The Pickens Plan

Originally Posted By Kar2oonMan

After seeing commercials for the T. Boone Pickens energy plan, I finally got around to checking out the site.

The whole thing sounds great from what I've seen so far. Using wind to generate 20% of America's electricity, freeing up natural gas for use in vehicles to cut down on the need for foreign oil.

Is this the whole story? Am I missing something?

I'm not providing a link, because you have to give your email address and zip code to view the site, but if you're interested, use The Google: pickens plan

 

Originally Posted By Mrs ElderP

I haven't looked at the site, but I know this much: if by and large wind was cheaper or as cheap as using coal to generate electricity, we'd be doing it by now. There are a few fabulous places to generate wind energy (i.e., lots of wind, and not alot of people to object). The pass on I-10 near Palm Springs is one of them. Any place that doesn't already have windmills either has an inconsistant wind supply or lots of people that don't want windmills in their back yards.

I'm not saying that's not a reason not to do it. I'm just saying it's STILL not going to bring your energy costs back to where they were in 2001.

I'm not saying you were claiming that you were either. As far as I understand the commercials Pickens only wants to get us off of foreign oil, and is not claiming endless cheap energy.

Fundamently expensive energy is a good thing, it forces us to use less of it, and has a side effect of cleaning up our air and as long as shipping gets much more expensive, bringing more jobs back to these shores as shipping costs out weigh cheaper labor costs.

 

Originally Posted By ChurroMonster

The Pickens Plan makes sense in some ways but there are some problems with it that aren't explained.

The push for harnessing wind energy is perfectly reasonable. Our country could certainly benefit from a dramatic increase in clean energy. However, the fact that a person whose company builds wind farms is the one pushing for it raises some red flags. Instead of American money going oversees it will be lining Pickens' pockets.

I also don't buy his argument that the natural gas currently being used in power plants can be easily switched over to automobile use. He proposes that about 20% of cars could be natural gas-powered in just ten years? Maybe that's possible. But shouldn't car manufacturer's already be building these cars if it's so practical?

Pickens discounts the practicality of nuclear power saying it would take too long to get that many plants online. He's right about that but he doesn't say that building enough winds farms to provide the country with 20% of its power would take at least as long. It would take up such a huge amount of land that residents in any area proposed for such wind farms would fight like hell to not have them in their communities. Just the fight over land-aquisition and not-in-my-backyard protests could delay wind projects for decades.

I love the idea of reducing our dependence on foreign oil but this whole thing just smacks of a ploy for Pickens to become the richest man in the world.