The plan buys time—"time to develop a renewable fuel that breaks our dependency on foreign oil," Pickens says in one ad.
The first major step would be to build an enormous belt of wind farms stretching from Texas to Canada—the "Saudi Arabia of wind power," in Pickens parlance.
Pickens has already jumpstarted this process, building the world's largest wind farm in Texas.
If completed, the wind farm belt could provide the 20 percent of U.S. electricity currently produced by natural gas, Pickens says.
The plan comes with a staggering price tag, even by Pickens's own estimates: a trillion U.S. dollars in privately funded investments.
But he says it's a bargain compared to business as usual—spending some $700 billion a year on foreign oil—though that number is falling as oil prices plunge during the current financial crisis.
Gridlock?
Despite the high costs, Pickens touts the economic growth the expanded wind farm industry could provide.
Even after the farms are built, though, a revamped—and extremely expensive—power grid would be needed.
The prime locations for wind farms are in remote regions with limited or no electric infrastructure, so new construction would be needed to provide ways to move electricity from the farms to population centers.
Pickens estimates the transmission infrastructure could cost another $200 billion—an effort he likened to the government-funded construction of the U.S. interstate highway system, which kicked off under President Dwight D. Eisenhower. Between 1958 and 1991 the interstate project cost an estimated $128 billion, with the federal government paying about 90 percent of the cost, according to the U.S. Federal Highway Administration.
Upgrading the grid is likely to be a hurdle for any major renewable-energy project, according to David Pumphrey, deputy director of the Energy and National Security Program at the Center for Strategic and International Studies (CSIS) in Washington, D.C.
"If you want to do renewables, which seems to be a widely accepted strategy, you've got to build out and strengthen the grid. And it's going to cost quite a bit of money to do that."
Not to mention that the wind doesn't always blow.
Neal Elliott, associate director for research at the American Council for an Energy-Efficient Economy (ACEEE) in Washington, D.C., said, "Wind is not there all the time, and that [inconsistency] tends to be a problem with most renewable energy sources.
"It may or may not be producing at times coinciding with peak demand periods."
Stockpiling electricity generated by wind farms may be an option, though proposed methods—such as storing the power in batteries, hydrogen fuel cells, or as compressed air underground—are expensive, inefficient, or largely untested.
The inconsistency of wind energy underscores one reason it might not be wise to take natural gas out of the U.S. utilities mix, as the Pickens Plan recommends.
Coal and nuclear power, for example, aren't flexible enough to be as quickly ramped up to match demand surges. (See a green guide to cutting the costs of coal.)
According to the Pickens Plan Web site, Pickens maintains that it's unlikely large areas of the sprawling corridor would be windless at the same time. He also advocates keeping some amount of natural gas in power production for demand spikes.
Pickens Plan spokespeople did not return repeated phone calls requesting comment.
Choices at the Pump?
Pickens's plan to employ natural gas for everyday transportation is perhaps even more controversial than his wind farm plan.
The primary hurdle is a lack of natural gas filling stations and a fuel infrastructure to support them.
For example, natural gas must be transported in special high-pressure cylinders, and liquefied natural gas must be kept cold in thermal tanks. Traditional gasoline pumps and nozzles can't be used for natural gas, which requires that nozzles and vehicle receptacles lock together to form a sealed system during refueling.
Many fleet vehicles—city buses and delivery trucks, for example—already operate on compressed natural gas, or CNG.
Pickens points out that natural gas today powers about 1 in 5 U.S. public transit buses and more than 8.5 million vehicles worldwide.
"The idea of using natural gas in trucks, port areas, buses—anywhere you have a fleet that stays on a known route and distribution—probably makes sense," CSIS's Pumphrey said.
But private consumers don't always travel set routes and would rely on widespread—and for now largely nonexistent—CNG fueling stations. So it would take a multibillion-dollar infrastructure shift to make the fuel a convenient alternative for the family car.
Pickens hopes to start with a somewhat cheaper, smaller infrastructure for vehicles that are driven on predictable routes.
For example, almost one of every three barrels of foreign oil ends up powering cargo-carrying tractor-trailers, according to Pickens. He believes that converting those vehicles alone over the next decade would cut U.S. oil imports by nearly 30 percent.
Back to Russia and Iran?
Questions persist about the wisdom of a large-scale shift from gasoline to another nonrenewable fossil fuel for cars.
Pickens suggests that North America may have enough natural gas in reserve to meet demand for the next century. But others disagree.
ACEEE's Elliott, for example, is "not convinced that there is as much excess natural gas capacity in the marketplace, at an affordable price, as Mr. Pickens would have you believe."
With coal prices rising—and coal use possibly facing environmentally motivated surcharges—there may be a surge in demand for natural gas power worldwide.
"The biggest supplies in the world are in Russia and Iran," Pumphrey added—countries that Pickens says we should stop depending on for energy.
"Eventually you get back to those sources, and you may have some of the same security concerns you see now—just years or decades later," Pumphrey said.
"What's the Point of Natural Gas Cars?"
In the current economic climate, there is just no money to pay for a Pickens Plan, according to Vaclav Smil, a professor of environment, earth, and resources at the University of Manitoba in Canada.
Besides, Smil said, there are simpler solutions, like lighter and more efficient vehicles.
"What's the point of making natural gas cars?" Smil asked.
"Why not simply drive highly efficient, old-fashioned internal combustion engines? If everybody drove a Honda Civic, we wouldn't need oil from the Middle East.
"If everyone used a 97 percent efficient natural gas furnace, we'd be giving natural gas away," he added.
"That could save much more than Pickens. Within ten years you could use massive natural gas savings to produce clean electricity and then use that to drive all-electric vehicles."
(See "Even Modest Increases in MPG Can Equal Big Gas Savings" [July 2, 2008].)
Too Simple?
Dave Hamilton is the director of the Global Warming and Energy Program at the Sierra Club, which supports the Pickens Plan.
Hamilton said ambitious thinking and big plans are exactly what's needed to solve the United States' energy issues.
"We are very supportive of large-scale expansion of wind power, because it will ultimately give us more latitude to address our energy needs," he said.
By forcing a revamped power grid into being, he said, wind power could also pay dividends for later development of alternative technologies, like all-electric vehicles.
"A rapid transition to plug-ins is going to mean more of a demand on our [current] 50 percent coal-fired power grid," Hamilton said.
"There are certain problems that we need to solve in sequence. And how we get clean electric is right at the top of that list."
The Sierra Club also supports widespread transition to natural gas as a car fuel, though Hamilton admits it's not perfect.
"It is a fossil fuel and it does emit carbon dioxide [a greenhouse gas associated with global warming], so it's not a panacea," he said.
But CNG, he said, "can reduce emissions and give you time to figure out how to cut emissions more drastically. … "
ACEEE's Elliott said the Pickens Plan is too simple to be true, and refers to a quote by early 20th-century U.S. essayist H.L. Mencken.
"He said, 'There is always an easy solution to every human problem—neat, plausible, and wrong.'
"I think anybody who offers a simple solution is probably ultimately doing a disservice," Elliott said.
But Pickens maintains that a real plan must be put in motion soon, and he says his plan is currently the only one that replaces rhetoric with reality. He and his million-plus-member New Energy Army march on, undaunted by skepticism and committed to convincing U.S. leaders to act boldly on alternative energy.
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