Pickens’ energy plan

Published: July 15 2008 09:25

T Boone Pickens is not your average tree-hugger. But the oil veteran and corporate raider is apparently worried about America’s addiction to foreign crude. In a blaze of publicity, he has launched a plan to cut the country’s fuel bill. In a nutshell, it involves building enough windmills to displace the 20 per cent of US electricity generation capacity currently fired by gas. This gas could then fuel cars instead, reducing US petrol consumption by 4m barrels per day, or a third of oil imports.
It would be easy to dismiss this as self-serving – Mr Pickens is, after all, currently building the world’s largest wind farm. The bigger bug-bear, however, is practicality. GSW Strategy Group, a US energy consultancy, points out that realising Mr Pickens’ vision would mean increasing the size of the US wind energy fleet 18-fold within 10 years – while also converting almost half the vehicle fleet to run on gas and refitting thousands of service stations.
Even if all this were feasible, would it be desirable? Natural gas power plants are both flexible and reliable. Wind is not. In addition, America’s “wind corridor” runs down the middle of the country, far from most demand-centres, so huge investment to extend the already overstretched national grid would be needed. Abandoning existing gas plants, and walking away from billions of dollars of sunk capital, would risk compromising the reliability of electricity supplies.
It makes more sense to use existing gas-fired plants to help power electric cars, supplemented with wind and other non-fossil fuel technologies, such as nuclear. Even if the details are wanting, however, Mr Pickens’ campaign is important. US energy policy is a mess and the presidential candidates have yet to focus enough attention on the issue. Politics, like nature, should abhor a vacuum. If the oil veteran can start the debate with his plan, it will have served a useful purpose.