Sweetwater, Texas was once known for hosting the world's largest rattlesnake "roundup" -- 12,000 reptiles every year. Now it calls itself "the world's wind capital" and, by the end of the year, turbines there will be pumping out 3,000 megawatts of wind to provide green power to America's electricity customers. Sweetwater is the County seat of Nolan County, which by itself would rank as the world's fourth-largest nation for wind power -- boasting more wind than the entire state of California. The rattler-friendly pastures and cotton fields around Sweetwater are dotted with General Electric, Siemens, and Toshiba turbines -- big ones, some generating 2.3 megawatts a pop.
T. Boone Pickens was first known as an oil and gas man and then as a corporate raider, but these days he is jousting to topple Sweetwater from its title. Flying with me to visit his wind operations in Sweetwater, he makes it clear that his next wind project is big, Texas-style -- 4,000 megawatts up in the Panhandle north of here. Pickens just doesn't believe that America's energy future is in oil any more. He dismisses the current calls for opening up the coast to drilling, saying that the government's official estimates of oil and gas reserves are wildly inflated -- "the geology just isn't there."
Pickens is infuriated by our continued and increasing addiction to imported oil, which he says now costs us $700 billion a year, and will soon climb to an even trillion. (He is watching the market as we fly, and as oil hits $143 a barrel, the Dow plummets. Boone notes "well, my securities are going to go down, but my commodities book will make up for most of today's loss." Pickens is long on oil, meaning he is betting that the price keeps going up.)
To put it plainly, T. Boone Pickens is out to save America.
But how can wind power, which generates electricity, help us out of our imported oil dilemma? Long-term, it will be through plug-in hybrid cars. But Pickens doesn't think we can afford to wait for the long term, so he's offering an audacious alternative vision -- generate enough wind so that America no longer needs to use natural gas to generate electricity, and then use that gas instead to power up to one-third of our vehicle fleet with compressed natural gas (CNG).
The conversion is clearly feasible. CNG cars are already normal in countries like Argentina, where they cost no more than conventional models. The barriers in the U.S. have been the resistance of the major oil companies and that we would need to install CNG pumps at service stations. But many fleets already burn the fuel, which is much cleaner, and emits about one-third less carbon than gasoline. And CNG now has another advantage: It costs about half as much as gasoline does. If we were to convert any significant part of the U.S. fleet, the resulting decline in world oil demand would actually reduce oil prices, potentially sharply. It's probably the only short-term (2-3 year) strategy that might.
How to recruit the necessary public support? This would take, it seems to me, a government mandate to get the distribution network in place. After all, the oil industry has hardly rushed to install E85 pumps for ethanol. We can expect that it will fight any effort to break its monopoly. And the auto industry would need to be more than a passive partner if we're going to get enough CNG vehicles rolling off the assembly lines to make a difference. Will it embrace this play? Lastly, the millions of Americans who own gasoline-powered trucks and SUVs would need to start buying affordable CNG-conversion kits for their vehicles to lower their driving costs. Pickens says he has a game plan, and will announce it next week.
Who knows? I certainly never expected to be inspecting wind operations with Pickens or to be hearing his scorn for the current political notion that we can somehow drill our way out of the oil-price crisis. He's certainly likely to draw an audience that a green wind-power advocate from the Sierra Club could never command. I think we should all stay tuned.
Follow Carl Pope on Twitter: www.twitter.com/CarlPope
And by the way he also shorted oil at 100 not long ago and got his ass kicked and then went long again! Since he went long, the speculation and overly high price of oil he was talking about when he was short then suddenly went away.
Pickens is about making money. His verbage will change to what makes him the most at any given point in time. He will pump you and dump you.
That said, the wind farm is a great idea. Cheapest form of energy, yet the Blue State New England area will not allow wind turbines offshore either!
Note however that the stocks of the companies making the wind turbines and nuclear are not going up ( GE is way,way down). Something's wrong with that if the switch is really on...
Regards
By using light and strong carbon fiber to replace steel we could reduce vehicle weight by as much as 60%. This would significantly boost vehicle fuel economy. For heavy trucks this would really be cost saving. And the safety issue is also a plus. Carbon fiber is many, many times stronger than steel.
Rocky Mountain Institute: http://www.rmi.org/
Recent blog posting about smarter energy grid/ distributed (local) generation:
http://green.yahoo.com/blog/amorylovins/48/re-imagining-the-electric-grid.html
Regards
Question: How many gallons of gasoline does one barrel of oil make?
One barrel (42 gallons) of crude oil, when refined, yields approximately 19.6 gallons of finished motor gasoline. The remainder of the barrel yields distillate fuel oil, residual fuel oil, jet fuel, and other products.
To give you the benefit of the doubt, maybe you meant "gallons"?
do you have a gas stove and oven?
do you like eating food?
if we don't need natural gas, we certainly need fertilizer now..., so divorcing ourselves from the middle east will be impossible
not that it would ever happen anyway.
sweet
one problem
natural gas production in north amercia
the more time goes by, the more wells we have to drill to keep production flat
natural gas in north america will start to decline soon no matter what we do
that's why we want to build so many natural gas terminals
when natural gas starts to decline, it will not be a 3% or 6% decline like oil (except Cantarell)
natural gas declines at a rate of 15% or 18% (or more) a year
when it goes, it will be very fast
also
natural gas is what we use to make fertilizer
of course, the middle east and russia will keep the green revolution going after we no longer can
without fossil fuel, the green revolution ends
with around 6.5 billion people in the world, nattural gas is way to important to burn it in cars
Here is a link to some Oildrum.com articles on unconventional gas http://www.theoildrum.com/tag/unconventional_natural_gas
In the long run, I agree that we need to downsize vehicles, reduce the number of vehicles on the road, and run vehicles on electricity. Meanwhile natural gas conversion can help the guy who bought an SUV a year ago, is upside down an his payments, and cannot afford to get a new more fuel efficient vehicle for awhile.
we need mass tranportation
trains that link big cities
and light rail inside them
we need to redesign cities around feet
to me, anything that tries to prolong the life of vehicles
can only be done at the expense of the rest of the world and our kids
it's not that we can't use natural gas to fuel cars...,
i just don't think it should be done
if we want to burn natural gas, we should use it to power light rail
it's like burning oil to power cars
when oil is in terminal decline, what do we do about plastic?
some things can't be made without plastic
cars must go
Maggots like him have far more in common with the chimpanzees in al Qeada than the Founding Fathers!
Pickens was behind the vile and un-American "Swift Boat Whores For Bush" campaing that maligned John Kerry, a Vietnam Veteran, to benefit a couple of republican cowards AWOL Bush and WAR DEFERMENTS Cheney!
The writing's on the wall...Pickens is a traitorous un-American confederate...same as he ever was!
Regards
Since the early 1970's (as in OVER 35 YEARS!) I have listened to Mother Earth News/Whole Earth Catalog types whining about how the big money boys wont invest in their eco-panaceas.
Now that one is, he's the freekin' Antichrist. Jesus wept! on occasion I feel like Rush Limbaugh whenever I confront the fact that some progressive types ARE NEVER SATISFIED by ANYTHING and ALWAYS
We're sorry that we Real Americans can not forget acts of treason like you can.
But, Y'ALL could 'git' 'yerself' on down to the ENLISTMENT CENTER and show your support for T. Boone and his toady George W. AWOL by joining your AWOL President's War to help Halliburton's and Exxon-Mobile's bottom lines!
Remember Immanuel, George W. AWOL and his boss T. Boone Confederate want Y'ALL!
This is going to happen. The job of progressives is to encourage decentralization (local and on site installations) to balance centralization (wind and solar farms).
http://nanosolar.com/
See my profile for who to get ALL our energy for about 1T$ over 10 years using Solar OR wind, and obvisouly both.
A123 batteries completely solve the battery problem.
Electronics have gotten much better.
see my profile for details and links.