Does anyone really believe Pickens sudden plea for the US to go to alternative fuels? That Pickens is all of a sudden an altruistic environMENTALIST? I admire Mr. Pickens’ capitalist acumen, just not at the expense of the taxpayer.

From Eagle Forum:

NOTE: At our recent Eagle Council meeting in Washington, one of our Texas Eagles delivered one of the best presentations on the current energy situation that I have heard. You will want to read every word!

By Pat Carlson

T. Boone Pickens has said “A fool with a plan is better than a genius with no plan, and we look like fools without a plan.� Mr. Pickens is certainly no fool when it comes to making money. He was worth $34 million in 1996 and just twelve years later is worth an estimated $4 billion, but he must think the rest of America falls under the category of fool. This Texas oilman who’s made and lost several fortunes has decided oil is no longer good for America. So this summer Mr. Pickens launched a $58 million campaign to sell his new idea of wind power to Americans. He says “We now produce 22% of our electricity with natural gas. I want to replace 22% with wind energy and move the natural gas over to the transport sector, where compressed natural gas can replace oil.� He wants to achieve this goal in the next ten years even though wind power now produces only 1% of the country’s electricity.

Wind energy is only viable when subsidized by the government and when subsidies go away so does wind power expansion and operation. It’s particular subsidy is called the Production Tax Credit (PTC) which was created in 1992 and has cost the US taxpayer $3 billion over 10 years and continues only if renewed each year. Mr. Pickens knows all of this and wasted no time in lobbying Congress for his plan. In a Senate Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Committee, he laid out his plan stating he did not want the government to mandate wind power but he would like for the government to mandate that all government vehicles be only those that run on natural gas. He also asked for the Production Tax Credit (PTC) to be extended for 10 years with funding of $15 billion each year just to get his plan started. He dismissed the exorbitant amount $15 billion by saying, “When you look at $700 billion going out of the country every year for the purchase of foreign oil, a $15 billion PTC is somewhat insignificant.� He is overlooking the fact that one dollar amount is a purchase and the other is a government giveaway.

Mr. Pickens is so serious about his plan he’s formed a new company called Mesa Power. His goal is to construct the world’s largest wind farm, containing as many as two thousand turbines spread over five Panhandle counties generating enough electricity to power more than 1.3 million homes. The company has a budget of $10 billion having already leased 3000 acres in Pampa, Tx and purchased 667 wind turbinesfrom General Electric. These turbines are the size of a 38 story building with three blades, each measuring 126 ft. in length sweeping a 1.15 mile area. They make a noise comparable to farm equipment. As a city girl, the only farm equipment I’m familiar with is a tractor, so I assume it sounds like a tractor.

Mr. Picken’s plan is ultimately to have wind turbines from Texas to the Canadian border. This first wind farm is meant to produce 4000 MW or the same power generated by four nuclear plants with one big difference, wind is unpredictable so wind power only operates at 30% capacity where nuclear always operates at 92% capacity. Most wind farms producing 1000 MW are setup on 125 sq. miles with eight turbines to the square mile, but Mr. Pickens wants to spread his turbines out 5 to a square mile. He estimates it will take 800 sq. miles, but considering wind power only operates at 30% capacity, it will probably take more like 1200 sq. miles. Again in comparison, a nuclear plant takes one square mile.

Bringing windmills online will require building a whole new cross-country transmission system. While wind energy is concentrated in theMidwest, consumer demand is mostly on the East and West Coasts. Normal transmission lines –of 128 kilovolts (kV) and 345 kV — lose about 10 to 15% of their wattage every 1000 miles, which is not a problem when the power is generated close to the consumer. But transmitting electricity halfway across the country will require a completely new infrastructure of 765 kV lines that cover long distances without losing power. Mr. Picken’s venture will require about 320 miles of transmission lines. He mentioned to the senate committee it would be fine if the government wanted to pay for this and no doubt he’ll find a way to make that happen.

If Mr. Picken’s dream is realized, a person will probably be able to drive from Texas to North Dakota without ever being out of sight of a windmill, but he’s admitted that none of the wind turbines will be placed on, Mesa Verde, his nearby 68,000 acre panhandle ranch, “because,� he says “I think they’re ugly as h***. But any of you who wants to put one on your ranch will get about ten to twenty-thousand dollars a year in royalties from us.� He’s admitted he expects to make a 15-20% profit on his West Texas wind farm.

The Achilles heel of every form of “alternative energyâ€? is their energy density is so low that it consumes hugh amounts of land in gathering them. Which brings up another alternative form of energy which is being forced on America – ethanol. The energy Policy Act of 2005 accelerated ethanol production at an unprecedented rate. Under the renewable fuels standard (RFS), gasoline was mandated to contain 7.5 billion gallons of renewable fuel annually by 2012 going to 36 billion gallons by 2022. Finally, the Energy Independence and Security Act of 2007 gave the 36 billion gallons by 2022 a boost by requiring “advanced biofuelsâ€? – defined as fuels that cut greenhouse emissions by at least 50% – to provide about 60% of the total requirement.

This year the US used 86 million acres to grow 30 million tons of corn for ethanol. We are now using 1/4 of our corn crop to replace 4% of our oil which is really scary considering 1/2 of the world’s corn is grown in the US midwest. Replacing 50% of our current oil consumption with ethanol would take 13% of the US land mass or about 7 times the land currently utilized for corn. Even if the entire US corn crop were used to make ethanol, the fuel would replace only 12% of current gasoline use. It takes 21lbs. of corn to make a gallon of ethanol and to fill the tank of an SUV with ethanol would feed one person for an entire year. All of this for a fuel that goes only 75% as far as gasoline and is price competitive only when the government subsidizes its production to the tune of 51 cents a gallon, costing the US taxpayer $4.1 billion a year.

It seems to me the radical environmentalist and the “let’s help the rest of the world� do-gooders have lost their argument when the facts about alternative fuels are laid out. How can an environmentalist be concerned about the polar bear and gas pipelines and not be concerned about the cows or sheep or whatever animal that will grazing under these great eye sores called wind turbines? How can they be concerned about the so called “pristine� ANWAR and over look thousands of acres of wind turbines? How can they constantly complain the US is not doing enough to feed the starving in the world and be okay with using crops for a fuel that is nothing more than 180 proof moonshine?

There is no logic to this reasoning.

Energy, T Boone Pickens, Eagle Forum, Pat Carson, junk science