Hot air over windmills is dwindling (Jan. 15)
By Chuck Doud
The Madera Tribune
It looks like Mrs. Doud and I are going to have to shelve the plans we had made to build a wind farm in our back yard.
In 2008, when oil prices were headed to about the level of the space station, we heard that T. Boone Pickens, the Texas energy billionaire, had decided to start building wind farms big time. He ordered 667 wind generators, and started appearing in commercials on television, touting the many benefits of generating electricity with windmills.
It sounded pretty good, especially to a country boy and girl who were used to seeing windmills pump water back where they grew up.
Planning was about as far as it got with us, though. Those big windmills — at least the ones big enough to generate electricity — cost an arm and a leg, it turns out. The price of electricity has to be pretty high in order for it to pay off the loan if you plan to put the windmill on your credit card.
Pickens knows that, which is how he got to be a billionaire. He now has cut his windmill order in half, according to The Wall Street Journal, and he soon will be appearing on television commercials urging the government to help get the country on natural gas, for generating electricity and running vehicles.
You just can’t keep up with that guy.
It turns out that the prices for natural gas and even oil have been going down, and it is so cheap now to generate electricity with natural gas that wind turbines aren’t economical in comparison.
This has to be heartbreaking to those who want the country to use wind power for all its electrical needs, from cars to flat-screen TVs. Windmills don’t commit global warming, and environmentalists like that.
Of course, Pickens is not an environmentalist unless it suits him. That, too, is why he is a billionaire.
