Oilman T. Boone Pickens has been touting his new energy plan on TV and the internet, promising that implementing his ideas would remove our "reliance on foreign oil".  One part of that plan involved moving from gasoline to compressed natural gas as the main fuel for automobiles; that was discussed in Slim Pickens, Part 1.  The other main component of the "Pickens Plan" is to convert approximately one-fifth of our electricity generation from natural gas to wind power (thus freeing up the natural gas for use in automobiles).

Pickens claims that "the United States is the Saudi Arabia of wind power", and that "building wind facilities in the corridor that stretches from the Texas panhandle to North Dakota could produce 20% of the electricity for the United States".  But here's the kicker:  by Pickens's own admission, building the wind turbines necessary to produce 20% of our electricity would come at a cost of $1 trillion.  Yes, that's "trillion" with a "t".  He calculates an additional $200 billion in cost to build the transmission capacity to get the electricity to consumers.  I don't know if he's including in these costs the amount of property that would have to be confiscated from private individuals, but even if that is included in his financial cost, there is a serious landowners' rights issue there.

Pickens claims that even at $1.2 trillion dollars, his plan for wind turbines is a "bargain" because we currently spend so much money on "foreign oil" (he claims $700 billion annually).  But in making this claim, he seems to forget that good economics implies finding the most efficient allocation of scarce resources.  He is making an argument similar to that made by those who try to claim that destructive disasters (e.g., hurricanes, terrorists attacks, etc.) can actually impart a net positive economic impact because they can spur investment in otherwise cash-strapped areas.  This argument was made, for example, about New Orleans following Hurricane Katrina.  What this argument ignores is that the money invested in such enterprises has alternate uses.  Instead of "investing" $1.2 trillion in wind energy, buying property, building turbines, and laying the infrastructure to transmit the energy, perhaps some other entity can use the money saved by purchasing the cheaper current petroleum-based energy system to find a more efficient and effective alternative energy source.  Wind power is simply not economically feasible without considerable government subsidy and tax credits; were it the best alternative, the market would be moving in that direction in order to reap major profits, rather than having to be goading by government carrot-and-stick.

Ultimately, that's the main problem with all these alternative "plans" periodically proposed by self-identified elites:  the economics don't work without government interference.  Oil and gas became the backbone of 20th century energy and industrialization because they quite simply provided the best, most effective, most economically efficient alternatives, and the market thusly responded.  While we can't "drill our way out" of our current situation, we can go after the resources we know we have — oil and gas in such locations as the Outer Continental Shelf and northern Alaska, among others — while entrepreneurs continue to attempt to develop the energy and industrialization backbone for the next 100 years.  Mr. Pickens is obviously a successful businessman; he should understand better than most that the best alternative to "foreign oil" will more likely come from someone seeking a profit motive rather than from a government program.