World's largest wind farm scrapped in financial downturn

The Texas oil billionaire T Boone Pickens has scrapped a $10 billion (£6.3billion) plan to build the world's largest wind farm.

By Tom Leonard in New York Published: 12:21AM BST 09 Jul 2009
Mr Pickens, 81, said the project, which he had backed with a $58 million marketing campaign, was scotched partly by falling gas prices and also because of the lack of adequate transmission lines to carry the electricity from remote locations to cities.
His plans were also damaged by the financial meltdown, which has hit investment in the renewable energy industry.

The farm was to be built in the Texas panhandle, on 200,000 acres of agricultural land several hundred miles northwest of Dallas.
Mr Pickens said he hoped instead to spend $2 billion on a string of smaller wind farms elsewhere, using up some of the 687 giant wind turbines he has already ordered from General Electric.
The giant wind farm was intended to harbour the power generated by 2,700 turbines to provide sufficient electricity for a million homes.
Mr Pickens, who has become a passionate advocate for the US ending its reliance on foreign oil, had originally said he would build his own transmission lines but has admitted "it was a little more complicated than we thought".
Wind power is seen as the great hope for American renewable energy but investment in the costly turbines and towers has been hit by the credit squeeze.
Emerging Energy Research, a consultancy, predicted installation of new wind power to fall by nearly 25 per cent this year compared with last year.
President Barack Obama included renewable energy in his stimulus package but two important provisions to boost investment have yet to be introduced.