T. Boone Pickens’ Bold Plan

Ex-oilman T. Boone Pickens has a bold plan to reduce America's foreign oil imports by one-third in ten years. Pickens is determined to make the plan a campaign and the major part of the next President's first 100 day agenda. The plan is simple and bold enough to succeed – if we are and our political leaders are bold enough to implement it or something reasonably like it.

The elevator speech from the newly launched (ning-based) social website www.pickensplan.com is this:

"America is blessed with the world's greatest wind power corridor and abundant reserves of clean natural gas. The Pickens Plan will utilize these tremendous resources to build a bridge to the future — a blueprint to reduce foreign oil dependence by harnessing domestic energy alternatives and buying time for us to develop even greater new technologies.

"The Plan calls for building new wind generation facilities that will produce 20% of our nation's electricity and allow us to use natural gas as a transportation fuel. The combination of these domestic energies can replace more than one-third of our foreign oil imports. And we can do it all in 10 years".

Right now we use natural gas to generate electricity – especially at peak times. If most of this natural gas can be displaced by wind-power as an electricity source, it can then be used as fuel for cars and trucks displacing diesel fuel and gasoline made from imported oil. There are seven million natural gas vehicles on the road today worldwide(According to NGVAmerica); and the switchover from gasoline to natural gas would be much easier and cheaper for the auto industry than a switch to electric vehicles (which I believe will happen eventually). There are already some natural gas fueling stations in operation including one in Burlington, VT (see map for a station near you); but obviously there's have to be a massive conversion of existing gas stations.

If the wind doesn't blow on a particular day, we would presumably continue to use some of the existing natural gas facilities to generate replacement power.

Pickens estimates the capital cost of his plan to build windmills from North Dakota to Texas (America's wind corridor) at about a trillion dollars plus another $200 billion or so to upgrade the transmission grid to take the electricity from the wind corridor to the rest of the country. Big numbers but not compared to the $700 billion dollars worth of oil and oil products we import annually. 97% of the natural gas we use today is from North America and Pickens isn't proposing that we use more NG, just that we use it differently. Great for both the economy and national security.

If reducing CO2 is your thing, this plan is for you. Remember, the plan is to burn only the amount of NG being burned today (and it is relatively low carbon and clean enough to burn indoors without a chimney). But we stop importing and burning a third of the oil we burn today. So the savings in emissions is everything that would have come out of the tailpipes of these cars before they were burning NG. BTW, the land under a windmill CAN continue to grow food crops.

There is a slight contradiction in the final paragraphs of Pickens' op-ed in today's Wall Street Journal:

"…This plan dramatically reduces our dependence on foreign oil and lowers the cost of transportation. It invests in the heartland, creating thousands of new jobs. It substantially reduces America's carbon footprint and uses existing, proven technology. It will be accomplished solely through private investment [emphasis added] with no new consumer or corporate taxes or government regulation. It will build a bridge to the future, giving us the time to develop new technologies.

"The future begins as soon as Congress and the president act. The government must mandate the formation of wind and solar transmission corridors, and renew the subsidies [emphasis added] for economic and alternative energy development in areas where the wind and sun are abundant."

There is no question, though, that government will have to mandate the establishment of energy corridors AND assure that they are not blocked by NIMBY or an unwillingness to make environmental tradeoffs. And, since we're not about to repeal the subsidies and tax breaks for other forms of energy, we probably do need to subsidize the wind (hopefully only for a while).

If you support this plan or something like it, you can sign up as a supporter. I did.

 

Comments

[JEFFT]

We have a two-fold plan to end U.S. dependence on fossil fuels.This plan consists of a dual system: The Interim System, and The Permanent System. The Interim System will keep the country running at an estimated .99-$1.30 in fuel costs. This initial step will yield gasoline and diesel fuels for any residual use during the interim. The Permanent System will consist of a new motor which will enable the country to realize a 90% drop in fuel cost, while generating the same amount of power. For example, once this system is in place, a family of four will be able to travel from New York City to Los Angeles,California for approximately 15%. This plan will utilize 100% American resources. The concept fundamental to the plan totally excludes the use of batteries, solar and wind power, as well as geo-thermal sources. There will therefore be no depletion of corn crops; nor will hydrogen be employed. The central idea to this System is completely new and uniquely fitted to our current situation.

[Mo Ahmed]

Why not update Pickens & Obama’s plans?

The goal is to use the wind electricity to displace natural gas electricity to free up that natural gas for displacing petroleum currently used for transport. What’s the problem here? On first brush, multiple items jump out:

Natural gas is already a tight resource, already “peaked” like oil, which we could well likely have supply problems in the years ahead. Should we create / foster a new demand?

Natural gas and wind power are, in fact, complementary electricity sources at this time. Unless there is a major storage system (such as hydro storage), wind’s challenge is its intermittentcy, that the wind isn’t always blowing. Natural gas turbines can be turned on / off quickly to work as a partner with wind to support electrical demand.

This plan seems to ignore one of the most fruitful paths to cut into America’s oil addiction: plug-in hybrid electric vehicles and moving transport to electricity. Why not use that wind generated electricity to directly fuel America’s ever-more electrified transport sector?

Think of new jobs from the energy equivalent of Apollo Project in 21st Century.
The Apollo objective of safely landing a man on the moon was accomplished in 8 years (President Kennedy’s announcement on May 25 1961 to Neil Armstrong’s setting foot on the moon July 20, 1969). For eight years the Apollo Program required 500,000 workers directly and another 2.5 million in support jobs. The Untied States spent 6% of its yearly national budget to accomplish the moon program. As a result the United States is the uncontested technological leader of the world in a technology revolution that we are still witnessing.
— Posted by Mo Ahmed

[mmagic]

Flaw in the plan---
1) Wind is weakest at dusk and dawn when demand is greatest.
2) Wind farms are already going up in Ia and Nebraska as fast as they can manufacture the components... without government sticking their nose in.
3) T. Boon just wants eminent domain for his own wind farm so he doesn't have to pay ranchers annual lease fees!
4) Wind will do more to augment Coal and Nuclear stationary plant demands than NG.

The concept is not a total solution but rather one leg of a sound energy program.

[scotty]

There is a public Forum for discussions about Pickens plan :
www.pickensenergyplan.com
Cheers.

[peter]

I like this Pickens guy, reminds me of Ross Perot. But only better. Im an not sure how I feel about his plan yet though? If anyone wants to know more you can go to Pickens website. http://www.tboonpickens.com