Boone Pickens: The Wind Dies Down

From today's Wall Street Journal, "The Dallas-based entrepreneur, who has relentlessly promoted his "Pickens Plan" since July 4, 2008, announced earlier this month that he's abandoning the wind business to focus on natural gas."

"Two years ago, natural gas prices were spiking and Mr. Pickens figured they'd stay high. He placed a $2 billion order for wind turbines with General Electric. Shortly afterward, he began selling the Pickens Plan. The United States, he claimed, is "the Saudi Arabia of wind," and wind energy is an essential part of the cure for the curse of imported oil. " There's nothing like a Texan hyping energy--except that Mr. Pickens didn't understand very much about wind as an energy source nor about relative prices.

Wind may have a minor role to play in a US energy portfolio, but for all the ancillary investment in grid connectivity, storage issues and the sheer visual and auditory blight of the towers, it is clear that natural gas and nuclear can have bigger impacts on curbing greenhouse gas emissions than wind ever will. Increasing fleet efficiency for cars and trucks, and cutting commercial and residential energy use are also ready channels for reducing electricity demand growth and hence the need for new plants, which means less greenhouse gas emissions than the current baseline trends.