Lawrence Person's BattleSwarm Blog

If you live in Texas, there’s a good chance you’ve seen the Farouk signs festooning fences along major highways. They belong to one Farouk Shami, who is waging an underdog gubernatorial campaign against Houston Mayor Bill White for the Democratic nomination.

There’s much that’s commendable in Farouk Shami’s personal background. A Palestinian-American entrepreneur (that’s the Palestine that’s east of Jerusalem, not the one east of Mexia), he might bring much-needed private sector experience to a race dominated by political insiders.

Many of his positions are pretty standard liberal boilerplate (for a death penalty moratorium, against cracking down on illegal aliens, etc.). On the other hand, he favors limiting abortions to the first trimester, a moderately cultural conservative position that probably puts him to the right of most Democratic primary voters on this issue.

Oh, and did I mention that he also wants to provide everyone in the state free electricity? Yes, indeed. He said that goal could be achieved in ten years thanks to through “expansion of wind and solar energy use.”

Let’s do a little math, shall we?

In 2005 (the most recent period for which I was able to locate reliable data), Texas consumed 334,258 million kilowatt hours of electricity. Or, to put it Big Scary Number form, 334,258,000,000 kwh, or 334,258,000,000,000 watt hours.

Of that 334,258 million kilowatt hours of electricity, a grand total of 7 million kwh is currently supplied by wind power. There’s no separate figure I’ve been able to find for solar. My suspicion is that it is similarly a drop in the bucket.

Prices to generate solar power are all over the map, but most seem to agree that 10 cents a kilowatt hour is the “holy grail” of solar electricity consumption, the point at which it becomes marginally price competitive fossil fuel energy sources. (For comparison, the City of Austin currently charges 7.82¢ per kWh for residential customers who exceed 500 kWh during the summer.) That means Governor Farouk could provide power to all Texans for a mere $33.4 billion in taxpayer money. Every year.

The Texas State biennial budget for 2010-2011 is $182.2 billion, or $91.1 billion a year. So Farouk Shami is suggesting we spend well over 1/3rd of the state budget to supply energy to residents, money that would presumably have to come from either massive tax hikes or massive budget cuts. This is, to belabor the point, in no way, shape or form “free.”

Now these are quick and dirty, back-of-the-envelope calculations. If you have better numbers for any of the above, let me know. But I suspect the conclusions will remain the same.

I do not think that it is too much to ask that Texas gubernatorial candidates be capable of performing basic math. This, combined with his recent announcement that he’s invented a blow-dryer that grows hair makes me conclude that Farouk Shami is not, in fact, a serious candidate for Governor of Texas.