The Pickens Plan

[Darwin333]

I searched but couldn't find a thread on T. Boone Pickens plan.

T. Boone Pickens is an 80 year old oil man who has made billions in oil. He seems to know the energy market quite well and has came up with a real plan to help us start getting out of this energy mess we got ourselves into. Wait! Don't stop reading just because he is an old oil man. His plan is MUCH better for the environment then our current situation, cheaper, and keeps a ton of the money currently being sent to other countries right here in the US. One more thing, he has ALREADY put his money where his mouth is to the tune of a few billion and the ball is already rolling.

He explains it on his website but the basic idea is:


-Nat. gas is currently used to produce 21% of our electricity.
-The ?wind belt? in the US is the Saudi Arabia of wind (middle America from Texas to Canada)
-Replace the electricity produced with Nat. gas with wind power.
-Use the natural gas that is saved as a transportation fuel.
-He has already started buying the turbines and acquiring land rights for his first 4,000 MW wind farm.


I personally like the idea. Its a win for everyone except the foreign countries we buy oil from.

The Pickens Plan

 

[Engineer]

Not only that, he's putting his money where his mouth is.....unlike many others (including our own Congress).

Would be a big plus if the windmills are made here in the USA also. Those things are enormous (was riding a car and passed the turbine blades on three semi's a few years ago. Each "seemed" and may have been larger than a 747 wing).

 

[frostedflakes]

21% of our energy from wind: Thumbs up
Natural gas as our transportation fuel: Thumbs down

 

[Engineer]

Originally posted by: frostedflakes
21% of our energy from wind: Thumbs up
Natural gas as our transportation fuel: Thumbs down

While you may give it a thumbs down, I watched his commercial and he suggested that it was a short term stop gap until we could develope alternatives. Natural gas supply is already there and would need infrastructure (partially in place already). Other alternatives would need to be both developed in high supplies and then placed to the markets via new infrastructures.

 

[Darwin333]

Originally posted by: frostedflakes
21% of our energy from wind: Thumbs up
Natural gas as our transportation fuel: Thumbs down

Got a better idea? We already produce a ton of natural gas right here in the US and it burns MUCH cleaner than gas. Its the perfect stop gap measure until a real alternative can be brought online. Cheaper, cleaner and domestically made but your still not happy?

 

[RightIsWrong]

Although I like the sounds of the plan and the prospect of the net results, anyone that thinks Pickens is doing this for anything but selfish reasons is insane.

He makes himself seem like he his being altruistic but all he is doing is trying to bend the curve down the path to turn his millions invested in wind plants into billions earned in energy sold.

He is essentially selling out all of his oil buddies that he rode to billions and is trying to make wind buddies that his family will exploit for decades to come.

That said, I still have to welcome the idea because someone is going to make money from it and if his double crossing of and sinking the ship of those in the oil industry works, we will all be better off because of it. Mr. Pickens will just end up being the "best" off.

 

[Jaskalas]

Originally posted by: frostedflakes
21% of our energy from wind: Thumbs up
Natural gas as our transportation fuel: Thumbs down

Exactly. We don't need to drive around on our own little suicide bombs.

 

[sandorski]

Originally posted by: RightIsWrong
Although I like the sounds of the plan and the prospect of the net results, anyone that thinks Pickens is doing this for anything but selfish reasons is insane.

He makes himself seem like he his being altruistic but all he is doing is trying to bend the curve down the path to turn his millions invested in wind plants into billions earned in energy sold.

He is essentially selling out all of his oil buddies that he rode to billions and is trying to make wind buddies that his family will exploit for decades to come.

That said, I still have to welcome the idea because someone is going to make money from it and if his double crossing of and sinking the ship of those in the oil industry works, we will all be better off because of it. Mr. Pickens will just end up being the "best" off.

I don't think Profiting from it negates the possibility of Altruism. I think they can coexist and his plan does seem very practical as a temporary solution. Natural Gas powered Vehicles are a technology that's been around and used for a longtime. There's no reason why they can't be Mass produced. The downside to it is that there's a decrease in Power, but the time that people get stuck on that is quickly passing. Some vehicles certainly don't need Performance.

 

[frostedflakes]

Originally posted by: Darwin333

Originally posted by: frostedflakes
21% of our energy from wind: Thumbs up
Natural gas as our transportation fuel: Thumbs down

Got a better idea? We already produce a ton of natural gas right here in the US and it burns MUCH cleaner than gas. Its the perfect stop gap measure until a real alternative can be brought online. Cheaper, cleaner and domestically made but your still not happy?

Biofuels (not produced from food crops) or electric. The technology is basically there, about half a dozen commercial-scale cellulosic ethanol plants are currently being built in the US, and the technology will only get cheaper. If the EEStor supercapacitor lives up to expectations, it will revolutionize the EV market. Research is being done on producing biodiesel from algae, which have per acre yields orders of magnitude greater than traditional crops. I just think natural gas is a step backward.

 

[Darwin333]

Originally posted by: frostedflakes

Originally posted by: Darwin333

Originally posted by: frostedflakes
21% of our energy from wind: Thumbs up
Natural gas as our transportation fuel: Thumbs down

Got a better idea? We already produce a ton of natural gas right here in the US and it burns MUCH cleaner than gas. Its the perfect stop gap measure until a real alternative can be brought online. Cheaper, cleaner and domestically made but your still not happy?

Biofuels (not produced from food crops) or electric. The technology is basically there, about half a dozen commercial-scale cellulosic ethanol plants are currently being built in the US, and the technology will only get cheaper. If the EEStor supercapacitor lives up to expectations, it will revolutionize the EV market. Research is being done on producing biodiesel from algae, which have per acre yields orders of magnitude greater than traditional crops. I just think natural gas is a step backward.

Great. When all those things come online we will switch to them. In the meantime, Pickens idea uses technology that we already have . Not to mention that it is better for the environment then ethanol.

 

[Perknose]

Originally posted by: RightIsWrong
Although I like the sounds of the plan and the prospect of the net results, anyone that thinks Pickens is doing this for anything but selfish reasons is insane.

He makes himself seem like he his being altruistic but all he is doing is trying to bend the curve down the path to turn his millions invested in wind plants into billions earned in energy sold.

He is essentially selling out all of his oil buddies that he rode to billions and is trying to make wind buddies that his family will exploit for decades to come.

That said, I still have to welcome the idea because someone is going to make money from it and if his double crossing of and sinking the ship of those in the oil industry works, we will all be better off because of it. Mr. Pickens will just end up being the "best" off.

Dude, without your personal condemnation, doing things for selfish reasons, ie profit, IS the American way!

As a country, we depend on people doing good things for selfish reasons, for profit.

I sincerely HOPE he can make a decent profit, because then, others will follow.

We face an energy crisis that we should have comprehensively addressed since the first oil shortage of the early 1970's. Unfortunately, the guys who subsequently dominated our traditional selfish (for profit) response were the oil guys.

Quite simply, our system did not serve us well.

Our energy crisis, like our fast approaching health crisis, DEMANDS a serious, comprehensive, nation-wide approach.

Unfortunately again, our faux-individualistic ideology is presently getting in our way. In this way, our some of our former stengths are showing up as our most critical weaknesses.

Anyone who thinks we are doing well by trying to fix our energy and health care problems with a piecemeal, band-aid on the side of the Titanic, partisan from any side, "nothing is really wrong" approach has their head in the sand.

They are being intellectually parsimonious in their approach. Which makes, them, imho, sand niggards.

 

[Fern]

Adapting some gasoline cars to use natural gas seems a good idea to help transition to electrical vehicles. We can't just all ditch our internal combustion vehicles at once.

Can the natural gas power plants be converted to coal?

If, not I would like to see cost estimates for mothballing the NG plants and switching over to wind.

I would also like to see how the flucuation of wind generated power is handled. What happens on days when it is not windy? I've also recently seen where very windy days caused problems by overloading the grid beyond that which they could handle.

Fern

 

[frostedflakes]

Originally posted by: Darwin333

Originally posted by: frostedflakes

Originally posted by: Darwin333

Originally posted by: frostedflakes
21% of our energy from wind: Thumbs up
Natural gas as our transportation fuel: Thumbs down

Got a better idea? We already produce a ton of natural gas right here in the US and it burns MUCH cleaner than gas. Its the perfect stop gap measure until a real alternative can be brought online. Cheaper, cleaner and domestically made but your still not happy?

Biofuels (not produced from food crops) or electric. The technology is basically there, about half a dozen commercial-scale cellulosic ethanol plants are currently being built in the US, and the technology will only get cheaper. If the EEStor supercapacitor lives up to expectations, it will revolutionize the EV market. Research is being done on producing biodiesel from algae, which have per acre yields orders of magnitude greater than traditional crops. I just think natural gas is a step backward.

Great. When all those things come online we will switch to them. In the meantime, Pickens idea uses technology that we already have . Not to mention that it is better for the environment then ethanol.

Except for the fact that our cars can't run on natural gas... between retooling our infrastructure for biofuels/electric or retooling for a different fossil fuel, the former makes much more sense.

And cellulosic ethanol is a technology that we already have. It costs like $2/gal (and is getting cheaper), and our cellulosic waste products alone (agricultural wastes, cardboard, paper, etc.) could take care of a good chunk of our transportation fuel needs. Switchgrass grown on land unsuitable for food crops could account for a significant portion (maybe all?) of our needs as well.

 

[Darwin333]

Originally posted by: RightIsWrong
Although I like the sounds of the plan and the prospect of the net results, anyone that thinks Pickens is doing this for anything but selfish reasons is insane.

He makes himself seem like he his being altruistic but all he is doing is trying to bend the curve down the path to turn his millions invested in wind plants into billions earned in energy sold.

He is essentially selling out all of his oil buddies that he rode to billions and is trying to make wind buddies that his family will exploit for decades to come.

That said, I still have to welcome the idea because someone is going to make money from it and if his double crossing of and sinking the ship of those in the oil industry works, we will all be better off because of it. Mr. Pickens will just end up being the "best" off.

Profiting off ones investment is the American way. What do you have against people making money? Is GM bad for making money off of the wind turbines they are selling him? People nor companies will invest this kind of money without the chance of a decent return on investment. I can see it now: 7/12/18 Windfall tax on big wind bill introduced.

And frankly, maybe his motive is purely profit but I doubt it. The guy is an 80 year old billionaire. He doesn't need anymore money and he doesn't have all that long left to make/spend more. Some of ya'll simply just can't be pleased. A guy is investing his OWN money into the largest wind energy project EVER and you still find more words to damn him than to support him.

 

[Pliablemoose]

I like his plan, NG electricity is currently the most expensive type generated or traditional methods.

TB is richer than god, I saw his bit on CNBC when he announced it, he mentioned he really didn't need the $, but would be making $ on the deal, but his plan was primarily to make us less dependent on foreign oil, and he mentioned we likely have 20 years of easy NG, and in the meantime needed to develop something like hydrogen powered cars or whatever.

His plan is realistic, and we should do it, we should have started doing it 20 years ago.

 

[Perknose]

Originally posted by: Pliablemoose
His plan is realistic, and we should do it, we should have started doing it 20 years ago.

Yup. His and much, much more, from the 1970's on.

You see why we didn't though? Pickens can decide to do what he is doing because he's an "I".

Yet, it is undeniably true, we should have been doing something, decades ago.

Our energy crisis, like our fast approaching health care crisis, is too huge and too dire to leave solely to the very few "I's" rich enough to react.

 

[Moonbeam]

Originally posted by: frostedflakes

Originally posted by: Darwin333

Originally posted by: frostedflakes
21% of our energy from wind: Thumbs up
Natural gas as our transportation fuel: Thumbs down

Got a better idea? We already produce a ton of natural gas right here in the US and it burns MUCH cleaner than gas. Its the perfect stop gap measure until a real alternative can be brought online. Cheaper, cleaner and domestically made but your still not happy?

Biofuels (not produced from food crops) or electric. The technology is basically there, about half a dozen commercial-scale cellulosic ethanol plants are currently being built in the US, and the technology will only get cheaper. If the EEStor supercapacitor lives up to expectations, it will revolutionize the EV market. Research is being done on producing biodiesel from algae, which have per acre yields orders of magnitude greater than traditional crops. I just think natural gas is a step backward.

Totally agree, but time will be needed to go fully renewable.

 

[CADsortaGUY]

Originally posted by: Fern
Adapting some gasoline cars to use natural gas seems a good idea to help transition to electrical vehicles. We can't just all ditch our internal combustion vehicles at once.

Can the natural gas power plants be converted to coal?

If, not I would like to see cost estimates for mothballing the NG plants and switching over to wind.

I would also like to see how the flucuation of wind generated power is handled. What happens on days when it is not windy? I've also recently seen where very windy days caused problems by overloading the grid beyond that which they could handle.

Fern

No, you can't realistically convert a NG generation plant to coal. Coal is by rail and NG is by pipeline. Also, you need vast areas of land for a coal plant for processing/etc. Just not realistic at all.

Wind is easily handled based on it's output. No wind - power plant picks up load. "Too" much wind, they "slow" the plant(wind down one of the generators). The problem is that we'd still need to cover all potential electrical use via normal generation in case there was no wind. Then if there is wind you "throttle" the plant back. It's how it's currently done anyway so adding more wind really isn't a problem unless you get so many that you could effectively idle the plant - which wouldn't be good for the efficiency of production during ramping...

 

[BoomerD]

Originally posted by: Jaskalas

Originally posted by: frostedflakes
21% of our energy from wind: Thumbs up
Natural gas as our transportation fuel: Thumbs down

Exactly. We don't need to drive around on our own little suicide bombs.

There are thousands (hundreds of thousands?) ov vehicles that run on propane. IFAIK, there haven't been any major problems with the technology. Propane and natural gas are very similar. You can convert natural gas appliances to run on propane very easily, (usually just an orifice swap) and AFAIK, cars converted to run on propane could easily be converted to run on nat'l gas quickly and cheaply.

http://www.npga.org/i4a/pages/index.cfm?pageid=623

BTW, there are already over 100K vehicles on the roadways that run on CNG:

http://www.naturalgas.org/over...ses_transportation.asp

 

[CADsortaGUY]

Originally posted by: frostedflakes
21% of our energy from wind: Thumbs up
Natural gas as our transportation fuel: Thumbs down

I agree, unless they can come up with a good/efficient way of "pumping" NG into our tanks. Compressing NG means you loose some of the net efficiency.

 

[Perknose]

Originally posted by: CADsortaGUY

Originally posted by: frostedflakes
21% of our energy from wind: Thumbs up
Natural gas as our transportation fuel: Thumbs down

I agree, unless they can come up with a good/efficient way of "pumping" NG into our tanks. Compressing NG means you loose some of the net efficiency.

As with hydrogen, distribution infrastructure is a huge obstacle here. Commercial and municipal fleets with a central supply are the pioneers.

We need an approach to our energy problem that is comprehensive, that fully recognizes the seriousness of our problem. All sides need to put ideology aside in the principled pursuit of our nation's best solution(s).

 

[Darwin333]

Originally posted by: frostedflakes

Originally posted by: Darwin333

Originally posted by: frostedflakes

Originally posted by: Darwin333

Originally posted by: frostedflakes
21% of our energy from wind: Thumbs up
Natural gas as our transportation fuel: Thumbs down

Got a better idea? We already produce a ton of natural gas right here in the US and it burns MUCH cleaner than gas. Its the perfect stop gap measure until a real alternative can be brought online. Cheaper, cleaner and domestically made but your still not happy?

Biofuels (not produced from food crops) or electric. The technology is basically there, about half a dozen commercial-scale cellulosic ethanol plants are currently being built in the US, and the technology will only get cheaper. If the EEStor supercapacitor lives up to expectations, it will revolutionize the EV market. Research is being done on producing biodiesel from algae, which have per acre yields orders of magnitude greater than traditional crops. I just think natural gas is a step backward.

Great. When all those things come online we will switch to them. In the meantime, Pickens idea uses technology that we already have . Not to mention that it is better for the environment then ethanol.

Except for the fact that our cars can't run on natural gas... between retooling our infrastructure for biofuels/electric or retooling for a different fossil fuel, the former makes much more sense.

And cellulosic ethanol is a technology that we already have. It costs like $2/gal (and is getting cheaper), and our cellulosic waste products alone (agricultural wastes, cardboard, paper, etc.) could take care of a good chunk of our transportation fuel needs. Switchgrass grown on land unsuitable for food crops could account for a significant portion (maybe all?) of our needs as well.

Conversion kits for your car are not all that difficult. It uses the same principals and engine as gasoline does. It just uses a different fuel delivery system. Honda actually has a home NG refueling device that is so safe it is classified as a home appliance (like a stove). Natural gas infrastructure is already in place across much of the US.

What other issues do you have with NG?

 

[Fern]

Originally posted by: CADsortaGUY

Originally posted by: frostedflakes
21% of our energy from wind: Thumbs up
Natural gas as our transportation fuel: Thumbs down

I agree, unless they can come up with a good/efficient way of "pumping" NG into our tanks. Compressing NG means you loose some of the net efficiency.

Honda, and likely others, already sell vehicles that run on natural gas. There are also companies already that can perform the conversion (some specialize in GM etc).

Honda can provide a home pump that uses your existing natural gas lines.

I don't see NG vehicles as the "silver bullet" cure, but of several things I'd like to see explored ASAP.

IMO, just because we can't solve the problem in one blow doesn't mean we shouldn't start nicking away at it as much as possible now.

Likely some solutions are a better fit for some, others have different needs. E.g., I drive less than 10 miles a day, so I don't really need the long trip capabilities others do. From what I can tell, NG vehicles can go about +200 miles before a fill up is required.

Edit: Given how price sensitive oil seems to be, a rather minor reduction is demand could potentially have a pretty big price effect. With tax credits etc, moving a relatively minor percentage of our commuting population off oil/gas and onto NG and electricity could have a significant benefit.

Fern

 

[Pliablemoose]

http://www.myphill.com/

 

[Perknose]

mindfart