George Ayoub: Large white blades generating winds of change

If we're going to find an answer to $4 gasoline, we may have to see which way the wind is blowing.

If it's blowing is more to the point.

Amid escalating fuel woes, energy experts are giving wind a serious look. That includes the affections of the nation's most legendary oilman.

None other than T. Boone Pickens is touting the power and profitability of the hair-mussing, dust-blowing, flag-waving wonder of wind. Pickens is planning to build a 4,000-megawatt wind farm dotted with 667 turbines in the Texas Panhandle. He wants to trade the allure and easy access of Middle Eastern oil for the winds that roar through America's Midwest from Canada to Mexico.

The Pickens plan weans the nation from the opiate that is foreign oil in 10 years. The plan calls for wind-produced electricity being carried to power plants now being fueled with natural gas. The clean natural gas would then be used for vehicles, a cycle free from the energy bonds now anchored in the Middle East.

The plan also touts cleaner, cheaper transportation and electricity and a potential revival for the economy of rural America, where wind farms would be located.

Like Pickens, Al Gore has challenged the nation to be fossil-fuel-free in a decade, although wind power is only part of his plan.

Before we all go out and buy shares in Mariah Energy Inc. or Jet Stream Ltd., there is a little matter of money.

Billions of dollars of it.



Breezy marketplace

We already live in a pretty pricey neighborhood. Pickens says the $700 billion we send to foreign countries every year represents 70 percent of the oil we use.

When you're spending that kind of dinero, it's best to have a system in place that can help you spend it.

We do.

Changing it will cost a lot of money. The Department of Energy estimates that moving America to 20 percent of electricity from wind by 2030 will cost about $43 billion. Our current production of electricity from wind turbines is slightly more than 1 percent.

While a huge capital requirement is an obstacle, changing an energy culture also requires an enormous amount of will, the kind that may come from paying $7 for a gallon of regular unleaded, or maybe $5.

Pickens is counting on $4, about the current rate, doing the trick. He has recently taken to the airwaves to sell his idea.

An oilman pushing wind energy would normally set off hot-air warnings, and Pickens was recently embroiled in a rather unpleasant political fight with John Kerry supporters.

Still, a plan to trade wind for fossil fuel has plenty of merit, given that best estimates peg 2018 as about the time we would see benefits if we drop a drill into the earth or ocean floor tomorrow in search of domestic oil.

Wind already has a footprint, albeit tiny, too. By 2006, 36 states had electricity generated from wind with Texas, Iowa, Minnesota and California producing the most. Nebraska seems a natural to become a bigger hitter in this breezy marketplace.

The American Wind Energy Association announced Tuesday that the United States has surpassed Germany as the world's top producer of wind-generated electricity during the first half of 2008.



An energy plan

Besides money and willpower, we also have to consider that the wind doesn't always blow -- although anyone who has spent a spring in Nebraska might argue the point. Storing and rerouting electricity through an amended grid system would be necessary and efficient.

T. Boone Pickens believes it is all possible. So does Al Gore. Go figure.

The price of gasoline, with little hope for change in sight, provides plenty of incentive.

But at the core of this wind of change is our commitment to do just that: to see the world differently, to see one where the blades of thousands of white turbines dance in the sky; where foreign oil magnates no longer call the shots; where clean air is an energy plan, not a cost of doing business.

The bottom line with wind power, as it is with many things, is the bottom line.

What we have to decide is whether we can afford to implement an idea like the Pickens plan.

Or whether we can afford not to.



George Ayoub is senior writer at The Independent.