Discuss these critiques of the Pickens Plan
Hello all. I recently heard several critiques of the Pickens Plan that seemed sound to me. So I would like to hear from you a rebuttal to these points. (I am asking this as someone who is very enthusiastic about the Pickens Plan, but always interested in the "other side" of the argument as well.) These rebuttals come from the testimony which followed that of Mr. Pickens' before the Senate.
(1) Assuming that we generate the equivalent of ~22% of our current electrical demand from Wind, there is no mechanism by which we can dictate that the "freed up" natural gas moves to the transportation sector. For example, the Wind power could displace Coal instead - it really depends on the underlying economics.
(2) The United States only has about 3% of the world's proven and unproven reserves of natural gas. The nations that have most of it? It's the very same nations that currently have most of the world's oil. So is a dependence on natural gas actually any better, from the geo-political / security standpoint?
Thanks and I look forward to your replies.
(1) Assuming that we generate the equivalent of ~22% of our current electrical demand from Wind, there is no mechanism by which we can dictate that the "freed up" natural gas moves to the transportation sector. For example, the Wind power could displace Coal instead - it really depends on the underlying economics.
(2) The United States only has about 3% of the world's proven and unproven reserves of natural gas. The nations that have most of it? It's the very same nations that currently have most of the world's oil. So is a dependence on natural gas actually any better, from the geo-political / security standpoint?
Thanks and I look forward to your replies.
Tags: Pickens, Plan, Senate, criticism, debate, hearing
Views: 28
Replies to This Discussion
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Permalink Reply by Piers Sutton on -
1) If the price of gas remains high, and I'm making an assumption it's a higher profit good than natural gas, the shift should occur naturally.
2) If we're just shifting the 22% nothing has changed with respect to natural gas consumption has it?
It's certainly true that this plan is not a complete fix, but rather a step in the right direction so it is good to consider the downsides. I still like the notion of sticking thin-film solar all over the wind generator surfaces and such :)
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Permalink Reply by SJC on -
The objective may be to reduce oil consumption. The strategy seems to be use natural gas that is offset by wind power. The tactics of how we convert all those vehicles is left to people's imagination. The principle is a sound one. If we do not use as much natural gas in power plants, we can use it in cars. The real trick is the implementation.
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Permalink Reply by Bob Bancroft on -
Thanks everyone for the replies. I wanted to clarify what is meant by the first criticism.
Let us assume we are ten years down the road and we are generating the equivalent of 22% of today's electricity demand from wind.
What is certain is that this 22% has displaced something.
But how do you know what it will displace? For example - it might displace coal. This all depends on the relative costs of the energy sources. If it displaced coal, you would be left in a situation where you are generating the 22% of electricty from wind, still generating 22% of electricity from natural gas, but instead of 50% coal you're down to 30%. And you have failed to "free up" natural gas for use in the transportation sector.
Now if you have mandated large fleets and government vehicles to run on natural gas, but the NG is still used for electricty, all you will have succeeded in doing is driving up the cost of NG.
That is the point of this criticism. And I don't have a good rebuttal for it. I don't see a policy or economic tool that you could use to assure yourself that natural gas is displaced by wind, as opposed to other fuels. We can argue that wind is a better source than either coal or natural gas, anyway, so no matter what we have done some good for the environment. True. But we won't have lessened our dependence on foreign oil, and that is the primary objective of the plan.
I would really like to hear a good counter-argument to this.
I think to answer it, we would need to know the relative cost to produce electricity using coal and natural gas. Whichever is the most expensive would be the one most likely displaced by new wind power. Does anyone have that information?
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Permalink Reply by Dale Nelson on -
Natural gas can be produced from sewerage, landfills and factory farms. If the price for NG rises, as it would under this plan, more people who have the available means of production would be encouraged to produce more NG. The plan addresses a very clear problem: those who could produce NG don't because of the low price and uncertain demand. It makes something that is not of interest into a profit center..IE: hog poop.
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Permalink Reply by Lock Piatt on -
Bob
This is why TBP said after he met with congress "I am for drilling, I am for solar, I am for wind, I am for nuclear, I am for any source that can be used to reduce dependence on foreign oil spending. In other words "DO IT ALL AND DO IT NOW".
The free market will sort out the winners and loser just as it has since the beginning of time and bartering.
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Permalink Reply by SJC on
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If it replaces coal all the better. We reduce particulates, sulfur, mercury and huge carbon emissions. We will not run out of natural gas. Methane can be produced by gasification of biomass. There are 1 billion tons of biomass each year that could produce 150 billion therms or more than enough to run 100 million cars.
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Permalink Reply by Lock Piatt on
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SJC
biomass fuel is years away from mass production and it can create water shortages in some areas. It is a great alternative fuel by we need time to make it real. TBP said we need a bridge to the new energy option and CNG is the only real alternative to gasoline NOW. CNG is widely available with pipe to most houses already, service stations can add compressors for a small investment that could be offset with tax credits to encourage converstion.
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Permalink Reply by SJC on
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I am talking about gasified cellulose biofuels which take very little water and you seem to be talking about fermented biofuels that do. If you read my posts I have been talking about gasification of cellulose biomass to synthetic biofuels.
BTW,
Please turn off the bold lettering, it is not necessary.
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Permalink Reply by Lock Piatt on
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I am old and do not see well. The cellulose materials take water and C02 to grow.
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Permalink Reply by Kenneth Morris on -
I recently sold a house in the midwest which had been in the family for nearly 100 years. All the homes there are heated by natural gas. I watched the cost of heating that house increase by 300% and it's still rising. It was so expensive the cost of heating the place was killing us. They told me that the reason NG is so expensive is because of the cost of transporting it was huge. This also seems to be the trouble with wind generation as well. The cost of a transmission line can be as much as a million dollars per mile. The cost of transporting energy is the real problem, not the energy itself.
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Permalink Reply by Bob Bancroft on
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I'm not sure I understand why transmission of wind-generated electricity would be any different from transmission of coal-generated electrcity.
Once it's electricy, it's eletricity. It doesn't matter how it was created.
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Permalink Reply by Mike H on -
Regarding what is displaced, I think we know that the market will adapt to changes based solely on economics. So, generating more electricity will reduce its price, possibly making it more attractive than coal and/or NG. Also, lots of homes heat with oil, so there could be an impact there too. It would be interesting to know the numbers here regarding cost of producing electricity by different means. If the cost differential is big enough and the volume is there, coal and NG fired plants may be forced out of the market.
I think the bottom line is, investing in wind and solar power on a large scale should help on a number of fronts, and it is worthwhile pursuing it. High volume production of these products (wind turbines and solar panels) will lead to decreases in production costs, making this route even more attractive not only for the US but also for other countries, especially developing countries that have these types of resources (sun/wind).
TBP states that we don't have to wait for wind to displace NG power generation. The problem I have is I don't understand how a move to private vehicles burning NG will take place. It's a chicken/egg problem when you have no infrastructure to fill them up and because of that, nobody has any reason to purchase these vehicles. I would like to get some detail on how it could happen.
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