[Vision2020] Big Oil To Big Wind: Texas Oil Man Plans Largest Wind Farm On Planet

[Ted Moffett]

Investment in solar, wind, geothermal, biomass, is hampered in the US by the
lack of a coherent long term energy policy impacting taxation, CO2
regulation, etc.  But massive investment from a billionaire oil man is
giving alternative energy a huge boost.  The plans involve constructing the
largest wind power farm in the world in Texas, while Pickens maps out
further development of massive wind and solar energy implementation across
the US.  Are the climate change denialist Al Gore haters also going to call
Pickens a hypocrite, given he admits he does not want wind turbines on his
ranch, stating "They are ugly!"?

Ted Moffett

http://www.guardian.co.uk/environment/2008/apr/14/windpower.energy

...Pickens has for many years been a major financial backer of both George
Bushes, but he professes to be frustrated by the lack of action on energy by
this administration and all its predecessors. "George Bush has done nothing.
Nothing. Every guy that ran for president clear back to Nixon said he would
make us energy independent, but not one goddamned thing has been done. Zero.
The biggest problem facing the United States in the next 50 years is energy
and nobody has come up with a solution."

Pickens, being Pickens, has come up with a solution - and it makes his own
gargantuan plans for a wind farm in the panhandle look tiny. For the benefit
of the Guardian, he draws on a white board his master scheme. He carves out
an enormous corridor of land running north to south through the middle of
the US - along the great plains - where he would build an army of wind
farms. Then he draws an equally enormous corridor running east to west from
Texas to southern California which he would similarly dedicate to solar
energy.

"You need a giant plan for America. Not the pissant 83 megawatt [windfarm]
deals being stamped all over the country. There needs to be a huge plan from
someone with leadership. It's going to take years to do, but it has to start
now." Only then, he explains, can the US stop what he regards as the madness
of a flood of money flowing out of America to the oil producers of the
Middle East. "That money is going God knows where - a few friends, a lot of
enemies. We've got to stop it."

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Now this straight-talking Southerner is launching the biggest and most
audacious project of his career. This month he will make the first down
payment on 500 wind turbines at a cost of $2m each. The order is the first
material step towards his goal of building the world's largest wind farm.

Over the next four years he intends to erect 2,700 turbines across 200,000
acres of the Texan panhandle. The scheme is five times bigger than the
world's current record-holding wind farm and when finished will supply 4,000
megawatts of electricity - enough to power about one million homes.

It's not just the breathtaking scale of the scheme that is striking, though
at a total cost of $10bn it impresses even Pickens himself: "It's pretty
mind boggling," he says. The fact that Pickens, a tycoon who made his
fortune in oil, has turned his attention to wind power is an indication of
how the tectonic plates are moving. Until recently wind was seen as marginal
and alternative; now it is being eyed by Wall Street.

"Don't get the idea that I've turned green," Pickens tells the Guardian in
the Dallas offices of his new venture Mesa Power. "My business is making
money, and I think this is going to make a lot of money."

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Vision2020 Post: Ted Moffett
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