Texas Company to Lasso Wind Energy for Server Farm

Texas is not exactly known as a hotbed of renewable energy, but the expanse and once oil-rich Lone Star state is taking great pains to reinvent itself as a hub for wind and solar. Houston-based Baryonyx, which incorporated just two months ago, is upping the ante with plans to build wind farms big enough to power nearby large-scale data centers.

While it may not seem like it, every time we "poke" someone on Facebook or watch the famous skateboarding dog on YouTube, we burn a little coal or natural gas to run and cool all those servers that make the Internet possible -- a lot, actually, in aggregate.

Data centers use up to 100 times as much energy as a typical office building, according to information provided by the U.S. Department of Energy, while today's faster and more data-hungry applications only increase that burn. According to the DOE, "Data center energy consumption doubled from 2000 to 2006, reaching more than 60 billion kilowatt hours per year. That number could double again by 2011."

So, viewed in that context, Baryonyx is doing some very important work. Its first project will consist of a server farm in the Texas panhandle powered by 100 wind turbines. It also has plans to build several hundred 300-foot offshore wind turbines within two parcels in the Gulf of Mexico totaling 38,000 acres. Baryonyx made the winning bid to lease the areas just last week, making it the largest offshore wind concession in the country.

After all, this is Texas we're talking about. They like to do everything big -- in this case, it's also gentle on the environment. Baryonyx is hardly alone in the Lone Star state's transition from oil to wind, a boon to Texas ranchers and farmers, as this Texas Farm Bureau video illustrates.

(Image courtesy of Baryonyx Corp.)