[SustainableTompkins] Big oil to big wind: Texas veteran sets up $10bn clean energy project

[Eric Banford]

http://www.guardian.co.uk/environment/2008/apr/14/windpower.energy

T Boone Pickens is famousfor thinking big. He founded his Texan oil company, Mesa Petroleum, in1956 with just $2,500 (£1,200) in the bank. After a string of audacioustakeovers he turned it into an independent empire that challenged thebig oil companies, and today he is worth $3bn. 

Now thisstraight-talking Southerner is launching the biggest and most audaciousproject of his career. This month he will make the first down paymenton 500 wind turbines at a cost of $2m each. The order is the firstmaterial step towards his goal of building the world's largest windfarm.

Over the next four years he intends to erect 2,700turbines across 200,000 acres of the Texan panhandle. The scheme isfive times bigger than the world's current record-holding wind farm andwhen finished will supply 4,000 megawatts of electricity - enough topower about one million homes.

Beyond the mere profitmotive, which clearly excites him, there is the fact that Texan oil hasbeen on the wane since it peaked at 10m barrels a day in 1973, and isalready down to half that amount. "Oil fields have a declining curve -you find one, it peaks and starts downhill, you've got to find anotherone to replace it. It drives you crazy! With wind, there's no decline."

"GeorgeBush has done nothing. Nothing. Every guy that ran for president clearback to Nixon said he would make us energy independent, but not onegoddamned thing has been done. Zero. The biggest problem facing theUnited States in the next 50 years is energy and nobody has come upwith a solution."

Pickens, being Pickens, has come up with asolution - and it makes his own gargantuan plans for a wind farm in thepanhandle look tiny. For the benefit of the Guardian, he draws on awhite board his master scheme. He carves out an enormous corridor ofland running north to south through the middle of the US - along thegreat plains - where he would build an army of wind farms. Then hedraws an equally enormous corridor running east to west from Texas tosouthern California which he would similarly dedicate to solar energy.

"Youneed a giant plan for America. Not the pissant 83 megawatt [windfarm]deals being stamped all over the country. There needs to be a huge planfrom someone with leadership. It's going to take years to do, but ithas to start now."



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