T. Boone Picken’s Plan to Escape the Grip of Foreign Oil
OpEd excerpted from the WSJ July 9, 2008
T. Boone Pickens has started running TV ads explaining the severity of the energy crisis and touting wind power as a quick, partial solution. His WSJ OpEd spells out his plan:
“Each year we import more and more oil. In 1973, the year of the infamous oil embargo, the United States imported about 24% of our oil. In 1990, at the start of the first Gulf War, this had climbed to 42%. Today, we import almost 70% of our oil … [So] our economic engine is now 70% dependent on the energy resources of other countries, their good judgment, and most importantly, their good will toward us.
This year, we will spend almost $700 billion on imported oil, which is more than four times the annual cost of our current war in Iraq … if we don’t do anything about this problem, over the next 10 years we will spend around $10 trillion importing foreign oil. That is $10 trillion leaving the U.S. and going to foreign nations, making it what I certainly believe will be the single largest transfer of wealth in human history.
I have a clear goal in mind … to reduce America’s foreign oil imports by more than one-third in the next five to 10 years.
Start with wind power … the U.S. has the capacity to generate 20% of its electricity supply from wind by 2030 … [take] the energy generated by wind and use it to replace a significant percentage of the natural gas that is now being used to fuel our power plants.
Today, natural gas accounts for about 22% of our electricity generation in the U.S. … use new wind capacity to free up the natural gas for use as a transportation fuel. That would displace more than one-third of our foreign oil imports.
Natural gas is the only domestic energy of size that can be used to replace oil used for transportation, and it is abundant in the U.S. It is cheap and it is clean. With eight million natural-gas-powered vehicles on the road world-wide, the technology already exists to rapidly build out fleets of trucks, buses and even cars using natural gas as a fuel. Of these eight million vehicles, the U.S. has a paltry 150,000 right now.
[To get started] the government must mandate the formation of wind and solar transmission corridors, and renew the subsidies for economic and alternative energy development .
We need action. Now.”
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Observations:
1. Gotta like the guy’s passion and clarity of thought. And, he puts his money where his mouth is – in ads and development capital.
2. Why not? Doesn’t solve the problem completely, but at least it hacks away at it. No apparent downside. Doesn’t conflict with political agendas.
3. My bet? Politicos will take Picken’s ad quote “we can’t drill our way out of the problem” out of context and use it to support drilling bans.
4. Watch: Congress will convene hearings on wind power and drag their feet.
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http://online.wsj.com/article/SB121556087828237463.html?mod=opinion_main_commentaries
Thanks to Christian Walker (MSB MBA alum) for the heads-up on the article
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The Homa Files 
July 20, 2008 at 12:12 pm |
Well,
Mr. Picken does not appear to consider the economics of his proposal. Without getting into too much detail, here are my main concerns:
1. Availability of wind turbines – currently there is a 3 year wait at ALL major wind turbine manufacturers. Given that the short is with the turbines, so is all of the return. In fact, often time a wind project developer has to disclose the locale of the wind site to the manufacturer – this way manufacturer (who must have taken Homa classes) prices to developer’s cost of capital given “green” tariff structure at particular market. All NPV goes to GE :).
2. He ignores transmission availability/cost – wind as such is readily available in lots of places, however getting the power from the places where its available to where its needed is often time very difficult (read expensive). In mainland Europe where people live on top of each other that’s not too much of a problem, wilderness of Texas – is a different matter.
3. Wind Quality – there is such thing as too little wind, too much wind, good wind and bad wind. All this has an impact on “availability” – effectively capacity factor utilization. I have no idea how good the wind quality data from Texas is, but 20+ years would be needed to get any sort of reasonable financing terms.
There are other concerns with his proposal – but above are my main ones. At the end of the day, even with $130 oil – wind needs subsidies (and GE, Simiens, Vestas, etc have no qualms about grabbing all of them) to compete. Even with 40%+ availability of wind – electricity to the grid costs about $150/Mwh. Then add transmission (often times greenfield), distribution, dispatch, O&M, etc and even today’s prices gas fired plants look good.