Due to the economy and drop in oil prices it’s just not economical to develop wind farms in the Texas panhandle. The wind energy market has lost a lot of it’s luster considering it can be much more expensive than traditional energy sources such as oil and with the price per barrel of oil dropping below $70 there’s just not as much interest putting together a wind energy project.

The economics of alternative energy will be the driving force of innovation and technology. As long as the prices stay low, there won’t be much advancement in the alternative energy sector, but as oil prices increase, you will see many more technologies and innovation coming from alternative energy sources.

T. Boone Pickens has delayed his 4,000-megawatt wind farm in the Texas Panhandle because lower prices for natural gas make it uneconomical.

Since the price of natural gas has decreased under $7 per million Btu, it would be more expensive to to produce energy from wind farms. Pickens says that natural gas prices would have to be over $9 per million Btu for wind energy to be advantageous.

This is another sign of how the low oil and natural gas prices have slowed down alternative energy. With the lower prices, people have been losing interest in alternative energy technologies. Once prices rise again, there will be a renewed push for alternative energy resources where businesses can make money from alternative energy sources.

I’ve been an oil man all my life, but this is one emergency we can’t drill our way out of. But if we create a new renewable energy network, we can break our addiction to foreign oil.

Pickens want’s to replace the 22% of energy that we use natural gas in our overall energy consumption and replace it with wind power. Pickens is already planning the world’s largest wind farm in Pampa, TX. Wind energy could supply 20 percent or more of the nation’s power.

Fueling these plants with wind power would then free up the natural gas historically used to power them, and would mean that natural gas could replace foreign oil as fuel for motor vehicles, he said.

As many people know, T. Boone Pickens has made his fortune in the oil and gas industry. He still has it in his best interest to sell oil and gas. This is why he wants to take the 22% of natural gas that would be removed out of the overall energy consumption and put it into transportation fuel. This is where his plan is wrong.

We do not want to replace one non-sustainable energy source with another. If we did, we would eventually have the same problems with natural gas that we have with oil today. Even though natural gas is less expensive than gasoline or diesel now, there would be a rise in demand pushing prices higher and we would be still incur times of shortages, price spikes, and all the other forces of economics.

From the Pickens website about the plan:

According to the California Energy Commission, critical greenhouse gas emissions from natural gas are 23% lower than diesel and 30% lower than gasoline.

That’s still not good enough. With more vehicles on the road every year, we need vehicles that are emissions free.

To put his plan in place, we would have to overhaul the infrastructure at gas stations so they could supply natural gas to vehicles. At this large of an expense and time, it would be much more wise to replace the pumps with electric outlets designed for electric cars to recharge.

I admire T. Boone Pickens and what he has done throughout his life. I appreciate how he is trying to position himself as “the man” to go through for anything in regards to energy and he has invested millions of dollars into alternative energy. It’s capitalism at it’s best, and I love it. But his plan to reduce our dependency on foreign oil is not the best one, but it’s getting people to talk about the issues and I think that’s great.

What we need to do is take the best part of his plan, which is building the wind farms to produce electricity for the overall energy consumption, and restructure the natural gas plan on how to build an infrastructure to provide electricity for plug in hybrids and electric vehicles. Since wind can only produce so much energy, we would need to get this extra energy for the vehicles from other alternative sources such as solar energy.

Pickens Plan