation in oil and gas jobs in 2020 with 347,529 people employed in the industry. That’s 39% of the oil and gas jobs in the entire country. The industry, says TIPRO, supported some 2.3 million Texas jobs through direct, indirect and induced multipliers. The state’s 12,000 oil and gas businesses represent three times the number of second-place Oklahoma. Not surprisingly, many leaders in the petrochemical industry received formal education in Texas, including at the Cockrell School of Engineering at the University of Texas at Austin. U.S. News and World Report ranks the UT Department of Petroleum Engineering graduate program tops in the country, while the UT undergraduate program is ranked No. 2. Delivering Downstream Texas’ 27 refineries lead the nation in both crude oil production and refining. With over 5.1 million barrels Texas is still No. 1 for petroleum, and it’s not even close. by GARY DAUGHTERS UNRIVALED DOMINATION UNRIVALED DOMINATION O I L & G A S Photo by Shay La’VeeTE X A S E C ONOMI C D E V E L OP ME NT G U I D E 59 a day, Texas has 29% of the nation’s total capacity. According to the U.S. Energy Information Administration, three of America’s four largest refineries are located in Texas. They include the Saudi Aramco refinery in Port Arthur (607,000 barrels per day), Marathon Petroleum’s Galveston Bay refinery (585,000 b/d) and the ExxonMobil Baytown refinery (560,500 b/d). In recent years, ExxonMobil has targeted Baytown for investments totaling a staggering $2 billion, including a project to build a new ethane cracker to provide feedstock for two newly-added polyethylene units at the nearby Mount Belvieu plastics plant. Such on-going investments help Texas to account for one-half of the nation’s “downstream” petrochemical products such as plastics, polymers and fertilizers. Even as the COVID-19 pandemic posed unprecedented challenges to the industry, it presented opportunities, as well. Amid increased demand from sectors such as packaging, fast-moving consumer goods and healthcare, Brazil-based Braskem launched a $750 million polypropylene line in La Porte on Trinity Bay east of Houston. Braskem’s new line has a production capacity of over 450 kilotons per year for manufacturing products such as homopolymer, impact copolymer and random copolymers. It’s the first new PP plant to be built in North America since 2008. “The startup of our new production line comes at a time when the North American polypropylene industry needs it most,” said Alexandre Elias, Braskem vice president. “The market has adapted to the COVID pandemic and demand in North America has recovered to pre-COVID levels. The demand, coupled with recent operating challenges in the industry, has created a situation where clients in North America need our support.” Construction of the Baskem facility employed some 1,300 development and construction workers, and Braskem created an additional 50 full-time jobs to support long-term commercial production. The company says the La Porte plant is designed with attention to sustainability factors such as emissions, water and energy efficiency and recycling and waste reduction. Going With the Flow Texas produced 1.73 billion barrels of oil per day during 2020, a pandemic-year decline of 117 million barrels. Despite the drop in production, oil-driven economies of west Texas continued to prosper. Midland and Odessa in the Permian basin, one of the oldest and most widely recognized oil and gas producing regions in North America, ranked in a tie for No. 6 among Site Selection magazine’s Top Performing Metropolitans (Tier-3) in 2020. Each registered major investments in oil- related construction and equipment manufacturing. In August 2020, family-owned Barron Petroleum announced the discovery of a 13,000-acre oil field near the west Texas town of Ozona. The company says the field is estimated to hold 417 billion cubic feet, or 74.2 million barrels, of oil and gas reserves. The Permian Basin’s output potential received a major boost in January 2021, when Kinder Morgan’s long-awaited Permian Highway Pipeline entered service. The 430- mile pipeline, with a capacity of 2.1 billion cubic feet per day, opened a new corridor to the Houston metro, with expanded access for Permian producers to the Gulf Coast industrial and export markets. ExxonMobil’s Baytown, Texas refinery. Courtesy of ExxonMobil Chemical60 TE X A S E C ONOMI C D E V E L OP ME NT G U I D E A U T O M O T I V E MAN U F A C T U RI N G Everyone thought that Amazon HQ2 was the biggest economic development project to hit America until — Tesla came along in 2020. How big was the impact of the site search for the 2,000- acre Gigafactory that Tesla shopped around the country? Huge is an understatement. Adriana Cruz, Executive Director of the Texas Governor’s Office of Economic Development & Tourism, called it a game-changer. Experts in the automotive world labeled it transformative. Tesla founder Elon Musk himself made it the signature project of his meteoric career. When the dust settled last July, Musk announced that the world’s largest electric vehicle manufacturer would locate its Gigafactory for producing the much-ballyhooed Cybertruck in Travis County near Austin, Texas. Other wins came with it. Along with the futuristic Cybertruck, Tesla would bring manufacturing operations for its new electric semi-truck, the Tesla 3 and the Tesla Y. The numbers alone are staggering. The project amounts to a $1 billion capital investment that will create 5,000 new jobs in Central Texas just minutes from both Austin Bergstrom International Airport and downtown Austin. Estimates place the total size of the complex between 4 million and 5 million sq. ft. How did “Project Bob Pole” land Tesla’s decision to park a billion- dollar-plant near Austin revs up an already humming sector. by RON STARNER Texas Driven to Photo courtesy of Tesla, Inc.Next >