NEW YORK – T. Boone Pickens dropped by Fortune’s offices last Thursday, and not surprisingly the billionaire oilman had oil on his mind as gas prices hit yet another new high.
“The only way you’re going to kill demand is with price increases,” Pickens, 80, told a group of editors and writers. “But demand is not as easy to kill as you think.”
The legendary Dallas wildcatter and corporate dealmaker believes the world is approaching “peak oil” – meaning we’ve pumped out more oil than remains in the ground – and he’s looking beyond the petroleum age by placing some big bets on wind. His $12 billion Pampa Wind Project in Texas will generate enough electricity to power some 1.3 million homes when completed in 2014. (Last week Pickens’ Mesa Power placed an order for 667 turbines with General Electric (GE) for the project’s $2 billion first phase.)
For Pickens, wind is key to weaning the U.S. from the petrol pump. “The only transportation fuel we have in the U.S. to replace oil is natural gas,” he said.
Here’s how it would work, according to Pickens. Replace the natural gas power plants that generate about a quarter of the electricity in the United States with wind farms. Use the freed-up natural gas to power cars, trucks and other vehicles. “We could reduce oil imports by 38 percent,” Pickens declared.
The U.S Department of Energy earlier this month released a report estimating that wind power could supply up to 20 percent of the nation’s electricity by 2030. Huge hurdles stand in the way of achieving that target, such as the need for a massive upgrade to the transmission system and the fact that the wind blows intermittently. And natural gas-powered cars won’t be as clean as, say, electric vehicles powered from solar.
Wind isn’t the only green energy source on Pickens’ horizon. I ask him about large-scale solar and he pulls out a map illustrating the best spots for solar power plants in the U.S. “I like it,” he says. “We’re looking at all renewable energy.”
As he put it earlier in the conversation, “I’ve been too early on a lot of things, but now I have enough money to be as early as I want.”
Green Wombat 
Pickens is right. We will need all the energy that we can get from wind, solar and nuclear. My brother worked for an electric utility for over 30 years. He told me that modern electric power plants are designed to burn either oil or natural gas depending on what was the cheapest and what was needed to meet pollution laws. Currently oil is recieving a $100 to $200 billion a year subsidy. This subsidy is providing military protection to Saudia Arabia. The true cost of gasoline is really $1.00 to $2.00 higher than the pump price.
What Pickens is suggesting isn’t a long term solution, but it will buy us more time to go all electric.
It takes 5625 cubic feet of natural gas to replace the BTUs in one barrel of petroleum.
According to EIA we had 21 billion barrels of oil in this country.
We currently consume 20 million barrels per day (730 million per year) meaning we go dry at today’s consumption rate and with no improvement in technology in 28.7 years.
We have 204 trillion cubic feet of natural gas which sounds like a lot but only equates to 36 billion barrels of oil. It buys us another 49 years.
As you can see we have a little over 77 years of oil/natural gas left. I like where Pickens is going but the real answer is to go all electric.
Solar thermal can generate enough heat to make commercial production of hydrogen feasible. That hydrogen can be used to generate electricity. That electricity can be used not just for homes and industry but to power our transportation system (airplanes, construction equipment, over the road trucks being exceptions). We can save our oil for those assets, everything else goes electric.
He is right about natural gas to a point. Using up the stuff to run electric plants is not its best use. Using it in cars is only a good idea in cities, fleets and such. It burns much cleaner than petro-gas so it’ll cut smog. However its mile per gallon equivalent to petro-gas is not so good. It’s best used in manufacturing, industry and home heating/cooking. It will last a long time that way. I think wind is great idea, but birds don’t like them windmills much. I vote for Nukes to generate electricity, natural gas for the above uses, oil for cars/trucks/boats/trains/chemicals/plastics. Solar has a place as does Bio-mass ethanol.
None of this will happen if we do not let our lawmakers know we want it. Alternative oil sources like Oil Shale and CTL, can make America much less dependent on foreign oil and as a bonus, we can create LOTS of jobs. The site below has some good info on those energy sources and a way to get lawmaker’s attention too.
http://www.AmericansForJobsAndEnergy.org
We spend billions each year buying 50% of our oil from other countries. If those billions stayed in this country maybe we could afford to develop the “holy grail”… a Hydrogen economy. Read up on super safe Very High temperature Reactors (VHTR) and their suitability for co-generation of electricity AND clean hydrogen.
So when oil men are turning to renewable resources isn’t that a sign that Bush should do likewise. And what about tapping wind power from the ocean. Although some people worry about wind farms degrading the value of their homes, I think more and more people appreciate the value of clean energy.
Dagny McKinley
http://www.onnotextiles.com
organic apparel
Wind Wind = Win Win
We should install wind where ever we can place it, starting in the deserts first; then as other forms of CLEAN energy come on line we can phase out the most unwanted wind turbines. Wind and soon ocean current powered turbines will allow us to begin the shift from Oil – Our Congress is stalling and delaying by funding corn based fuels which is and will always be a “gift” for the farmers and also totally screw up the Worlds food supply; which feeds right into the game plan of the terrorist…
Nukes still create HUGE waste problems, in fact we still do not have a National place to store the millions of tons we have now – this is the problem with Nukes and nobody wants to talk about it…