Windmills at a standstill
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BY KELLEN HENRY – MEDILL NEWS SERVICE
Was T. Boone Pickens just blowing hot air?
The Texas billionaire and oilman-turned-alternative energy investor announced earlier this week that he is abandoning plans to build the world’s largest wind farm near Pampa, Texas.
It was only a few months ago that Pickens touted the viability of wind farms and his Pickens Plan for energy independence in Chicago. As the keynote guest at the American Wind Energy Association’s WINDPOWER 2009 conference in May, he rallied many of the conference’s 21,000 enthusiastic attendees with his commitment to building the 1,000-megawatt farm and transforming America’s energy reliance on foreign oil.
Click HERE to listen to an excerpt of T. Boone Pickens’ speech at WINDPOWER.
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His reasons for reneging on the project demonstrate many of the sweeping challenges with overhauling the country’s energy infrastructure. Pickens credits the failure to trouble with transmitting the power to population centers and with low prices from competing fuel sources, he told The Dallas Morning News this week.
The windfarm was a lot more alluring when it was launched last summer as oil prices topped $140 a barrel. These days, crude oil is closer to $60 a barrel and natural gas prices are at a deep low, taking away some of the urgency around using alternative fuels. Though energy consumers may see the value in cutting carbon emissions or relying less on foreign oil, there are immediate wallet benefits of relying on traditional electricity when it’s cheap. Often, what people say they want and what they’re willing to pay for are two very different things.
“The price of conventional or of any energy source will affect the demand,” said Henry Kurth, associate director of the Energy Resources Center at the University of Illinois at Chicago.
Even consumers that say they want more efficient energy provisions, the idea of towering powerlines cutting through backyards can be a lot of swallow. People have deeper reservations about things like nuclear power plants, they have hang-ups about alternative infrastructure as well.
“There’s the same ‘not in my backyard’ syndrome when you’re looking at a wind farm. It does take up space, it does block views. It’s not completely benign,” Kurth said.
Though Texas and the Midwest corridor have some of the highest grade wind potential in the county, reliability issues will exist until renewable can be supplemented with other kinds of energy and be brought onto the power grid.
“On a muggy, summer day in Chicago, the wind doesn’t blow and we need electricity the most,” Kurth said. “The slow development of the smart grid will be somewhat of a barrier.”
Tags: Alternative Energy
