Pickens: My Energy Plan Is The "Only Plan"

[sweeps]

If you've been watching television lately, chances are you've seen a white-haired Texas oil man promising he can save America from foreign oil by using wind power, solar energy and domestic natural gas. He's T. Boone Pickens, and he's playing the role of pioneer and provocateur, in a massive national campaign warning of an energy crisis as dire as the current financial one.

Pickens: My Energy Plan is the "Only Plan" (60 Minutes Interview)

[CoreAssets]

I'm not really familiar with the details, but simply like the idea that he is taking his own initiative (and money) to do something at the grassroots level.

[GrimJack]

The only money Pickens is investing goes to his advertising - he expects billions in handouts. He has had to put it on hold once the price of oil dropped precipitously.

The Pickens Plan, however, is based on the utterly impractical idea that "Harnessing the power of wind to generate electricity will give us the flexibility to shift natural gas away from electricity generation and put it to use as a transportation fuel."

Uhh, never gonna happen, T. Boone. Never. The most obvious reason is the gross inefficiency of the entire plan.

Right now, "We currently use natural gas to produce 22% of our electricity." Most of that electricity comes from gas burned in combined cycle gas turbines at an overall efficiency of up to 60%. Why in the world would the federal government — or anyone else — spend billions and billion of dollars on natural gas fueling stations and natural gas vehicles in order to burn the gas with an efficiency of 15% to 20%? Natural gas is simply too useful and expensive to squander in such a fashion.

There are even more nay-sayers - many because of his 'swift-boating' ties but quite a few because of his hedge-fund ties.