It was meant to kick-start one of the most unlikely and ambitious
transformations you could think of - weaning America off its addiction to
oil - but it has been stymied by the double whammy of plunging fuel prices
and the financial slowdown. For what would be the world's biggest wind farm,
climate change has been trumped by the credit crunch.
It is a heavy blow for the plans of T Boone Pickens, a billionaire oilman-
turned-green energy activist, who has delayed the construction of his wind
farm, which was to have stretched out across the Texas Panhandle.
“With natural gas prices where they are, you can't kick off a wind project,
you're not economical,” he told a news conference in Arizona. Moreover, with
the banking crisis showing little sign of easing, financing the scheme was
becoming more difficult.
Mr Pickens, who made his fortune by producing and betting on the price of
crude, has poured millions of dollars this year into promoting his “Pickens
Plan”, a set of proposals designed to switch America away from oil and
towards the use of wind energy to generate electricity and domestically
produced natural gas for transport fuel. He has dubbed the United States the
“Saudi Arabia of wind” and envisages a sea of giant turbines stretching from
Texas through the heart of the country to the Canadian border, what he calls
“a wind corridor”. His proposed $10 billion Pampa Wind Project was meant to
be merely the beginning, slated to include - eventually - thousands of
turbines generating 4,000 megawatts of electricity, or enough to supply
electricity to 1.3 million homes.
Jay Rosser, of Mesa Power, the company leading the project, said that Mr
Pickens remained committed to it. “The capital markets are problematic for
everyone, and we are keeping an eye on them,” Mr Rosser said. “The capital
markets may lead us to slow down a bit, but we are still going forward with
our wind business.”
The first phase of the Pampa scheme had been due to start producing power in
2011; it is not clear how far this start date will be pushed back.
Oil imports account for nearly 70 per cent of America's total consumption, up
from 24 per cent in 1970. The Pickens Plan, however, envisages wind farms
generating 20 per cent of the country's electricity. This would displace
most of the natural gas that is used to generate power at present, which
could be used to power vehicles, thus reducing oil imports. Mr Pickens
argues that America could achieve complete energy independence within ten
years at a cost of around $1.2 trillion by adopting this strategy.
He also believes that it would support the US economy by creating new
green-collar jobs and industries and providing a new income stream for
farmers who agree to place wind turbines on their land.
“We are going to have to do something different in America,” Mr Pickens said
this summer. “You can't keep paying out $600 billion a year for oil.”
