Passing Wind
Forget all those commercials: T. Boone’s becalmed
NEW YORK (CNN) — Billionaire oil man T. Boone Pickens is shelving plans to build the world’s largest wind farm.
T. Boone Pickens says the capital markets will not support his plans to build the world’s largest wind farm.
The chairman of BP Capital Management announced Tuesday that his plans for the Pampa Wind Project, designed to generate 4,000 megawatts of electricity using thousands of wind turbines, is on hold.
“I had hoped that Pampa would be the starting point, but transmission issues and the problem with the capital markets make that unfeasible at this point,” Pickens told CNN’s Ali Velshi. “I expect to continue development of the Pampa project, but not at the pace that I originally expected.”
No surprise, really. With the global recession and subsequent drop in the oil markets wind power makes very little economic sense, and when combined with NIMBYism most of these projects generate nothing more than smug press from politicians about how they’re “making a difference for the children.”
There was one little interesting point in the article, though:
Renewable energy is the source of only a small portion of electricity used today, but in 2008, the United States became the world’s leading provider of wind power.
Damn you, Chimpy! How’d you let that happen on your watch?
Biz | Mr. Bingley | 
July 8, 2009 7:15 am
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This would be the same T. Boone who’s gonna make a killing with Cap’n Trade, so this little venture ain’t dead yet.
One nuclear power plant equals all the wind power produced in twenty years.The solution for the problem is to build another power plant next to those already existing in the US.That would go
around environmental problems that would hang-up
new ones in court.We haven’t built a new nuclear plant,or even a new oil refinery, in the US for over
35 years.That is more time than the span between WW1
and WW2.1917-to 1941.How far we have fallen..From
the best to the sick mess.
I couldn’t agree more, greg.