Have you heard? Oilman T Boone Pickens is not only committed to planting the world's largest wind farm in the fertile soil of Texas. He is not only committed to working to stringing a meaningful electrical grid to move electricity from that wind farm to lush markets for harvesting serious profits. T Boone has a plan to save America (while making a bundle) and has committed some serious dough to convincing Americans that his plan is the path to a better future.
In something that reminds me of another Texan with charts (Ross Perot), Pickens' $58 million will go a long way, along with a cooperative media, in making sure that people hear about this.
And, as per the discussion after the fold, while there are some tremendous things among what Pickens is saying and pursuing, there are far more missing items, and there are some highly questionable elements.
Picking at Pickens
Before really turning to the plan, perhaps we should remind ourselves just who is T Boone.
Not that it matters to anyone at this site, but T Boone provided about 10% of the funding for that uneventful group the Swift Boat Veterans for Truthiness and Outright Lying. (Pickens offered $1 million to anyone who could disprove any of their lies, when John Kerry provided the material to do so, T Boone welshed on the deal.)
Take a look at T Boone's $5.45 million in donations since 1979, including that $24k headed to Democratic Party candidates (including, by the way, $3k to John Kerry's Senate races). Gilmore ... Helms ... Shadegg ... and so many others that have helped foster the travails the nation faces.
T Boone is certainly a great ally of the progressive community and progressive causes ... Not ...
Forcefully stating the problem
T Boone restates forcefully what George W Bush said in the 2006 State of the Union address about America's oil addiction. According to TBoone,
America is addicted to foreign oil.
It's an addiction that threatens our economy, our environment and our national security. It touches every part of our daily lives and ties our hands as a nation and a people.
The addiction has worsened for decades and now it's reached a point of crisis.
Here is one of the nation's leading oil men, a fossil fuel fortune-maker, laying out quite clearly that America's oil habit is centerpiece of risk for the nation in the years ahead. Is the addiction's solution to be found in Newt's Drill Here! Drill Now! Pay Less (a decade from now ... maybe)?
Not according to T Boone:
Can't we just produce more oil?
World oil production peaked in 2005. Despite growing demand and an unprecedented increase in prices, oil production has fallen over the last three years. Oil is getting more expensive to produce, harder to find and there just isn't enough of it to keep up with demand.
The simple truth is that cheap and easy oil is gone.
Maybe Newt and the Republicans should be listening to people who actually know at least something about energy?
Let us be absolutely clear: Legendary conservative oilman T. Boone Pickens says oil is a dead end!
Oil is dead, T Boone tells us (the US), what should we do?
Pickens' Plan
T Boone Pickens isn't stopping with defining a problem, he is outlining (forcefully) a proposed solution path. ThePickensPlanis a concept for reducing America's dependence on foreign oil, to carve into the $700 billion+ per year heading out of the United States to ensure top-offed McSUVs. As T Boone expresses it, "the largest transfer of wealth in human history." The PickensPlan has a mixture of extremely good and important elements, and concepts that simply don't comport with energy reality. Let's take a brief look at some of this.
Centerpiece of this effort is green power and green jobs: a drive for moving wind from roughly 1% of the US electrical supply to 22% by 2020. Construction and maintenance jobs for rural America with cleaner electricity for all Americans. Connect this wind produced in the center of the nation to major urban markets with HVDC cables (much like the European TREC concept). What would it take to do this?
Building wind facilities in the corridor that stretches from the Texas panhandle to North Dakota could produce 20% of the electricity for the United States at a cost of $1 trillion. It would take another $200 billion to build the capacity to transmit that energy to cities and towns.
That's a lot of money, but it's a one-time cost. And compared to the $700 billion we spend on foreign oil every year, it's a bargain.
A true bargain and a vision which this author can share with T Boone.
Not everything creates agreement
The next stage of the vision, however, is more troubling.
T Boone makes a direct relationship between reaching 22% wind electricity with the 22% of electricity currently produced with natural gas turbines. For T Boone, 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 for something so critical that is already under supply/demand pressure? For information about peak natural gas, see Energy and Capital, Hubbert Peak, or The Oil Drum):
"evidence supports Laherrere's position that North America is past peak production and that as little as 30% of our natural gas endowment remains to be produced. ... Much like world oil supply, the official forecast is that natural gas supply will be abundant for nearly a century. This view suffered a serious setback in 2001 when the US production peaked and again in 2003 when Canadian production peaked."
- 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.
- "Natural gas is simply too useful and expensive to squander [in transport]."
- 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. Electricity is fungible as to source while creating a vehicle fleet reliant on natural gas makes them fully dependent on natural gas just as today's cars are addicted to oil. Why not use seize that flexibility and use that wind generated electricity to directly fuel America's ever-more electrified transport sector?
- Even more importantly, where is efficiency? "Nega-gallons" can have a tremendous impact, far faster, in changing America's energy situation. (Not that we need to develop new non-fossil fuel travel options.)
Okay, T Boone, I'm ready for this conversation. I can go a long with you in defining the problem. I see the value and importance of planting turbines and harvesting the wind for decades to come. But, you've lost me when it comes to natural gas.
With all of your investment in outreach, advertisingand fancy website, something is truly impressive on first brush: the Forumlooks truly open to real conversations, supportive and critical of your ideas. Eric raises the question of your role in the Swift Boating of John Kerry (with 94 comments last that I checked). Tim Martin demonstrates how partisanship can led to denial of reality as he calls on T Boone to Quit Drinking the Kool Aid from the Liberal Media spinning many of the classic fantasies and truthiness of those caught within the first stage of denial. And, so on ... Over 875 posts, many with 10s and some with 100s of comments, as of this writing. A hat tip, Mr Pickens, for embracing the new media to such a degree that you've opened your website to such an open and strong debate.
To return to T Boone's own words
I'm T Boone Pickens. I've been an oilman all my life. But this is one emergency that we can't drill our way out of.
This is a serious problem that requires serious solutions. While not in accord with the natural gas portion of T Boone's vision, he is bringing much of value to national attention. And, I fully agree with him:
It's our crisis. And, we can solve it.
Ask yourself: Are you doing your part to ENERGIZE AMERICA?
Are you ready to do your part?
Your voice can ... and will make a difference.
So ... SPEAK UP ... NOW!!!
PS: Energize America has a panel Friday morning, 9 am, at Netroots Nation.
Please join Jerome a Paris, Devilstower, Energy Smart candidates Debbie Cook (CA-45) and Mark Begich (AK-Senate), and myself for a truth-filled (rather than truthiness) conversation about Energizing America: Setting an Agenda for Progress.