Pickens Plans On Wind Power

Hugh Pickens writes "T. Boone Pickens (no relation) has launched an energy plan and social-networking campaign that calls for replacing Middle Eastern oil with Midwestern wind. The Pickens Plan would exploit the country's 'wind corridor' from the Canadian border to West Texas to produce 20 percent of the country's electricity and provide an economic revival for rural America. Transmission lines would be built to transport the power where the demand is and natural gas, now used to fuel power plants, would instead be used as a transportation fuel, which burns cleaner than gasoline and is domestic. Pickens proposed that the private sector finance the investment, which would result in a one-third reduction, equal to $230 billion, in the U.S.' yearly payments to foreign countries. Pickens has already invested heavily in wind, notably a planned 4,000-megawatt wind farm in his native Texas. 'We've got to get renewable into the mix. The problem for this country is that we're paying $700 billion — you heard that — $700 billion a year,' Pickens says. 'We can't afford that. In 10 years we'll be broke if we continue that.'"

Comments

Before the FUD hits the fan.

[copponex]

http://www.greencarcongress.com/2006/12/doe_study_offpe.html

Someone, somewhere, will claim that this does not help solve the gasoline problem. Please read the above link, which states that current off-peak electricity could power nearly 200 million PHEVs, according to the DOE. Adding green energy sources will greatly reduce pollution in urban areas when combined with ultra low or zero emission transit.

We'd still have somewhat of an oil problem, but commuting can be covered by existing electric infrastructure.

Re:Um

[volcanopele]

His point is to use wind to replace natural gas power plants, then use natural gas to fuel our vehicles.

Re:I saw that commercial too

[Solandri]

There are some that would argue that the US is already broke. The creditors just hadn't started calling yet. But they are now.

As a percentage of GDP, the U.S. debt situation is about the same as Germany, France, and Canada, and is considerably better than Japan and Italy's. It's a common misconception that the U.S. is badly in debt. For some reason people keep looking at the raw dollar values. In raw dollars, the U.S. has huge economic figures because its population is significantly larger than all the other G8 nations, and its per worker productivity is the highest in the world. Once you account for this (by dividing by GDP), its debt load is pretty much in the middle of the other G8 nations.

Take a look at the S&P 500 over the past couple months, then zoom out and compare it to 2001. Yes, friend, right here is the abyss. Not later - right now.

While you're doing that, you might want to look at the FTSE 100 (UK), the DAX (Germany), and the CAC 40 (France). They all do pretty much the same thing as the S&P 500.

Re:What about???

[mcrbids]

I think you are referring to a solar tower. They are neat, in that if built right, they could last damned near forever, potentially generating energy at very low operational cost.

Additionally, since they operate on top of a heat sink with several days of thermal mass, they could easily be used as a 24x7 "base load" alternative energy power plant.

However, they aren't particularly efficient, they haven't been well tested at larger scales, and present a number of fairly serious engineering challenges. The taller the central tower, the more efficient, but building a mile-high tower isn't cheap. And while the "several days" of base load could be turned into a week or more with the correct engineering, that raises construction costs significantly...

Before solar towers can reach the critical mass of economic viability, other technology that's more (downward) scalable will probably win out first. Quite easily, IMHO.