Winds of change: Oilman Pickens presses for energy shift
WASHINGTON (AFP) — Former oilman T. Boone Pickens is singing a new tune these days: the answer to the US energy crisis, he says, is blowin' in the wind.
The longtime Texas oil tycoon this week unveiled his "Pickens Plan" that calls for reducing American dependence on oil and boosting wind energy to provide 20 percent of US electricity needs.
Pickens launched a multimedia advertising and Internet campaign to focus attention on this crisis, along with a Facebook social networking site to help generate momentum.
He is urging Congress and a new president to promote investment in power generation from renewable resources such as wind and to use natural gas as a transportation fuel, replacing more than one-third of America's imported oil. This would save more than 230 billion dollars a year, he argues.
"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," said Pickens.
"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."
Pickens has already put his own money into wind. The former owner of independent oil giant Mesa Petroleum has launched a Texas project that is believed to be the world's largest wind farm.
But he is pressing to make wind and other renewable energy sources a larger part of the energy picture, saying oil cannot be relied upon.
"My plan addresses the rapidly expanding imbalance between decreasing supply and increasing demand for oil from fast growing countries around the world like China and India," Pickens said.
"Today, the US imports a quarter of the world's oil production with just four percent of the world's population and just three percent of the world's reserves. This is not sustainable, certainly not at today's prices."
Pickens cited a Department of Energy report concluding that 20 percent of the US electricity supply can be generated from wind turbines in the nation's "wind corridor" -- a vast stretch from West Texas to the Canadian border.
The Texas billionaire's efforts have earned him wide praise from environmentalists, including Sierra Club executive director Carl Pope.
"He's certainly likely to draw an audience that a green wind-power advocate from the Sierra Club could never command," said Pope.
Not surprisingly, the industry-backed American Wind Energy Association welcomed the Pickens campaign while calling on Congress to extend the existing tax incentive for wind generation.
"Wind power has become a key option for our country," said AWEA executive director Randall Swisher.
"In order to make this happen, however, the US government will need to play its part and enact short- and long-term policies to transform many of our current practices.
"Of critical, and immediate importance, is an extension of the federal production tax credit, so that the industry can move ahead with planned investments and keep people at work."
While the plan to use more wind energy drew praise, Pickens' idea of converting large numbers of cars to compressed natural gas got a more lukewarm reception.
"Why would we go to the trouble of switching our vehicle fleet from running on one expensive fossil fuel to another expensive fossil fuel? Any freed up natural gas should be used to displace coal," Joseph Romm, a senior fellow at the Center for American Progress, wrote on the environmental website Grist.
