GOOD ODDS ON BIG WIND—T. BOONE

T. Boone Pickens likes odds for his energy plan
Tom Fowler, January 6, 2009 (Houston Chronicle)

“Every president since Richard Nixon has pledged to move the country toward energy independence, and they’ve all failed, oilman and investor T. Boone Pickens told a crowd at Rice University…“But we have a better chance now with President-elect Obama than we would have with McCain…”

“…Obama also seems to be favoring energy sources that Pickens has made central to his own campaign to reduce U.S. oil dependence — wind power and natural gas…Pickens’ talk at Rice was his part of the road show for “The Pickens Plan,” a campaign he launched last August to get the country to cut its foreign oil dependence by one-third.

The plan, which he has spent $50 million to promote, calls for meeting more than 20 percent of the country’s electric needs through wind power and redirecting the nation’s abundant natural gas reserves away from power generation and into fueling cars and truck.

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“This would require spending about $1 trillion on building thousands of wind power turbines from the Texas Panhandle to North Dakota and another $200 billion to run transmission lines to major cities. Billions more would be spent helping owners of large vehicle fleets buy natural gas-fueled vehicles.

“Pickens has much to gain from his proposal. He’s planning a huge wind farm in North Texas and has large holdings in natural gas as well as investments in firms that convert large vehicles to run on the fuel. But at 80 years old, he says it’s not just about the money…

“New York Times columnist Thomas Friedman has called him a cross between J.R. Ewing of Dallas and Sierra Club head Carl Pope…But there’s no shortage of critics of the plan…”