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Pickens Wind-Power Plan Comes To a Whimpering End
Spy Handler writes "In 2008, billionaire T. Boone Pickens unveiled his 'Pickens Plan' on national TV, which calls for America to end its dependence on foreign oil by increasing use of wind power and natural gas. Over the next two years, he spent $80 million on TV commercials and $2 billion on General Electric wind turbines. Unfortunately market forces were not favorable to Mr. Pickens, and in December 2010 he announced that he is getting out of the wind power business.
What does he plan to do with his $2 billion worth of idle wind turbines? He is trying to sell them to Canada, because of Canadian law that mandates consumers to buy more renewable electricity regardless of cost."
the OilIgachy get to say he was full of hot air.
No one has told me that I have to buy renewable energy. Be interesting to find out what the "law" is that is forcing us to buy renewable.
I'm resolving to reduce electricity use in my own home with an improved roof, solar cooling chimney, maybe water heating. If I had the $ I would also go for a ground-source heat-pump.
Pickens real plan wasn't wind energy - it was water. He wanted the government to grant him free land for the power lines that would be required to get the power back to where it would be used (cities). The land he was trying to get was going to also be used for water transport pipelines, which is going to be a huge moneymaker in this century - particularly in the south and west. Pickens doesn't give a crap about wind energy, I'm glad he was defeated.
Green/clean/renewable/buzzword power is a funny market, I've seen them try something similar here. Basically what happens is that the current pool of power is already a mix with some parts good and bad. All the special offers do is take part of it and charge a premium for it, while the normal power becomes "dirtier". The overall production mix remains the same, the people willing to pay feelgood money are too few to actually increase demand. That and the environmentalists usually are also opposed to the large windmill parks and whatnot disrupting the natural environment, so their demands usually contradict themselves. But then of course an oil crisis will hit, prices will skyrocket and politicians will be blamed for doing nothing. You're just not going to win this one.
Live today, because you never know what tomorrow brings
and unless you want to pay for 3$ a litre oil i suggest you rethink your statement.....IT isn't aobut forcing anything its about reality. I'd like to see the govt put solar arrays NOW on every house EVERYWHERE. in ten years the world gets a HUGE boost in not having to pay for electricity....
I'm in Canada. There are several provincial efforts to specify a certain percentage of renewable power by a particular date (e.g., 25% of power from renewable sources by 2015), and/or the ability for customers to voluntarily pay more if they want to buy renewable power -- as in, pay an extra few percent on your power bill and the power company guarantees that all that money will be invested in renewable power production (e.g., wind turbines). The laws don't say "regardless of cost", and don't specify doing it by wind turbines. They usually say "achieve this benchmark for renewable power by this date". The power companies are free to achieve that goal however they want, including importing power from elsewhere (e.g., Nova Scotia recently made a deal for a new hydroelectric power project in Labrador). It *may* cost more money, or maybe not. Depending upon how high the price of oil or other fossil fuels go in the next few years, it might not actually be more expensive in the long run. Realistically, it probably will be in the short term, but I think of it as "achieve this renewable energy target the cheapest way the market can figure out", not "regardless of cost".
The state subsidy for coal electricity is absurdly high, it is still like 10x more then for renewable energy. No wonder expensive green energy projects can't compete.
Pickens is a scumbag. He doesn't care about Wind Power, he wants water. He used the guise of wind-power to try to grab land to transport water. Don't believe me? Read this: http://earthfirst.com/%E2%80%9Cblue-gold%E2%80%9D-t-boone-pickens-and-the-privatization-of-water/
Pickens placed a $1.5 billion wind turbine order from GE. But the problem: transporting the energy from West Texas to the rest of the state. Pickens planned to build his own transmission, but the approvals fell through, says economist Mike Giberson at Texas Tech.
This isn't an issue of relative energy cost. This is an issue of not being given permission to build the basic infrastructure he needed for his system to work.
Atlas Shrugged, indeed.
10 MD
The failure of T. Boone Pickens has nothing to do with "market forces". It has to do with trying to solve the wrong problem. Or not even understanding what the problem is in the first place. Just because you're rich doesn't mean you know what you're talking about.
I keep hearing the phrase "reduce our dependence on foreign oil" associated with things like wind turbines and nuclear power. Maybe somebody should do a little research and discover that 1% of the electricity in the U.S. is generated using oil as fuel. Unless you're planning on cars, trucks, buses and trains powered by wind turbines or nuclear reactors, how exactly does this "reduce our dependence on foreign oil"?
Wind power is heavily subsidised in Europe.
It's the renewable energy with the second-highest percentage for *electrical* uses (the highest being the well-established hydro) [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Renewable_energy]. It seems to make sense to invest more in that.
Where are our nuclear power stations?
If you add up the subsidies sunk in nuclear (from the good ol' times started with the Manhattan Project), I guess you'll dwarf whatever went into renewables.
Look just at the table in [http://www.world-nuclear.org/info/inf68.html] (and that's by a nuclear lobby group, for crying out loud!). They don't even blush at those numbers. And I'm sure there are many hidden subsidies (think military!) and externalities they don't wwant to talk about.
One billionaire won't do much against 100,000 millionaires working against you.
Not that I want to start yet another political flame war, but isn't republicans philosophy that money trickles down from the wealthy? Here is a perfect example of how even if you want to spend all your money, you can't.
You mean, heavy subsidization by the US Tax Payer? Those aren't market forces, it is stealing from the poor to give to the rich, to make them wealthier? I'll pass.
This had nothing to do with wind or electricity. This plan was a blatant attempt to steal water from Amarillo and sell it to Dallas with no compensation for the water. Amarillo and the Texas panhandle is running out of water at an alarming rate. The Pickens wind energy plan was just a ruse.
I was wondering how the crowd that claims wind and other renewables are more economical than anything else would spin this.
It can't possibly be that he lost money, if it's so economical. So, it must have been something else, like a secret agenda that required him to lose money for a greater gain.
A bit like the 200 mpg carburetor that the big corporations are keeping secret.
But, obviously I must be part of the conspiracy, since I'm not out supporting the 200 mpg carbu... I mean wind farms, enthusiastically enough.
Yeah, I'll get mod bombed for this, but big deal. I've got so many +5 informatives that I'm hardly worried. ;)
BUILD more nuke plants and then in 2040 fusion!
Only put the satellite microwave ones in areas away from where people live.
Back in 2008, natural gas prices had spiked, and it "appeared" (at least temporarily) that they might stay rather expensive. Texas is very dependent upon natural gas for electricity, so "wind power" was almost economical.
Now, in 2010, with more sources of natural gas seeming to 'pop up' due to the additional drilling in Texas over the last couple years, NG is cheap again. Wind generated electricity costs twice as much as natural gas generated electricity right now. So unless a business is just wanting to "appear green", there's no economic incentive to buy wind power right now. Would you pay twice the price for electricity just to "say" you're buying wind power?
Pickens is above all else a business man. If it won't make money, there's no point in doing it.
Picken's plan - to grab loads of pork.
1. Buy $2 billion worth of renewable energy products
2. take huge tax deduction
3. realize that someone made a huge mathematical error and this not going to work
4. sell products to Canada where they are required by law
5. PROFIT
He owns large amounts of land with lots of natural gas, he never intended to put up any wind turbines.
Try to develop a wind or solar farm that is "close enough to be useful" transmission lines and environmental forces will put that project on hold or even make it impossible to get permits. Sometimes the "green forces" in the US are just as bad as the so called party of No in stopping things that could make alternative energy a viable energy resource. I've seen quite of number of projects just fade into the sunset because of "the environmentalist". I personally wouldn't invest in any alternative energy project until they were ready to generate power.
Pickens was one of the top cowboys in getting us into this oil mess. Then he invested oil profits heavily in natural gas, which indeed did pay off: production has risen some as consumption has risen slightly more, but prices have doubled, with frequent sevenfold spikes that last most of a year. Nice racket, but not good enough for a snakey oil salesman like Pickens.
So Pickens started pitching his plan to move America's cars from gasoline to natgas, switching the natgas flow away from our gas turbines. New combined cycle gas turbines get up to 85% energy efficiency, because the plants can usefully consume the heat, but cars will just pump it out into the air - at about 20% energy efficiency (or worse: about 17% for gasoline cars converted to natgas). Which all means that we'd have to burn 4-5x as much natgas to get the use in cars we do now in CCGT plants. Which means buying 4-5x as much gas, from Pickens, just to burn 80% out in his backyard.
He invested $2B in wind farms because he expected at least that much more profit from natgas. He's getting that profit anyway, without the wind farms. If he'd been serious about the wind farms, he'd have them up and running, producing power, instead of letting them depreciate and then selling them to a foreign country.
Pickens has done all he could to get us into this energy crisis, and has no skills in getting us out of one. Indeed, if oil money weren't so easy once you're in the old boy club, that old boy wouldn't have made much anywhere that takes skills that actually serve and develop a market, rather than shooting fish in a barrel - Texas style, which means oil barrel.
--
make install -not war
I am no expert but I wonder if the majority air/water pollution is coming from automobiles, trucks, and buses.
Nope, cargo ships. Each one pollutes like 50 million cars.
So if Pickens buys water and his water actually becomes critical at some point, eminent domain will work, for once, as it was intended: the government will take the damn water and the public will at least be dealing with a regulated monopoly. Politicians can be bought in the short term, but an entire starving (thirsting) populace tends to destabilize the best of plans.
He's not dumb, just came out on the wrong end of the stick this time. He's made and lost millions betting on one thing or another. THAT is how America's do things. They take RISKS. If your risk pays off, you become wealthy, if not, you don't. Look at Donald Trump...he's made and lost more money than a lot of people could ever dream of having. People try to trash "the rich", but if it wasn't for them taking a risk, we'd still be riding horses to and from work in the dark, coming home to the oil filled lamps!
You see, this is exactly why people are beginning to think that so called environmentalists don't care about the environment and are more concerned with political power. Well, that and the fact that many "environmentalists" have stated just as much...
Picken's idea was a garbage plan for wind power, no doubt about it, and I can definitely see the land access angle as a prime motivator... but who cares. If people want more clean and renewable energy sources, this would have provided that, and the water pipelines will become necessary if things go as has been predicted. So, the means and end were aligned here and it didn't get any traction from the environmentalists... nice.
Now, I think it was a horrible idea, but it was far better than any others that have been given a large audience. Personally, big plans like this and the "Smart Grid" sound horrifying to me. Pickens would have been better suited to work with existing power companies as an investor. The problem with wind power is the upfront investment. The coal fired power companies have no long term interest in sticking with coal if other sources of power become affordable; they aren't evil, they just are... and if they could get out of the business of buying coal or mining for it, it would be a better business model for them.
A supremely better plan would be a movement away from consolidated power generation to a more distributed model, which is the opposite of this Smart Grid concept. You could go as distributed as everyone generating some to all of their own power and forming small grids in their neighborhoods with [relatively] small fossil fuel generators supporting additional needs as necessary. That would shorten up the chain on power generation significantly, reduce waste energy from long distance transmission lines, and all sorts of things. That would be the most environmental friendly option out there, and it would certainly be welcomed by many true environmentalists and even a huge segment of the population that doesn't consider themselves environmentalists. New neighborhoods could use it as marketing tool, where the entire neighborhood is environmentally friendly. There are some people currently willing to pay a small premium on that... and as it becomes more mature and costs go down, more will follow. Capitalism is the ultimate means to this end... and it proves that environmentalists don't really care about it.
that for 5-9 years would pump into it 2-3 billion a year to put solar arrays on all home owners homes....
it would be about 300,000 homes a year and if you think about that the home owner gets then 4000-5000 dollars a year back in savings to electricity minus and cost of maintenance ( very minor ) this also sets up an acorss the country job market to install these( jobs and taxes) and that 4000-5000$ would also be taxed right as you spend it....
i also said that if you spread htis out evenly you can have each of these homes with solar sell back to the grid at equal or under the current rates a tiny bit and thus it begins to cut back on need for coal ( environmental savings and such) as well puts more cash into said home owner who then gets taxes put on that revenue as its spent....
in about 8 years the govt can even begin to lesson the 2-3 billion being spent on this and each year in fact as the taxes gained on the new revenue 4000-5000 + electricity revenue start to being seen and realized....
by year 12 the govt isn't spending a dime and just uses tax gains and then in year 13 starts gaining and might be able to begin reducing taxes/paying debts....and by year 15 its completion date its gaining massively in taxes....NOTE the first homes into this in 5 years after the completion date will need to be refitted so if you slow this project a tiny bit it becomes a retro active all hte time 200,000 solar arrays a year that costs the tax payers nothing and sees the tax base GDP rise on account no on is paying for elctricity
6 million homes get covered this way and to cover 11million you simply increase the number of hmes a year as your tax base grows and brings you more revenues such that by year 8 you increase to 400K homes and by year ten 500K and so on....
11million times 5000 ( plus about 1000-1500 on electricity sales )
is 55 billion people arent spending on electricity (PLUS 16.5billion on sales)
NOW the 55 billion is money you spend on items thus HST.
7.15 billion in tax dollars/year and puts 48 billion into the economy to get spent
electricity sales we can lap a 20% tax on 3.3billion on sales.
THUS you can see the tax revenues on this not only end up paying for it all but are about 10.4billion and the people get to play with 61.1 billion
THUS the GDP per home goes what the hell up.
I have done this idea up very well elsewhere and a lot of people liked it and want to know more.
use it play with it and enjoy FREEDOM.
you can also say that i on social assistance am paying 75$ a month in electricity to my landlord whthar i use it or not. IF the above happens and he isn't allowed to charge me, you tax payers can have 40$ back and i can keep 35$ a month to eat and live better. IF you think of this for pensioners, and disabled and such you can quickly see how the whole country can benefit. NOW add these wind turbines to the coasts of canada and you again increase this such that we can export energy to the troubled USA WHOM btw would have to have a pay as you go plan as i see form 60 minutes the bills aint getting paid anywhere in the usa.... if the world does this DO we need wind turbines , perhaps to sell the electricity to businesses thats how YOU me and the turbines and as tax payers can make a buck directly off corporations. THEY might not like us having this power but its people power and it really does put people in control of the world.
That bullshit isn't good reading for anyone.
No. I don't think the problem is people interfering with "Atlas" but not pandering to him.
This is American business remember. It is likely that he was depending on some sort of subsidy or handout or other sweet special deal and that didn't go through.
Infact, I am pretty sure that's what happened in this case.
A Pirate and a Puritan look the same on a balance sheet.
What does a story about a failed architect have anything to do with wind turbines?
To understand wind power, look at the wind map of the United States. Wind turbines aren't useful unless the average wind speed is in the 8 m/sec range and up. Note the huge high-wind area from the Texas panhandle up to Canada. That's where Pickens wanted to operate. Good place for wind turbines, but no nearby place that needs the power. So some long transmission lines were needed. The problem is not that "regulators" wouldn't let Pickens build transmission lines. It's that he wanted governments to pay for them. See Pickens' testimony before Congress. He wanted eminent domain powers and tax credits for high-tension lines. Back in 2009, though, he couldn't raise the $2 billion needed to build them.
Those wind charts come in much finer detail. Look at the California wind map. There are four really good wind areas in California, and they all have large wind farms operating. There's room for further expansion out at Mojave, but the other three sites are essentially full. Those are all successful operations, because they're reasonably near big loads.
Also, the Pickens claim that collecting wind power over a large area would provide significant base load capacity may be bogus. See the live data for the PJM grid. (This brings up a big Flash application showing what the power grid for the Northeastern US is doing. Switch one of the panels to "Wind Power" and set the scale to "All Data".) Within a 3-day period, total wind power for the entire Northeast US can range over an 8 to 1 range. That's from real, operating wind farms.
I mean that whole HFCS is horrible, you should use sucrose. The weird part is when you talk about soft drinks. (Which is usually the main thing people complain about it.) Many soft drinks (like cola) are acidic. Sucrose breaks down into fructose/glucose in an acidic solution. That means at least when it comes to soda there is little difference between HFCS and sucrose because the soda itself turns the sucrose basically into HFCS
Did you know 80 to 90% of the moderators on slashdot wouldn't recognize a troll even if one dragged them under a bridge.
Finally, electricity comes to Canada. We shall use it to light our National Igloo on windy days.
We will plant them all along the Only Road in Canada. Life has been hard up here since the Cola Wars so we are not so proud as to refuse second hand generators from a down and out Yankee billionaire.
I can attest that the idea of corn syrup being the same as sugar is crap.
At some point I realized that cheap pancake syrup was causing me to break out horribly and painfully ( the deep tissue 1 week to work their way to the surface ones ). I also got the effect with the bulk food muffins ( the big costco ones ) and if I drink two or more cans of soda.
Avoiding product with large concentrations of corn syrup has made my life a lot better.
Jones Soda ( as well as Coke with yellow caps?) uses sugar and I've drank that without a problem but now I've become accustomed to the diet drinks.
Calling a Texas oilman a Yankee [anything] is mildly offensive. The north and the south of the US still dont play nice, the stereotype of the stuck up autocratic Yankee and the dimwitted racist southerner is alive and well and sadly theres enough people on both sides that fulfill the stereotype to keep it that way for a long time.
i wage a holy war against the apostrophe.
My bad. Sorry for the typical Canadian ignorance of American cultural values. I take back "Yankee" and substitute "Texas".
Much shame. Back to my igloo.
If people are fat because of HFCS, then it's not their fault for simply eating too much. It's someone else's fault. (Diet plan for weight loss: eat less. If it's not working, eat even less. Continue with these actions until you've reached your desired weight. End complete diet plan.)
Also, big companies make HFCS. So there's a long term benefit from demonizing it. Someday, some trial lawyers will find enough jurors who've been indoctrinated with enough hatred that they'll be able to cash in by suing food producers. It took 30-40 years for smoking, but the lawyers eventually made hundreds of billions of dollars.
Meanwhile, fructose is in your honey and your strawberries and most of the rest of your "healthy" fruits causing no particular harm. But since when were witch hunts about reality?
All the subsidies and tariff protections should be ended though. All of them.
lol, no worries, just thought i'd point out some useless information.
i wage a holy war against the apostrophe.
No, you are not that off; Americans are just degrees off that Texas idiocy - they just get upset when you don't notice the minor difference.
I thought Picken's wanted water rights to the land he was going to use for wind? I distinctly remember him wanting stipulations having nothing to do with wind power. As far as trying to compete in Texas of all places - that is not possible unless you bribe them enough to begin to compete with the subsidies conventional power gets. Even then, TEXAS isn't full of people willing to do anything responsible if it involves ACTION. I bet you if there was a checkbox on the bill to switch to green energy at no cost the majority wouldn't do it.
And when the parts are sold up north in Canada by a .. is it still carpetbagger like?
Domestic spying is now "Benign Information Gathering"
Quite so - a mere few pages before a night sleep guards against insomnia very well!
The last thing our northerly friends need is US Libertarian porn. They need to start building a wall on the border for when the half term governor from Alaska becomes president in 2012.
The US gas production is more and more dependent on shale gas production, due to the progress of the hydraulic fracturing technique . Although the American Petroleum Institute claims that there this technique pose little or no threat to underground drinking water, environmentalists say otherwise and their voice has been gaining strength thanks to the recently released Gasland documentary film.
What is clear to me is that there is no reason to explain why Dick Cheney exempted the gas drilling industry from the Safe Drinking Water Act, but to protect the gas industry profitability...
To be fair with Democrats, I also have to say that Obama strongly supports shale gas extraction. Good luck, America!
Solution: nuclear powered ships. As a bonus, the ships can go really fast.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Q6OHHGrVM3g
(in the middle he says some standard anti-nuclear bullshit, but otherwise it's a great clip)
Those who would give up liberty to obtain working drivers, deserve neither liberty nor working drivers.
Wrong story. "The Fountainhead" was about an architect (Howard Roark). Atlas Shrugged was primarily about a railroad tycoon (Dagny Taggart), a steel baron (Henry Reardon) and a philosophist-hero (John Galt).
Learn about Photography Basics.
The only reason why france has any breeder reactors is because they are government owned and operated at a huge loss.
Actually, that's not what happened. In fact the Congress has been implementing more wind subsidies because the market has been shrinking otherwise. What happened to wind market was a combination of two things: back in 2008 debt markets and natural gas prices collapsed almost simultaneously. Debt markets have recovered, but natural gas prices have not. Today it's much cheaper to build natural gas power plants than it is to develop wind farms. Really, though, Pickens should've seen it coming 2 years ago (and privately he did - he's been trying to sell all those GE turbines for a while now).
One is really left to question, just who DOES elect this Canadian government?
"It's the height of ridiculousness to say for those 9 lines you get hundreds of millions."
Increased use of natural gas was a big part of his plan. He wanted to see truck fleets (like Overnite, Old Dominion, your various chain grocery stores, etc.) converted through retrofit and/or attrition.
I see even classic Slashdot is now pretty much unusable on dial up anymore.
...in contrast to other farm crops or any other agriculture? Is it just because the first primaries are in Iowa/Idaho?
The corn lobby is very powerful, as the rather expensive ethanol subsidy was extended for another year in the tax cut deal, adding another $7 billion to the deficit. Kudos to Senator Dianne Feinstein who at least tried to cut the ethanol tax credit slightly to save about $2 billion, but she was rebuffed. Hopefully she won't be overly punished for defying the corn lobby.
http://www.nypost.com/p/news/opinion/opedcolumnists/the_tax_deal_corn_lobby_kickback_FhJ8HlZFoMmg1ZQg1aZr0L
http://www.reuters.com/article/idUSTRE6BE4XY20101215
I live in Quebec Canada, We have ample water and thus hydro-electric power. My city (Montreal) with around 2 million homes, have these homes entirely heated and cooled by electricity. At 4c per kwh, why not. We like clean unpolluted air and ground water. We like electric cars, not gas or oil fueled vehicles, but the major limitation to conversion to all electric cars is the battery. It needs to be able to work at -30F as well as +90F. We are mainly anti-energy polluting industries. Our overall cancer rates are lower than our neighbors. We think we know why.
Leslie Satenstein Montreal Quebec Canada
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Nuclear Power.
None of the alternative energy plans can provide electricity on a 24-hour basis. If we're all to drive Al Gore's pokey electric cars, we need a way to charge millions of batteries at night. That means producing enormous additional amounts of electricity. Electricity green energy (wind and solar) can't produce once the Sun goes down.
We built all of the useful dams on all of the useful rivers decades ago.
Green pundits will never allow coal fired plants, and they don't like burning anything. What they like is wind and solar.
Ethanol is very hard to produce using low-sugar crops like corn and grasses. Beat sugar makes more sense, but the Fed is owned by Agribusiness companies like ADM. It would cost a lot of money to switch away from corn. Since the 60s corn was introduced into nearly everything we eat.
If anyone thinks we're protecting Ma and Pa farmer on the plains, think again. They either went bankrupt in the 70s or sold out when the kids graduated and moved away. The remaining independent farmers either don't farm or are being squeezed out through skillful cross pollination of their crops from neighboring corporate farms.
Only the dead have seen the end of War. - Plato
If all my books were carved in Ice, I think I might be less likely to read too. Just imagining the Ice-monitor your reading on.. brrr
Mr. T. Boone (not to be confused with Slim) may be out of the game for now, but he gets big bonus points with me for being a pioneer and trying to lead the way. It won't be that many years before people like him will be belatedly lauded for clearsightedness and wisdom in the face of our $600Ba oil deficits.
In the meantime, there's plenty of other wind action happening across the US (not to mention China, which is trying to corner the manufacturing market). There's SO much wind energy being wasted in the Midwest that T. Boone might want to invest instead in some of those 15MW monsters the Spanish are building.
"You must try to forget all you have learned. You must begin to dream." -- Sherwood Anderson