wind energy

London-based oil giant BP has announced that it has scrapped all plans to build wind farms and other renewable energy projects in Britain to concentrate on the US market instead. Said BP Spokesman Robert Wine, via Earth2Tech:

It’s a big place and it’s got a lot of wind.

Right. But that's not exactly news. America has long-boasted some of the world's best wind resources and greatest market potential.

The real spark for BP's latest investment switch?

It does our heart good to see an oil tycoon spend his money to tell the truth. There’s too little of that today. But T. Boone Pickens, the Texas oil billionaire, is investing $58 million on a television ad campaign (Youtube) to explain that we can’t drill our way out of the current energy crisis.

Instead, he says, we should build wind farms from Texas to North Dakota, and install the transmission lines necessary to move the power to where we need it. That will liberate natural gas from its most common current use – generating electricity – and allow us to use it to power our vehicles, Pickens says.

He’s right about the wind part and wrong about the best use of natural gas.

Most folks by now know about China’s wind power boom. At the end of 2007, the nation's installed base of wind energy was just over six gigawatts. By the end of 2008, it will climb to ten gigawatts. By 2010, experts predict 20 gigawatts. And by 2020, 100 gigawatts.

That’s more than all of the world's wind power today, which stands at 94 gigawatts.

But here’s the thing that’s really striking: China is gaining speed as the global leader in the manufacture of wind power parts, too. Indeed, its equipment may feed the whole planet's appetite for wind energy one day.

Think toys, but healthier.

As rumored, New York-based private equity giant Blackstone Group is pouring $1.5 billion into an offshore wind farm in Germany that will power half a million homes and avert 1.6 million tons of CO2 emissions.

It’s being billed as one of the largest wind projects in the North Sea and should spawn a heap of German "green collar" jobs. Says the Blackstone Group:

It is planned to source all technical expertise and substantially all materials from within Germany.

Why would Blackstone choose Germany for its mammoth project? In the company's own words:

Eighty-year-old Dallas oil man T. Boone Pickens has just delivered an ambitious, Texas-sized energy plan to the whole of America, in which he claims that wind could supply 20 percent of the nation's power within 10 years.

The proposal went live today at www.pickensplan.com.

You may recall that the nation's own Department of Energy proposed that same target -- in double the time.

So what's the Pickens secret? First, generate enough wind power so that America no longer needs natural gas for its power needs. And then use that natural gas to power a full one-third of the US vehicle fleet.

Sierra Club’s Carl Pope has discussed the plan with T. Boone himself. Pope's take?

To put it plainly, T. Boone Pickens is out to save America.

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