The Pickens Plan

After we Pump the 500 years of Oil out West, after we Drill ANWAR, Florida, etc.....then we can Talk Wind.

This is dumb....Wind Power is fine, you just can't FILL UP with it and Drive off.

I loved the article by Picken's, and I think he offers a viable solution. 

His theory is that Natural Gas can be a good bridge for our oil problem until we develop other technologies, such as Hydrogen.  I think he's right on the money.  What he wants to do is create another viable source for power plants to generate electricity using wind, and use natural gas as transportation fuel instead of it currently being used in electric power plants.  He's putting his money where his mouth is, and has invested a lot of money in his project.

We could easily use natural gas as an alternative for gasoline.  Many vehicles already use it, and converting cars is not too difficult.  A lot of municipal vehicles have been converted because of the enormous fue savings.  The best part is, the overwhelming majority of natural gas comes from the U.S., so we wouldn't be at OPEC's mercy.

Natural Gas could cure our addiction to oil.  It also burns MUCH cleaner than gasoline or diesel.  It's also less than half the price of gasoline.  Honda currently builds a Civic that runs on Natural Gas, and they can't build them fast enough.  You can refill it at home, and in some states, natural gas currently costs only 63 cents a gallon.

I really believe the U.S. should encourage the use of natural gas as much as possible.  It's a much better solution than Ethanol, which is more of a subsidy scam than anything.

One other thing we should demand, the government should lead the way.

All they have to do is pass a law requiring everything but emergancy vehicles have to use an alternative fuels, and you'll increase the demand for alternative fuels.  I would also include a governor to limit the speeds to the local max speed limit.  I'm tired of seeing state vehicles cruising on by me at 75-80MPH.

Actually, this discussion is the main reason electric cars could be so powerful.  Electricity splits the production of the energy and the storage.  (Actually hydrogen has this ability as well.. but the storage issues make it less desirable.  Not that electric doesn't already.)

The point isn't that electric cars will immediately cut back on emissions immediately, but that they give us the flexibility to cut back later as we swap out the large scale energy production plants from fossil fuels to cleaner technologies like solar, wind, geothermal and nuclear.  Plus much of the infrastructure is already there (power lines).  Then the next step would be adding charging capabilities to current gas stations and reducing the charging time.

So, whichever combination of technologies we start using to generate pwer in the future, we won't need to keep recreating our transportation infrastructure.

If we want to go from now to the future of energy independence using renewal energy, getting there (the middle) involves infrastructure.  And while I think it's great that Tito is an optimist when it comes to his belief that much of the infrastructure is already there, in fact the viability of what is there is extremely fragile and prone to failure.  Renewable energy coming from wind generators needs to be safely and securely transported from rural...forget rural - uninhabited, sometimes uninhabitable areas - to urban areas where the power is needed.  The infrastructure challenge is a big one for two reasons:

1. Existing power line infrastructure is already being stressed, and the homeland security issues are potentially huge.  Think of the blackouts we experienced in the recent past, both here in my state of California and in the Northeast and Midwest. 
2. In order to build new power lines, the permitting process must be expedited in the area of environmental impact studies which can take up to 10 years to complete, and the NIMBY resistance to large and powerful transmission lines crossing public and private land must be dealt with. 

The NIMBY issue is a big one.  I live in a state that can now claim Fire as a form of weather.  Part of this is due to the idiot environmentalists who refuse to allow controlled burns which might prevent the horrific CO2 emissions resulting from thousands of square miles burning simultaneously as they have been for the past several weeks, for example.  These are people who really leave out the middle and then wail about Global Warming without taking any responsibility whatsoever for their part in contributing to it unnecessarily.  This is gross incompetence coupled with extreme ideology unconstrained by any legislative, judicial or electoral common sense.  I left out the Executive leadership because for all practical purposes we have none in the form of Arnold Schwarzenegger, with the exception of the exemplary leadership he's shown in promoting The People's Republic of California. 

But back to the NIMBY issue, approximately 20-25% of California brush fires start from sparks resulting from downed power lines on untended land.  And there do appear to be some potential health and safety issues associated with generating huge amounts of electricity next to human and animal habitation.  This is from a Wiki on electric power transmission:

Some research has found that exposure to elevated levels of ELF magnetic fields such as those originating from electric power transmission lines may be implicated in a number of adverse health effects. These include, but are not limited to, childhood leukemia, Alzheimer's, adult leukemia, breast cancer, neurodegenerative diseases (such as amyotrophic lateral sclerosis), Miscarriage, and clinical depression. Although there seems to be a small statistical correlation between various diseases and living near power lines, any physical mechanism is not clear. One proposed mechanism is that the electric fields around power lines attract aerosol pollutants.

One possible response to the potential dangers of overhead power lines is to place them underground. According to the British Stakeholder Advisory Group on ELF EMFs, the cost of burying cables at transmission voltages is around GBP 10M/km, compared to GBP 0.5-1M/km for overhead lines.

Underground cables eliminate the electric field and reduce the width over which the magnetic field is elevated.

I think it's a great plan, very visionary, and I'm delighted to see someone with credibility, power and capital pursuing it.  At the same time, I don't believe this is a panacea.  I believe that, as Kudlow recommends, we should manage a complete portfolio of energy options and develop all of them to suit specific purposes.  In the case of renewables, I think we really need to do the following:

1. Repair and buff up our failing power infrastructure
2. Protect it from sabotage from terrorists and plain old incompetence (the latter usually constitutes a greater danger than global terror)
3. Look at the costs, benefits and ROI of underground transmission lines (this is one of the very few areas where I'd be in favor of Eminent Domain)
4. Provide tax incentives for private home owners to install solar panels that feed the hungry power grid
5. Develop associated technology for transportation and more efficient HVAC systems
6. Partner with the environmentalists and property owners to bring them to the table if possible - and if not, use every legal means at our disposal to circumvent their protests, resistance and rejection of permits and right of way access once the methods of moving the power have been proven safe in terms of low ELF

Historically, the reason the central U.S. hasn't been used as a large wind power production center is that the remote areas where the wind blows aren't connected to transmission lines.  This, interestingly, is partly a regulation problem and partly a $/risk problem. 

One of the main things that has held renewables back is that they can only be built in specific places (eg, where the wind blows, the river runs etc) while you can plunk a gas or coal fired plant down just about anywhere.

Building large lines like that is extremely difficult because of all the government regulation (largely at the local level) in the way.  Think land use and NIMBY ("not in my back yard").  There's also the problem that no individual developer wants to shoulder the entire cost of building the infrastructure themselves.  It's an insane amount of risk.

I'm curious to see what Pickens' solutions to this one is.

Building wind facilities in the corridor that stretches from the Texas panhandle to North Dakota could produce 20% of the electricity for the United States at a cost of $1 trillion. It would take another $200 billion to build the capacity to transmit that energy to cities and towns.

That's a lot of money, but it's a one-time cost. And compared to the $700 billion we spend on foreign oil every year, it's a bargain.

 Building the transmission lines and wind turbines might be a one-time cost, but there's also replacement and maintenance costs.

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