Regarding Q&A with T. Boone Pickens (Dialog, Aug. 10):
T. Boone Pickens' recommendations to reduce reliance on imported fossil fuels were pretty much on the money. Perhaps the only clinker was his comment that taxes on fuel should be raised to help drive consumption downward and motivate conversion to hybrid vehicles and locally generated power for such items as air conditioning. Why? Because no politician can get elected today with a policy to increase taxes on petroleum-based fuel. It would require a massive education campaign to make these taxes and the resulting price increases acceptable to the voting public.
Other things could be cited as a means to reduce our dependence on imported petroleum. Locally generated power to drive air-conditioning units could be coupled with smart metering by the local power companies, and the summer utility load on the power companies goes down. Even now, solar panels to heat water in one's home could go far in reducing the load on natural gas supplies; the technology has been around for more than a century. The efficiency isn't great and the pay-back time long, but increase the price of natural gas enough and . . .
There are lots of local roofs for solar panels in our suburbs. But cost-benefit analyses (including answers to questions of who pays and who benefits) need to be performed before embarking on any and all of these policies. Corn-to-ethanol comes to mind as an example in which such analyses were inadequately performed. Another idea is to match intermittent power generation (solar, wind) with industrial processes that have intermittent energy needs and product storage capacity. Water desalination comes to mind.
Strategic petroleum reserve? Hands off – our military security needs it now and for years to come. Finally and most important, the popular resistance to nuclear power plants must be overcome. While I realize that most environmentalists would just as soon see our population decline instead of grow, the faster the better, I really don't think that to be in the nation's interest.
BOB RINGLAND
Del Mar
Your interview with T. Boone Pickens helps him promote wind power as it if really could be the solution. I hope so, but there are two crucial questions about his scheme that did not get asked:
One, where does electricity come from when the wind doesn't blow? Covering North Dakota with wind turbines might be a good use of the place, but even there it's not windy all the time. The same with solar power. That raises the difficult second question of storage. Electricity doesn't sit around. It is a flow of electrons that are generated and consumed simultaneously.
So the key to a practical electricity system is having a way to store it in some stable “sit and wait” form, then convert it to electricity at exactly the right time in exactly the needed quantity. Electricity generated by wind or sunshine is not an energy we can control in this way.
The classic answer is to put it in batteries for later use, but they are big, heavy chemical systems that have their own issues. One reason electric cars are expensive and have limited power and range is their massive batteries. Another method is to use generated electricity to store physical energy, such as pumping water uphill to a mountain reservoir, essentially storing gravity, so the water can later be allowed to flow downhill, spinning electricity-generating turbines (as at Hoover Dam). Consider how many Lake Meads/Hoover Dams would be needed, or picture massive battery farms covering Imperial County.
I'd like to know if Pickens has a true solution to the difficult generate/store/use electricity cycle or just a generation-method business venture he's trying to promote.
JOHN HAWKINS
Poway
Regarding T. Boone Pickens and others pushing wind and solar energy, keep in mind these folks are also driven to make money, which in a capitalist society is OK. What I would like to know is where are all the environmentalists who want to preserve the pristine nature of our country. In California, there are groups to preserve our deserts, much to the dismay of people who enjoy camping, dune buggies, etc. Yet it would apparently be OK to cover many miles of desert with reflecting mirrors, solar panels, etc.
When traveling to San Francisco or Palm Springs you can see huge windmill farms that are certainly a visual blight on the countryside. Can you imagine rows of windmills along the Torrey Pines bluffs, the hills and mesas of San Diego, or in the beautiful upper highlands of the Lagunas? Not only are they a visual blight but they are noisy. The Sunrise Power Link would have less of an adverse environmental impact.
But apparently that visual and audible blight is OK to the environmentalists opposed to drilling in remote regions of Alaska where nobody lives and where north slope oil production shows it can be done in an environmentally safe manner. Or offshore drilling that has been shown to be safe and where most rigs are far enough out to sea that they can't be seen from shore. Just think of all the products we enjoy that are made from gas and oil and have worldwide markets.
We should also remember that electricity has no world market; it can't be sold to overseas countries. The only market is us, so get out your wallet.
EARL F. KRAPP
San Diego
Regarding “Pickens' way out/Plan to wean U.S. off foreign oil makes sense” (Editorial, July 26):
Your support of T. Boone Pickens' trillion-dollar wind farm ignores a couple of central problems. No wind, no power. Until a power storage facility, like batteries, is developed, wind power is unreliable. Transmission over power lines causes a loss of power. The more distant the user is from the source the greater the loss of power. New power lines must be built that would require eminent domain. With current fears and attitudes this would be a difficult, costly and lengthy task.
JIM REID
San Diego
