Pickens sails away from wind energy, toward natural gas

Texas oil tycoon T. Boone Pickens has given up on plans to build a massive wind farm because of a lack of transmission lines, a bad capital market and the “steep downturn in natural gas prices.”

The much-heralded “Pickens Plan” to reduce the U.S.’s reliance on foreign oil is celebrating it’s one year anniversary, but this likely isn’t how Pickens – or wind energy advocates, for that matter – probably imagined it.

Pickens’ Web site said his goal is for the U.S. to produce 22 percent of its energy via wind. He still plans to go forward with smaller wind farms, but if Pickens isn’t willing to go head first into wind energy, many will follow the man known for taking calculated risks to acquire large companies and enter new industries.

But just because Pickens is downsizing his wind operations doesn’t mean he’s giving up on the green movement. He was seen in Washington recently driving a natural gas-fueled vehicle, and has to be excited about Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid’s bill to double incentives for natural gas vehicles.

“I think it will pass right after the August recess,” Pickens said this week in a Bloomberg Television interview.

Pickens drives the natural gas-powered Honda Civic GX, which the Environmental Protection Agency hails as the cleanest internal combustion vehicle.

But does Pickens even see natural gas as a good solution, or simply as the best option left? He even admits natural gas will only tide our nation’s gluttonous appetite for fuel.

“It is a bridge fuel to slash our oil dependence while buying us time to develop new technologies that will ultimately replace fossil transportation fuels,” the Pickens Plan says.

Essentially, natural gas is a temporary answer until things like wind energy can carry a good portion of the nation’s transportation burden. And with Pickens’ wind energy projects slowing once again, the day the U.S. isn’t tied to Middle East fossil fuels is also one step further away.