Pickens Plan remains the best road to America's energy future
Time and time again, California has proven its leadership on environmental issues. As Congress moves toward meaningful debate on critical energy issues and inches closer to developing a national energy strategy, Californians should be wary of special interests vested in the status quo — industry, environmentalists, investors, politicians — who are already coming forward to divide and conquer America’s quest for domestic energy.
Since the earliest days of the Pickens Plan, the phrase “Everything American” has been a cornerstone. In addition to hydro, nuclear, geothermal, coal, solar and all the other potential sources of domestic energy, we put a spotlight on wind power for electricity and natural gas for transportation and power generation.Continue Reading
Wind and natural gas are natural partners. Gas generators are the most economical way for utilities to respond as electricity use goes up and down through the day, and as wind generation varies over time.
America has a rich supply of both. Accelerating their use would create millions of jobs, modernize our electric grid, and give us more options to fuel our world beyond the next 10 to 20 years.
Since we announced our plan, and 1.7 million Americans signed up for the Pickens Army, the economics of power production have changed. The worldwide financial crisis tempered demand for electricity and made financing large wind projects more difficult. New techniques are recovering trillions of cubic feet of natural gas from massive shale deposits under the continental United States, driving down its price.
But make no mistake: Renewables such as wind and solar continue to make a significant contribution to America’s energy future. Utility-scale wind projects have accounted for 35 percent of new U.S. electric generating capacity since 2007, and America continues to install some 100 wind farms a year with larger and more efficient turbines.
Wind power is already cheaper than new coal or new nuclear power. In the “wind corridor” — two states wide from Texas to the Canadian border — wind has now become cost-competitive with new natural gas generation, including tax incentives for all forms of energy production.
Wind has become so affordable that it is affecting overall electricity prices by helping hold down the cost of other fuels. Uniquely, wind offers long-term fixed prices for electricity, for up to 30 years, and uses virtually no water.
America is currently ahead of schedule to make 20 percent of all our electricity from wind by 2030, as projected under the Bush administration.
That is the electricity generation side. On the transportation side, the problem is simple: We continue to spend well more than a billion dollars a day importing oil.
You don’t have to be glued to cable news or spend all day looking at newspaper websites to understand the national security issues from depending on OPEC for huge amounts of our oil needs.
For example, Americans don’t spend much time thinking about Nigeria, but OPEC’s most populous member is now our fourth largest oil trading partner — after Canada, Mexico and Saudi Arabia. The domestic violence following Nigeria’s recent presidential election made little news here, but oil traders watched closely whether it would spread to the oil region in the south.
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T. Boone Pickens