In a sign of the difficulties facing the development of wind energy, the legendary Texas oilman T. Boone Pickens is suspending plans to build the world’s largest wind farm.
Over the near term, Pickens instead plans to build three or four smaller wind farms, at a cost of some US$2 billion.
He said that he was unsure whether he would ever revive the giant wind project in the Texas Panhandle that has been on the drawing board for years.
“I think at this point anything’s possible,” he said in an interview.
Pickens cited several factors that caused him to alter his plans, including lack of transmission lines and a fall-off in the price of natural gas, with which wind competes as a power source.
The project was also hurt by the financial turmoil that has stymied activity across the once-popular renewable energy industry.
“Everything kind of slowed us down,” Pickens said.
Pickens’s struggles are symptomatic of a broader reversal of fortune for wind developers.
This year, Emerging Energy Research, a consulting firm, expects a drop of nearly 25 percent in the amount of new wind power installed compared with last year.
Two crucial provisions to aid renewable energy in the stimulus package passed in February have yet to be introduced, Keith Martin, a tax and project finance specialist with the law firm Chadbourne & Parke, said.
“People expect that once supply of capital picks up and stimulus rolls out, that things will improve in the second half of the year,” Martin said. “But they’re waiting.”
Pickens’ situation is of particular interest because he has spent much of the last year advocating an energy plan that includes increasing to 20 percent the amount of the nation’s electricity that is supplied by wind power.
In his vision, that would free up natural gas now used to generate power so that it could be used in cars, reducing the nation’s dependence on foreign oil. (Currently, wind accounts for just 1 percent of the US’ electricity.)
For the huge wind farm he had planned in Texas, Pickens had already ordered 687 large wind turbines from General Electric, to be delivered starting in 2011.
But transmission lines being built by the state were unlikely to reach the location he has leased until 2013, so he needed to put the turbines elsewhere.
Pickens had once planned to build his own transmission lines, but difficulty in finding financing amid the credit crisis forced him to shelve that plan.
Possible locations for the 687 turbines include Wisconsin, Oklahoma, Kansas, Texas and Alberta, Canada, Pickens said.
Collectively, at a capacity of 1,000 megawatts — about the size of a nuclear plant — his project would still amount to a substantial investment in wind power.
He had planned his Panhandle wind farm at 4,000 megawatts.
“We’re going to be active in the business,” Pickens said.
“It’s not that we’ve gotten out of the business or anything like that,” he said.
ROLLER-COASTER RIDE: More than five earthquakes ranging from magnitude 4.4 to 5.5 on the Richter scale shook eastern Taiwan in rapid succession yesterday afternoon Back-to-back weather fronts are forecast to hit Taiwan this week, resulting in rain across the nation in the coming days, the Central Weather Administration said yesterday, as it also warned residents in mountainous regions to be wary of landslides and rockfalls. As the first front approached, sporadic rainfall began in central and northern parts of Taiwan yesterday, the agency said, adding that rain is forecast to intensify in those regions today, while brief showers would also affect other parts of the nation. A second weather system is forecast to arrive on Thursday, bringing additional rain to the whole nation until Sunday, it
LANDSLIDES POSSIBLE: The agency advised the public to avoid visiting mountainous regions due to more expected aftershocks and rainfall from a series of weather fronts A series of earthquakes over the past few days were likely aftershocks of the April 3 earthquake in Hualien County, with further aftershocks to be expected for up to a year, the Central Weather Administration (CWA) said yesterday. Based on the nation’s experience after the quake on Sept. 21, 1999, more aftershocks are possible over the next six months to a year, the agency said. A total of 103 earthquakes of magnitude 4 on the local magnitude scale or higher hit Hualien County from 5:08pm on Monday to 10:27am yesterday, with 27 of them exceeding magnitude 5. They included two, of magnitude
CONDITIONAL: The PRC imposes secret requirements that the funding it provides cannot be spent in states with diplomatic relations with Taiwan, Emma Reilly said China has been bribing UN officials to obtain “special benefits” and to block funding from countries that have diplomatic ties with Taiwan, a former UN employee told the British House of Commons on Tuesday. At a House of Commons Foreign Affairs Committee hearing into “international relations within the multilateral system,” former Office of the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights (OHCHR) employee Emma Reilly said in a written statement that “Beijing paid bribes to the two successive Presidents of the [UN] General Assembly” during the two-year negotiation of the Sustainable Development Goals. Another way China exercises influence within the UN Secretariat is
Taiwan’s first drag queen to compete on the internationally acclaimed RuPaul’s Drag Race, Nymphia Wind (妮妃雅), was on Friday crowned the “Next Drag Superstar.” Dressed in a sparkling banana dress, Nymphia Wind swept onto the stage for the final, and stole the show. “Taiwan this is for you,” she said right after show host RuPaul announced her as the winner. “To those who feel like they don’t belong, just remember to live fearlessly and to live their truth,” she said on stage. One of the frontrunners for the past 15 episodes, the 28-year-old breezed through to the final after weeks of showcasing her unique