T. BOONE PICKENS: Energy Plan

I'm not opposed to "big wind" power generation in theory but I don't like that he's not talking about the impact on the cost of electricity. He's talking about power generation from a "fraction of use" standpoint and using one chunk to reduce another chunk's impact, but he's not really talking about the relative costs of using that big swath of the country to generate enough electicity to have that impact, and that's where the real money in this deal is. Everyone's going to want to buy that land, so he's basically talking about the largest real estate deal in history, here -- at least partially subsidized by the federal government.

It's just like cell phone towers: people who have old buildings and real estate where the telecom companies wanted to hang cell towers reaped a windfall, (pun intended) and everyone else...so this really sounds like T. Boone Pickens' plan to buy some prime real estate with the American taxpayer footing the bill.

Also, from what I understand "small wind" is a technology that for most people takes about a decade to recoup their investment even in areas of the country very favorable to windpower generation.

In other words I'm very skeptical. Doesn't mean I couldn't be convinced if there were more detail involved in what he's trying to sell.

I think he does his argument a big disservice by the way he kind of sweeps nuclear power off the table right at the beginning. "Let's not talk about that for the purposes of this analysis..."

Once again, he also doesn't mention fusion power....shhhhhhhhhhhhh! Nobody's supposed to talk about the fact that the ITER is going to be built in Cadarache France....and will achieve first plasma in 2016....at 400MW......

...using 0.5 GRAMS of deuterium/tritium as its fuel.....

What if we took the billions in subsidies this windpower thing he's talking about and really say: "Hmmm. Let's take 10% of that and really start funding fusion power generation...." But I'm sure T. Boone Pickens knows that if fusion power works, you're not going to need a whole huge 1/3rd of the United States to generate power with, so there's no big real estate deals involved there, and then....

With an argument that takes nuclear off the table because "it'll take too long to get up and going" and then in the next set of pie charts he shows that it already accounts for 20% of the power generation in this country...

...while windpower accounts for....

...a lot less than that...

...and will require construction...

...across a third of the United States...

Since he's now "following me on Twitter" -- that some of the criticisms I've raised here are about par for the course in the blogosphere and on the internet, and in fact are pretty mild criticisms in today's political climate.

And so a part of what I'm writing here today is to let him know that things like this are going to be a hard sell.

My Dad's a guy who T. Boone Pickens would probably like a lot just from a personality perspective, and here are an excerpt of his comments after viewing the video, given to me just now through IM:

David says:
Well it's a good idea
David says:
I'm in favor of getting us off arab oil
David says:
and mexican oil too
David says:
I think we should drill and wind is ok if it does what he says it will
David says:
I have to go and eat before mom gets too angry

That last part has nothing to do with Pickens' energy plan, but it does say a lot about the way a lot of households in America live from day to day. :)

So in a nutshell, you have the young smarta** "critical think/New America" reaction and my father's view, which is probably ultimately more workable and less nrrrrrrvous, and maybe even closer to reality. Maybe Mr. Pickens should refine his case a little to appeal to each group a little more. I think we'd both like to see a little more of a detailed prospectus, personally.

Speaking for myself, the three greatest problems I have when it comes to the way the economic hardship in America has broken down recently, are these:

1) The high price of gasoline and diesel fuel have made it prohibitively costly for me to do the kinds of things I need to do for my small business: things like driving to a bulk mail center to drop off work, or filling my car with gas to take a prospective client to lunch.

2) The high price of electricity where I live in the country (Massachusetts) has made it increasingly difficult for me to do simple things like keep the lights on and run my machines simultaneously.

3) The high price of healthcare (and insurance is mandatory in Massachusetts) has made me have to raise my prices, not lower them, just to do #1 and #2, which is pushing me out of the market competitively speaking.

If we're going to do something to really help America, and wind power might be one of them, let's make sure that whatever we do it has a direct impact on #1 and #2, and in a positive direction.

America needs *more* power, not less, at less expense and with less environmental impact. That's the part of the Pickens plan that I like. But it has to be a realistic idea that will help people everywhere in the country, not just in the states where the windpower will be generated. If T. Boone Pickens can convince me that he can lower the cost of my electricity in Massachusetts with his plan, and at the same time make my workaday expenses lower, I'll be behind it 110%, even if it means some government subsidy. I don't care about that. What I care about are the people where I work and live, who are frankly getting raped by the State of Massachusetts (read: National Grid, which is really British Grid) and who have nothing they can do except suffer. It's about time someone cut through the BS and brought that to an end, I can tell you.

So Mr. Pickens: Develop this a little more taking into consideration some of the criticisms I've leveled today. That's what needs to be done. We need to stop paying the Arabs so that we can drive to the grocery store to buy food at rising prices and go out of business anyway because our electricity prices are so high. That's called the End of America. Let's not let it happen.

He didn't sweep nukes off the table because they're insignificant. As a practical matter, we're flat-footed right now; new nukes are too far off in the future, and trying to consider them in this analysis only muddies the point he's trying to make.

One thing that's unanswered is the all-in cost per kWh for wind, and can it survive on its own without a big tax credit from Uncle Sam.

The fundamental concept of replacing natural gas with wind for power is intriguing. I saw a Matt Simmons talk not long ago where the point was made that we are near the point that our imports exactly equal our transportation energy consumption. In other words, with any disruption in foreign supply would immediately curtail domestic transportation. That's a terrible position to be in.

Natural gas compares favorably with gasoline as a transportation fuel. Even with current prices around $13/mmbtu (which have roughly doubled in a year), natural gas does the work of a barrel of oil for less than $80. And we have proven our ability to ramp up deliverability, with production growing at a 9% annual rate over the last year & a half. We have nat gas resources waiting to be exploited in shale basins across the country, and some 40 tcf of the stuff (2 years domestic consumption if everything else were shut in) sitting waiting on a pipeline in Alaska.

Recent RedState post on the subject:

Update: T. Boone Pickens is writing more about his plan in the Wall Street Journal today:

My Plan to Escape the Grip of Foreign Oil

I think the plan has a lot of merit, and I'll say this for it:

Natural gas is the only domestic energy of size that can be used to replace oil used for transportation, and it is abundant in the U.S. It is cheap and it is clean. With eight million natural-gas-powered vehicles on the road world-wide, the technology already exists to rapidly build out fleets of trucks, buses and even cars using natural gas as a fuel. Of these eight million vehicles, the U.S. has a paltry 150,000 right now. We can and should do so much more to build our fleet of natural-gas-powered vehicles.

I run a small business that depends on the use of a small truck, a 14-foot box truck that is currently powered by a turbodiesel engine. In fact, you can see pictures of us replacing the old engine after it seized in my Flickr set, here. [We're "can-do" people, Mr. Pickens.] We'd like to have more than one truck, and if our business expands we will have to buy another, but here's the rub:

It's expensive to run. It's expensive to fill it up, and that expense is making a serious impact on my bottom line. And we know where the money is going. If part of America's energy independence plan involved a shift to the use of more natural gas in fleet and utility vehicles like the one I use to deliver my products, I wouldn't be opposed to it.

We need companies to committ to this, I wonder if WWEI Welwind Energy will be one? They have land leases in China and Canada already....also PWR and TRN will be players.