Green Tech

T. Boone Pickens addresses members of the press in San Francisco Wednesday.

(Credit: Erik Palm/CNET)

For oilman turned wind-power enthusiast T. Boone Pickens, the future is a bit up in the air.

The "Pickens Plan" for energy independence, launched in July 2008, now has 2 million supporters signed up online. It aims to make the U.S. less dependent on foreign oil by--among other measures--replacing imported oil with wind power and natural gas (two areas in which he has business interests).

His own wind project, however, has problems finding a grid to deliver power from his newly bought wind turbines. If it comes to fruition, the project, Mesa Power, would be the world's largest wind farm, potentially able to produce 4,000 megawatts--enough to power 1.3 million homes .

His company purchased 687 wind turbines from General Electric for $2 billion that can produce 1,000 MW and will be delivered in 2011. But there aren't yet any transmission lines from his wind park to the Texas grid to deliver the electricity to the Texans.

Initially he was going to build the transmission lines himself, but now that's "questionable," he said during a stop in San Francisco Wednesday, part of a tour to promote his alternative-energy plan. A transmission line to the west or east from the Texas Panhandle, he told members of the press, is "a little bit big for us."

Beyond that, Boone has interests in the water rights on his own land and the land he currently leases for his wind project, Mesa Power. With a Texas drought, and water increasingly being seen as the "oil of the 21st century" with peaking supplies, according to some observers, he's not sure whether wind or water will be his most profitable investment. "Where I'll make the most money, I don't know. I haven't made any money yet."

Pickens' wind plans call for spending $150 billion over the next 10 years to install turbines in the "wind corridor" of the Midwest, from Texas to Canada. A transmission line there would cost an estimated $70 billion, according to a 2007 Department of Energy study. The federal government must provide corridors for the transmission lines before private companies can build them, Pickens says. He hopes he can lobby to get government support, with the help of his Pickens Plan supporters.

That plan attracted a lot of attention when oil went to almost $150 a barrel and gasoline prices roared upward in 2008 with pump prices of more than $4 per gallon. Speaking to members of the press Wednesday, he said his plan "stays intact," though the oil prices are down to about $50 a barrel and gasoline is hovering nearer $2 per gallon.

Most of his ideas are now on their way in the Obama stimulus bill, he said. But that doesn't mean he's always thrilled with the way things get done--or don't get done--in the nation's capital.

"When I was a rich guy going to Washington to try to get something done, I got in to see everybody and they were all nice, " Pickens told members of the press before giving a public presentation at the Intercontinental Mark Hopkins hotel. "But not much happened. With 2 million people behind me, I am a hell of a lot more important when I go to Washington, than I was with money."

If he doesn't get transmission lines, Pickens is considering moving the turbines outside Texas where there is access to the grid.

"I'm not going to end up having 687 wind turbines in my garage," he asserted. "They are going to be spinning somewhere."

PALO ALTO, Calif.--T. Boone Pickens offered qualified support Thursday for the Obama administration's plans to reduce the nation's reliance on imported energy but said Washington's track record doesn't fill him with a lot of confidence about the will of the political class to get the job done.

Pickens

(Credit: CNET )

"We have to get a plan going," said Pickens, who made his comments at the Global Technology Symposium at Stanford. He is the founder and chairman of BP Capital and has been promoting his own plan for energy independence since last year. The so-called Pickens Plan would exploit the country's "wind corridor" from the Canadian border to West Texas to produce 20 percent of the country's electricity.

The Texas oil man said dealing with the political class the last 40 years has left him skeptical about Washington's ability to plan in the absence of an immediate crisis. But just to drive home the point, Pickens said that his supporters planned a "virtual march" for April 1 with the roughly 2 million people who have signed up on his Web site ready to send e-mails and faxes to their elected officials.

"I do have an army now," he said. "We are going to have an energy plan and it's going to come from the grassroots. What it's going to say very clearly is that we want an energy plan...It has got to be done."

He was blunt about what he described as repeated failures of leadership dating back to the Nixon administration, when he said the government first promised to curtail the United States' reliance on imported oil.

"We spent $700 billion last year (on foreign energy imports) and we'll spend about $450 billion this year," he said.

"It's been a lack of leadership for the last 40 years," he said, describing the status quo as "a war without guns."

Call it serendipity but Pickens' comments come just as a new study predicts a sharp drop in oil supply production because of falling investment, a development that could be a harbinger of higher prices when the global economy picks up again.

Speaking about the new administration, Pickens said President Obama had shown interest in what the Texas oil man has had to say about developing alternative sources of energy. At the same time, however, he said the country's leadership needs to expand its horizons to include greater development of available natural resources--including gas and oil--in this country to augment the development of new technologies.

"It is America and there's nothing wrong with drilling," he said.

INDIAN WELLS, Calif.--Billionaire and clean-energy proponent T. Boone Pickens said that the U.S. should establish a federally funded loan program, or bank, to finance large-scale wind developments.

Pickens spoke on Wednesday at the Clean-Tech Investor Summit here where he talked about his Pickens Plan for reducing imports of foreign oil. He also offered a number of energy policy recommendations.

His plan, launched in July, calls for spending $150 billion over the next 10 years to install turbines in the "wind corridor" of the Midwest United States, from Texas to Canada. The other major plank of the plan is to convert vehicles to run on domestic natural gas.

T. Boone Pickens speaks at the Clean-Tech Investor Summit in Palm Springs, California.

(Credit: Martin LaMonica/CNET Networks)

In both areas--wind and natural gas--Boone has business interests. If completed, his Mesa Power wind project will make 4,000 megawatts of electricity, which would make it one of the largest wind farms, capable of powering 1.3 million homes.

Boone has made a down payment on $2 billion worth of General Electric wind turbines, which are set for delivery in 2011. The credit crisis, however, has disrupted the financing for the project, although Boone still thinks the project will get done.

"There's no money to finance it, but I think it's all going to happen. I'm an optimistic entrepreneur type," he said.

To help wind developers and achieve the Pickens Plan target of 20 percent of electricity from wind, Boone said that the U.S. government should establish a "wind bank" that would give wind developers loans.

A wind bank would be a "fraction" of the projected $825 million in federal spending on a stimulus package, he said. It would also be cheaper than continuing to spend money on foreign oil, he argued.

Pickens says he is not opposed to other clean energy technologies, like battery-powered cars. But heavy-duty vehicles can't run on batteries effectively. One diesel garbage truck emits as much pollution as 350 cars.

To overcome that, he proposes an investment of $28 billion to purchase 350,000 heavy trucks that run on natural gas. The fueling infrastructure will follow once those trucks are on the road and corporations start to replace their fleets.

"You cannot get to the conclusion that we can reduce foreign oil in a significant way without using natural gas," he said.

The oil tycoon and life-long Republican has advised a number of politicians on how to cut oil imports. He has also spent $58 million on a public awareness campaign, which he says is successful because the media and politicians now regularly talk about energy.

Back story on the Pickens Plan
In a briefing with reporters, Pickens offered some color on how he decided to launch the plan.

He met with former President Bush in April 2008 to urge him to adopt the core ideas of the Pickens Plan and establish an "energy legacy."

Bush's response, according to Boone, was that he wouldn't have enough time to meet the goals. Six weeks later, Boone had still gotten no response from the Bush administration.

One night at two o'clock in the morning, he woke his wife up and told her: "Somebody's got to do this." Shortly after, he began work on the public awareness campaign.

"I said, 'Hell, it's up to me.' I honestly felt it was the patriotic thing to do. I'm 80, I got the money to do it, so let's just go ahead and do it," he explained.

He said if current trends continue, the U.S. will be importing 75 percent of its oil in 2019--more than today--and be paying high prices--in the $200 to $300 range--because of the supply cannot keep up with the demand.

In doing focus groups in conjunction with launching the Pickens Plan, the billionaire found that many Americans don't believe what politicians say about energy. But he said he doesn't fault them. "They're not lying. They really don't understand energy," he said.

Pickens met with Barack Obama during the campaign and has met with his transition team twice. He says it's clear that the administration is committed to green technology.

"(Obama) is a charismatic guy. I think he can pull it off and it will bring everybody together," he said.

Billionaire oilman T. Boone Pickens, who launched a high-profile campaign to reduce oil imports to the U.S., is being forced to delay a huge planned wind-farm project, according to published reports.

Over the past two days, Boone spoke at events where he said that the wind project is having trouble getting financing because of the credit crunch.

Investor T. Boone Pickens

(Credit: Pickens Plan)

He was also quoted saying that falling prices of natural gas, used in power plants, are making his wind project less economical.

Boone in July launched a public campaign, said to be funded with $57 million of Boone's money, to wean the U.S. off oil imports through a massive investment in wind energy and conversion to natural gas for vehicles.

Earlier this year, he also founded Mesa Power to oversee what would be the world's largest wind farm in Texas, able to make 4,000 megawatts of electricity, or enough to power 1.3 million homes.

Speaking at a Forbes Energy Conference on Wednesday, Boone said he has had to delay financing the project. But he characterized it as a temporary setback.

"When we were looking at the project, we felt like we could do it with 30 percent equity and 70 percent debt," The New York Times quoted Pickens saying on Wednesday. "The 70 percent debt is where we're having a little slowdown."

Mesa Power has already placed orders for the first phase of the Pampa Wind Project, 667 wind turbines from General Electric capable of generating 1,000 megawatts of electricity, enough to power more than 300,000 average U.S. households.

"The capital markets are problematic for everyone and...may lead us to scale back a bit," Jay Rosser, a spokesman for Mesa, told CNN in a statement. "But we are still going forward with our wind business."

The first phase of the project, projected to cost $2 billion, was supposed to come online in early 2011.

Oil mogul and corporate raider T. Boone Pickens launched an energy plan and social-networking campaign on Tuesday that calls for replacing Middle Eastern oil with Midwestern wind.

The so-called Pickens Plan would exploit the country's "wind corridor" from the Canadian border to West Texas to produce 20 percent of the country's electricity.

Transmission lines would be built to transport the power to places in the U.S. where the demand is. The natural gas, now used to fuel power plants, would instead be used as a transportation fuel, which burns cleaner than gasoline and is domestic.

He proposed that the private sector finance the investment, which would result in a one-third reduction, equal to $230 billion, in the U.S.' yearly payments to foreign countries.

Pickens has already invested heavily in wind, notably a planned 4,000-megawatt wind farm in his native Texas.

In his public statement, he said that any large-scale conversion off of oil would need a dramatic change in policy.

"I am calling on the next President and Congress to take immediate action in the first 100 days of the new Administration to do whatever is necessary to make this plan a reality. We are asking the American public to get behind this plan and to help us reduce our dangerous dependency on foreign oil. This has to be the number one priority in the country starting today and that's what this campaign is all about. I am also calling for a monthly report on the reduction in foreign oil imports and a monthly report on progress in the development of natural gas vehicles in this country.

In the video accompanying the PickensPlan.com Web site, Pickens said that getting 20 percent of the U.S.' electricity from wind and diverting natural gas to transportation could be done in 10 years "if there is the right leadership."

On the face of it, the Pickens Plan is not at all radical.

The U.S. Department of Energy earlier this year said that the U.S. could get 20 percent of its electricity from wind in roughly the same time period and has called for the creation of a transmission network to the coasts.

But the conversion of a famed and politically conservative oil prospector to a proponent of wind power will no doubt be eye-opening to people who still associate renewable energy with fringe environmentalists.

He's also adding some social-networking savvy. The Pickens Plan site has a way for groups and individuals to join the group or to carry the Pickens Plan badge on their site.

And to further solidify his social-networking cred, Pickens has a Facebook page for his plan.