Natural Gas & Wind Power - The Pickens Plan [View article]
Happy Cajun - - -
According to Paulk8756 there are 5,000,000 vehicles operating on NG today. I doubt that would be the case if it was not profitable. If I had a profitable gasoline business that I could milk for more profits using 20-40 year old infrastructure, I would not make an effort to try an alternative until some one started to compete for the business. Thus, the U.S. with only 150,000 NG vehicles is not yet offering any competition to gasoline. I see no conspiracy theory, unless you want to call managing your business to maximize profits one quarter and one year at a time a conspiracy.
To answer your Einstein question, maybe Pickens will create enough of a threat to turn the Einsteins loose. Once the use of NG for transportation reaches the critical mass in the U.S. I am sure we will go from the current 3% of NG vehicles in the world to a much larger percentage. When that has happened here I expect the rest of the world will have grown to much more than 5,000,000 NG vehicles.
Once the move starts it will be a tsunami.
Why hasn't NG caught on for 80 years? Try cheap and plentiful oil for a good reason. Now the relative costs have changed and appear to have changed permanently, or at least for up to 20 years after which NG costs may be rising faster due to supply constraints. In 20 years (or sooner) we should have another technology ready to take over, be it plug in electric, hydrogen fuel cell, or something else not on the radar today.
Natural Gas & Wind Power - The Pickens Plan [View article]
Good comments for the most part.
A few notes: (1) Pickens has said his plan is a 10-20 year stop gap until additional new energy technolgies are developed. (2) One of the individual wind plays not mentioned in the article is Vestas Wind Systems AS (VWDRY.PK) which I own. (3) A key element for electricity generation by variable sources such as wind and solar is electrical energy storage. Batteries and capacitors are an area that need a lot of R&D work. This area is also critical for the eventual ubiquitousness of plug-in electric cars. (4) As mentioned in the article and by several comments, energy is the largest economic challenge facing the U.S., larger than the size of the credit crisis, national debt and unfunded liabilities for Social Security/Medicare/Medi... combined. (5) New energy is also the great economic opportunity of the 21st century. It can have an impact equal to (or greater than) the railroad/industrial revolution of the 19th century and the internal combustion engine/petroleum driver of the 20th century.
Natural Gas & Wind Power - The Pickens Plan [View article]
According to Paulk8756 there are 5,000,000 vehicles operating on NG today. I doubt that would be the case if it was not profitable. If I had a profitable gasoline business that I could milk for more profits using 20-40 year old infrastructure, I would not make an effort to try an alternative until some one started to compete for the business. Thus, the U.S. with only 150,000 NG vehicles is not yet offering any competition to gasoline. I see no conspiracy theory, unless you want to call managing your business to maximize profits one quarter and one year at a time a conspiracy.
To answer your Einstein question, maybe Pickens will create enough of a threat to turn the Einsteins loose. Once the use of NG for transportation reaches the critical mass in the U.S. I am sure we will go from the current 3% of NG vehicles in the world to a much larger percentage. When that has happened here I expect the rest of the world will have grown to much more than 5,000,000 NG vehicles.
Once the move starts it will be a tsunami.
Why hasn't NG caught on for 80 years? Try cheap and plentiful oil for a good reason. Now the relative costs have changed and appear to have changed permanently, or at least for up to 20 years after which NG costs may be rising faster due to supply constraints. In 20 years (or sooner) we should have another technology ready to take over, be it plug in electric, hydrogen fuel cell, or something else not on the radar today.
Natural Gas & Wind Power - The Pickens Plan [View article]
A few notes:
(1) Pickens has said his plan is a 10-20 year stop gap until additional new energy technolgies are developed.
(2) One of the individual wind plays not mentioned in the article is Vestas Wind Systems AS (VWDRY.PK) which I own.
(3) A key element for electricity generation by variable sources such as wind and solar is electrical energy storage. Batteries and capacitors are an area that need a lot of R&D work. This area is also critical for the eventual ubiquitousness of plug-in electric cars.
(4) As mentioned in the article and by several comments, energy is the largest economic challenge facing the U.S., larger than the size of the credit crisis, national debt and unfunded liabilities for Social Security/Medicare/Medi... combined.
(5) New energy is also the great economic opportunity of the 21st century. It can have an impact equal to (or greater than) the railroad/industrial revolution of the 19th century and the internal combustion engine/petroleum driver of the 20th century.