Editorial: T. Boone's Windy Energy Plan

orange county register ^ | August 7, 2008 | staff

[kellynla]

What we like most about T. Boone Pickens' grand scheme for meeting America's insatiable energy appetite and reducing the reliance on unfriendly foreign sources of oil is his willingness that all alternatives should compete. Whether it's drilling for oil offshore, or processing natural gas shale from the heartland or capturing wind that blows from who-knows-where, Mr. Pickens is all for it.

"I'm for everything that's American," as the billionaire Texas oilman put it Tuesday when he met with the Register editorial board and news reporters.

What we like least about his grand scheme is that to pursue the parts of it he personally prefers, Mr. Pickens would rely on government's heavy hand. Without government subsidies, mandates and rights-of-way acquisitions, America's switch from reliance on foreign oil to natural gas and wind-generated power won't happen fast enough to suit him.

To promote electricity production from wind sources as a replacement for natural gas, Mr. Pickens wants government to mandate wind power, provide subsidies and exercise eminent domain powers to acquire land for transmission. That, in turn, would free natural gas to replace gasoline for large transport vehicles.

Despite claiming to prefer government not interfere in market decisions, Mr. Pickens is willing to take advantage when he can benefit from government's intrusion.

The insidiousness of government intrusion in the market is that it often benefits someone. But always at someone else's expense.

[Tarpon]

Pickens pushing subsidies for his windy investments is not in keeping with my opinion of him.

We should do everything, a few pilot projects are fine, but not full production until it is proved. But first up, oil, coal and nuclear should be the focus with the oil shale taking a huge jump in investments ... DOI says there are 800 BILLION barrels of recoverable oil in the Green Hills Formation alone.

[VaBthang4]

Read it again and again until you can quote it from memory...then, teach your kids.

"Government's involvement in market matters...[is]...wrong in at least two ways.

First, from a utilitarian approach, government's involvement is inefficient and inflexible. Whereas private parties are free to innovate, react quickly to changing circumstances and pursue the mutually profitable course, government meddling renders market decisions inflexible, arbitrary and perverts profit motives with gains through subsidies and losses from regulations that are completely unrelated to the transaction.

Second, from a moral standpoint, government's involvement is wrong. It seeks to pick winners and necessarily designates losers based on capricious standards coercively imposed on the unwilling as well as on the willing."

[ken21]

i don’t know what they like it,

they give excellent reasons for disliking boone’s plan—intrusive government.

[detective]

Picken’s plan is basically good and certainly infinitely better than what the government is doing now. However, he relies too much on wind and solar. Wind generated electricity is best suited for Wyoming, Montana and those areas in the west. The problem is to get this energy to the West Coast where there is new demand will require huge investments in transmission facilities. Wind energy has an extremely low load factor which makes investment in large transmission systems uneconomic. Also wind production is greatest in the winter and at night when it does not meet the demands for air conditioning. Plus Democrats and environmentalists are opposed to building large, new transmission systems. Wind energy only works when it is used to supplement fossil fuels like oil and natural gas which can be turned on and off when there is enough wind to produce electricity. Few of the politicians or the Washington elites understand this.

[G.Mason]

Ah ... T Bone Pickens, General Electric, Congress, and windmills.

You make the dough, they'll spend it for you.

You can bet T Bone is going to get money from the the tax payers.

T Bone & GE

[ken21]

“If they don’t, Mr. Pickens said, he’ll just build his own private transmission line. “

it would make the idea more palatable for many people.

[LS]

Elsewhere on FR, someone has totally deconstructed the numbers. They are ludicrous. Besides a total cost of at least $800 BILLION for the U.S. (to produce 35% power---hypothetically), you would have to build dozens of new coal- and oil-fired plants to back up the wind grid everytime the wind stopped blowing! It would cost a TRILLION DOLLARS and you still would have to rely on oil!

Go here, and see the link in post 10:

http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/2057858/posts

[Forward the Light Brigade]

Wind can help but it is no real answer. What if the wind stops? What about all the birds the windmills will kill? I have a bone to pick with the plan because its a government plan— This makes about as much since as using sailing ships once again to ship cargo or putting sails on our cars. We must use ALL of America’s resources: Nukes, Coal, Gas, Wind, and Oil.

[MinuteGal]

T-Bone Pickin's boring monotone with its nasal twang seems to fill my radio's waves 24/7......and is beginning to nauseate me. This jerk certainly has an enormous ego to think that the lumpen masses are just dying to hear his spiel being forced on them for lo these many weeks. Will he EVER go away?

I'd rather watch and hear Billy Mays.

I finally had a gander at T-Bone on a TV ad. Why did I instantly think Jimmuh Cahter when I looked at him? 'Twas scary, very scary.

Leni

[JasonC]

Drilling and coal are the touchstones. No green wacko will ever support them. No real American will turn them down, the point being to increase supply, lower prices, and reduce dependence on foreign sources in favor of domestic ones. Pickens pretending wind can solve anything is just a typical PR-driven straddle. It can't. It is a dodge. Face the issue - the left believes exhaling is evil and must be banned, with gas at $4 and GM and Ford bankrupt.

[G.Mason]

Yeah ... right.

That's why T Bone just spent 50 million on the add he has running. He doesn't expect to make money on this deal.

Question: If it takes 20 years to recoup the cost of a wind turbine, and wind turbines have a life expectancy of 20 years am I going to use your money, or mine?

[ken21]

i’m not a physicist, but my understanding from high school physics is that the winds will not stop

because of the earth’s heating and cooling daily.

as for your major point, i agree we need a balanced approach.

i don’t like seeing wildlife killed either.

[windsorknot]

Personally, I prefer Slim Pickens energy plan: nuclear.

[ken21]

lol!

po’ lean pickins be dead then.

[shove_it]

From the article: “Without government subsidies, mandates and rights-of-way acquisitions, America’s switch from reliance on foreign oil to natural gas and wind-generated power won’t happen fast enough to suit him.”

That would be as opposed to all other sources of electrical energy including nuclear, carbon based sources and other alternative sources which require the same government involvement.

[wita]

Wind energy only works when it is used to supplement fossil fuels like oil and natural gas which can be turned on and off when there is enough wind to produce electricity.

This sentence expresses the exact opposite of what I thought was the consensus among power generation folks, which is, power generating facilities cannot be turned off and on willy nilly as the wind dictates.

[wita]

...and therefor wind is not a supplement but an addition that is not much benefit and must therefor be subsidized.

[detective]

You are right. For facilities which provide baseload power generation wind provides no benefit at all. Wind also can't be used to satify peak demand because it is unreliable and can't be depended on when when peak demend occurs. Also, the wind energy that Pickens is talking about is located far from the areas where it is needed. Wind can be used as a low value supplement to natural gas fired generation but is not the solution to our energy problems and Pickens relies on it too much in his plan.

[mc5cents]

I just emailed my Congressman and two Senators with that excerpt from the editorial and told them they should memorize it lest they meddle even more in matters that they have no business or Constitutional Authority being involved in. I know it will fall on deaf ears as all three are Liberal Democrats.

It made me feel better though.