One of those folks who have already received their Tesla should drop by T. Boone's office and give him a test ride.

Nothing like a little first hand experience to broaden ones thinking....

natural gas is liable to reach its own peak and decline in the not too distant future. Allowing new wind production to retire the coal fleet is clearly the way to go.

Good for T. Boone though that he's moving in the right direction even at this late stage: his considerable fortune and influence will give this particular ball a lot of momentum.

The true meaning of life is to plant trees, under whose shade you do not expect to sit.

if the infrastructure for natural gas fueling of automobiles were already in place, it would be wonderful. in the short term, of course. As it is, however, revamping the entire vehicular fueling infrastructure to supply natural gas to a vehicle fleet which will take a decade or more to turn over and eliminate all the gasoline fueled automobiles but will become obsolete pretty soon after doesn't seem the brightest idea to me, although i have nothing but respect for pickens.

Pickens isn't building a wind farm as a charitable act.  He sees profit in it.  And that's a good thing.

Pickens says that he hasn't gone green.  He sees an opportunity to make more green.

That Pickens is the person putting up the money is an indication that wind has penetrated the 'far right'.  Remember that this is the guy who financed the Swift Boat group and was largely responsible for giving us a second Bush term.

If wind has reached the point where potential profits outweigh political viewpoints then we're well on our way toward replacing fossil fuels for electricity generation.

Most natural gas is used for heating. Ever hear about ground source heat pumps (running on intermittent wind and solar, storing heat/cold in building mass)?

Combined cycle?  Really?  I thought most natural gas power generation was done with old inefficient ICEs and turbines.  Combined cycle is maybe 20%?

Wouldn't it be a good idea to power long haul trucks, tractors, and trains with natural gas to stabilize oil prices by reducing demand?  These will be the last vehicles to be converted to renewable electricity.

I wonder how people will buy plugin hybrids (that aren't available in the US) without jobs?  A technology that is hardly ever discussed in mass delusional media, much less mass produced by gas guzzling auto companies.  

Will gas be 8 bucks per gallon when the first mass produced plugin hybrids come out, for 40k?    

Talking to the wall here?  Yep.

Oh yeah, might as well add more useless information.  Coal can be converted to natural gas underground with natural bacteria.

Thise plugin hybrids will need fuel ocasionally too.  Why not use natural gas?  

And the last, best point.  Biogas from the waste stream, that offsets GHG, could substitute for natural gas.  If 5% of the natural gas we use comes from biogas, we could offset the rest of the CO2 coming from the natural gas.

And since we already know that solar on roofs could replace coal, and wind could supply 40% of the demand lowered by conservation.  Along with biogas and natural gas that all would pretty much cover our energy needs without a carbon footprint and with a 100s of year supply of natural gas as an ultimate backup.

As batteries get better less and less natural gas would be needed.  Meanwhile we bid farewell to oil and oil wars.

Natural gas is impoertant as a backup for renewables necause we might experience a year or two without summer at anytime, no solar to speak of then and wind will need help.

http://amazngdrx.blogharbor.com/blog John Schneider, Northern Wisconsin

Me, hehey.

http://amazngdrx.blogharbor.com/blog John Schneider, Northern Wisconsin

don't care if it's wind, oil or natural gas, because as long as it's BIG Energy, Pickens knows that he gets to socialize ALL his costs onto ratepayers and the environment, build out his monopolies on our land and our dime, then bottle and sell us our wind, and sadly, some people will thank him for it!!

this is insane.  this fuel, and sun, are ubiquitous and local, point of use systems are the only way to create grid stability (see fires in CA causing endless power outages), reduce grid congestion (eliminating the need for the hundreds of thousands of miles of new massive powerlines these guys are also building on our land - including taking our homes - and our dime), and offer a chance to break up the Big Energy monopolies which have poisoned our planet and are bankrupting us.

please, please, let the voice of the PEOPLE be heard for once!  we want a level playing field, and right now, the system is so ridiculously gamed against us (and i live in CA, which masquerades as a "progressive" state!), we really need people to start advocating for the RIGHT kind of renewables - those which do not kill off huge swathes of wilderness, require massive new transmission, and re-entrench Big Energy monopolies when we are finally poised to break free...

the greenest energy is that which you needn't ever produce.

In what way is this plan oil free?  Grist should revise the headline of this daily grist story.

-MN *Promote US passenger rail service. Resources and time are limited.*

  The NG for vehicles proposal is quicker than waiting for plugins. Although I think Pickens was including it because the current attention is largely about oil. A single generation of NG vehicles doesn't sound that unreasonable to me. It roughly matches the time period during which our NG supply should hold up. It buys time for the plugins to make it into the market (probably 5-10 years before significant volumes are available). And compressed NG makes a lot more sense thermodynamically than the gas to liquid fuel boondoggles that are being proposed.

   Our problem is that peakoil is coming on pretty quick. The number of industry people predicting 2010 for the peak has been growing. Public panic over this could easily result in some very bad policies being rushed through. This plan might deflect some of that pressure.

The T. Boone Pickens ad shows many seconds of happy wind turbines, and a number of solar panels.  That ought to be enough to nudge some people to start thinking new good thoughts about renewables, no matter what the voice-over may be saying about natural gas.

Chickens deserve our true friendship! So do fish! So do other sentient beings! Let us learn to be kind.

Sounds like it was a "don't let the perfect be enemy of the good" moment.

The Honda Civic GX  (natural gas) routinely wins awards for the cleanest, greenest, car in production ...

It very sad to me that, in practice, enviros like to burn dirtier fuels until revolution comes ... because they may still be waiting in 20 or 30 years.

A nat-gas fleet would be a good, incremental, improvement over the status quo.  (Need I mention that "perfect" cars beyond the good nat-gas ones are still promises and not in production?)

OK, I see two problems:

 The cost right now is very high (about $12, it's basically doubled over the past year - just like oil).  More demand = higher prices.  And transporting gas is not nearly as easy as shipping oil, so supply issues would be problematic.  Thus, you have the same cost problems with oil or worse.  Note that increased demand for gas will raise electricity prices, home heating costs, industry costs (they use a lot of nat gas).  The issues with gas production are similar to oil production - it's getting harder to find and get out of the ground.  I think a shift to gas creates a whole new set of big problems.

 There are decent alternatives to natural gas cars now.  Hybrids, plug-ins, mass transit - all are better alternatives.  I think it highly unlikely that there will be a massive investment in natural gas supply infrastructure for cars/trucks/etc only to have that become useless in 15 years - which it surely will.  No one will be willing to make that investment, because I don't think anyone should.  

I think Joe is right on target with this one.

...that the power lines leadin' from the wind farm to Dallas, Pickens also intends to use their right-of-way for a water pipeline to try and transport water from the dwindling aqufers of the South Plains by the billions of gallons.

...Still, better he invest it this way than in traditional oil extraction...or worse, decide to endorse coal.

Only part I like is the part everyone else hates; using NG (or renewable methane) for powering vehicles.  Even PHEVs need some fuel of some sort.  But ditch the windmills (except maybe to charge PHEVs with their intermittent electricity) and build more nuclear power plants.

If we free up NG used in electricity production, then we'd have quite a bit for other uses, including vehicles.

Joe Romm is mis-guided (though technically correct) in simply stating NG use in vehicles is less efficient than using it in a combined-cycle plant.  Its value isn't in its efficiency, but its value as a storable (reasonably compact) fuel.

(Leave in a tiny gas tank so the vehicle can interface with the current infrastructure too.)

What is left out of the conversation is the ability to produce renewable methane from biomass; far more efficiently and easily than it is to produce ethanol.  This means all our cars could run from 100% renewable sources; electricity from wind and methane from biomass; and at prices that are affordable TODAY with CURRENT technology.

Build plugin hybrids that run on renewable methane. That's all that's needed.

Top Ten Ways T. Boone Pickens Could Better Spend His Ten Billion

Buy air time apologizing to the American public for funding Swift Boat...
 Spend a lot of money convincing Texas to put bounties on politicians and underwrite them...
 Pay off the bet he welshed on to the Vets' organization that documented the Swift Boat lies.
 Take a university class from Al Gore...
 Send me a modest one-tenth of one percent--a mere ten mill--to buy my  silence; otherwise I'm e-mailing Letterman...
 Loan Rush Limbaugh some money for a shrink, group therapy, and to finish his college education...
 Take a year-long ocean cruise and invite Rupert Murdoch to accompany him...
 Hire Scott Mclellan as his press secretary...
 Two year's health care insurance for one mllion uninsured American workers...
 A dinner date with Jane Fonda...

Boone Pickens says the $700 billion a year leaving the US to buy oil is killing the US economy.  Sounds right to me.  The nat gas is US owned.  Also, existing technology bridge to the point when electric cars, etc will be in place.  The politicians are so smart and selfless they will likely come up with some set of colossally stupid ideas to solve the energy problem - or maybe they will surprise us and do what needs to be done.  Care to bet money on which?  Congrats to posters BigTom, Odograph, esp Mike Johnson (right on), & JimBeyer (brilliant).

The truth will make you free - of friends and promotion prospects. "Play The Game" is the order of the day.