No, I don't see it catching on. We have the technology to mass produce electric cars right now and that alone would eliminate dependence on forign oil. The fact is that the powers that be need us to be dependant on oil. Natural gas is great, especially as a quick do it yourself conversion that will change your $4.50 a gallon habit to around $2.60, but it won't solve our problems long term. It's another bait and switch tactic to turn the attention away from electric vehicles.
It's just economy. Not completely apart from environmental needs, but just economy. He took an oil barrel price of 135$ for his 700 billion figure. He's now promoting a huge wind farm in Texas with more than 2,000 mills totalizing 4,000 MW. He's a tycoon, he is investing some of his assets but he's mainly encouraging other to invest in this project. The World map in 2:10 is a good example of what you can do by choosing a color scale to get your words backed. The "we are the best" assertion is self indulgent and pretty false, as the scale is the following: black = excellent dark red = very good red = good orange = so so yellow = pretty poor green = poor blue = bad This tailored scale shadows the really good areas for wind power investments: Newfoundland, Prince Edward Island, Gulf of Saint Lawrence, Coast of Labrador in North America. Look around the World, you'll find no better places than Southern Patagonia and certain points around the North Sea rim. If you also think that this scale takes average speed but not average power, the map could be any thing but not the treasure chase for wind power. You can compare with this map and look all the planet and the "wind corridor". Compare it. Much more to say, but now is lunch time.
The environmental side of Picken's words would be? His analysis accounts for a 50% of electricity generation using coal, a major source or greenhouse gases. The high prices of natural gas and oil are fostering the consumption of coal. Some countries have coal as their main local source of energy (India, Poland) and even it is exported (Australia). Some other countries foster their coal production in order to export their oil and natural gas (Russia) or avoid increasing imports and external dependency (China). USA produce, import and burn madly increasing amounts of oil and natural gas, and they are fostering coal use to replace natural gas as power plant input. Picken said 22% of electricity can be generated by wind. That would be about 45% of power, as wind is an excellent source of energy but it is not there the exact instant you need it. That would be about 250,000/300,000 MW of wind power and would demand an investment of about half trillion dollars ("Peanuts" in comparison with all the natural gas saved and used for transportation. Remember wind power uses no fuel.) The economical angle seems to be O.K., because natural gas is expensive and USA are depleting all natural gas they have, but he doesn't propose to replace coal with wind power because coal is abundant and cheap. That's the problem: abundant, cheap and extremely harmful in terms of global warming. Refraining from wasting energy madly is not a part of Picken's plan. I suppose it would be a bad investment. In fact, yesterday I read an article about people fined all around the USA for drying their laundry in a natural fashion as "it devalues the properties".
I am all for talking about REAL energy alternatives.... not inefficient and ineffective wind turbines.
I think he's a good man, but... The idea is to move away from oil altogether and away from the control these companies have over us. Which is considerable. We still need oil for the manufacture of certain things like rubber tires and lubricants. Including Vaseline. When I worked in the oil industry, I could wipe off natural deposits of the stuff from around the wellhead. It comes up in a vapor form and deposits wherever it hits the air. While wind turbines have come a long way, they do have lots of moving parts. Solar panels don't. x
