Pickens Plan is Great News for Inventors
In the past couple of weeks, billionaire oil tycoon T. Boone Pickens has been saturating the media with his plan to wean the United States off of our dependence upon foreign oil. If your television has been on this past month there is a good chance that you have seen his commercial. In case you haven’t seen it, or haven’t been paying attention, here is his first commercial:
Pickens believes that he has found a way to make money from alternative energy sources, and has even laid his own money on the table to build the world’s largest wind farm. Now Boone is putting in the money and effort to convince other potential investors and the government to follow his plan.
Great news for inventors
One of the major points in the Pickens Plan is the influx of money to the research and development of alternative energy technologies. There is going to be an even greater demand for brilliant ideas to improve wind, natural gas, and solar technologies. Despite having a huge amount of potential, these technologies have been hindered by a serious lack of funding. Pickens will hopefully spark the funding needed to really release the full potential of energies such as wind and solar.
I like to think huge, but most of us unfortunately do not have the means to develop huge grid powering wind turbines or solar plants. I think there will also be a great demand for alternative energy sources for much smaller applications. For example, Jay Leno powers his car garage on a small wind turbine. More houses are installing solar panels in an effort to provide green residences. Most experts on wind and solar energy believe that we are harnessing only a small amount of the total power capacity potential with our current technology. This means there is a ton of room for improvement, and opportunities for inventors everywhere.
Learn more about Pickens Plan
If you are interested in learning more about the Pickens Plan, visit the website http://www.pickensplan.com. You will find explanations of the plan, many videos of Pickens on TV talking about it, news, and social media ways to follow Pickens.
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July 23rd, 2008 at 3:52 am
How does him making millions or billions off his investments in wind farms and natural gas powered cars help inventors? this guy isn’t in this for noble gestures.. he’s in it to make as much money as he can and he’s using the media hype and govt. to push his plans to make even more money.
Billionaires don’t help Joe Average for free.. they’re in it for big profit.
July 23rd, 2008 at 4:41 am
Like I said in the post, part of Pickens Plan is to push money into the research and development of alternative energies. This is good news because the largest road block in developing alternative energy is a lack of funding. The perception has always been that alternative energies are bad investments, hence the term alternative. Pickens is important because he is the big stereotypical oil tycoon that can change this perception, and convince more investors to pump money into the development of these technologies.
Pickens has been very clear that yes indeed he does intend to make money, and again for this venture he must invest money to make money. But just because he has taken a very right wing capitalist approach to the issue, does not mean that he is not solving a serious crisis. In my opinion, he is doing a better job of solving the crisis by directly addressing the roots the problem than the liberals who are putting their faith in good documentaries.
That is probably an unfair statement towards liberals, but without capitalists there is no one to fund the ideas proposed in films like “An Inconvenient Truth.” The involvement of Al Gore in recent meetings with Pickens is yet another indication that this guy is on the right track, despite any underlying motives.
As for Billionaires not helping Joe Average for free, I want you to know that philanthropy is not dead among billionaires. In fact I look up to many billionaires like Bill Gates who are actively helping the little guys, and I aspire to become a billionaire so that I can do the same.
July 24th, 2008 at 7:16 am
actually, i just feel that this invention is beautiful!!!!=p
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July 24th, 2008 at 10:47 pm
More work needs to be done to make wind and solar power more reliable. The cost to generate power isn’t as much of an issue for power companies as is the ability to predict the amount of power available from that source.
Wind and solar farms need to capture the power and then feed it to the power grid in a predictable pattern.
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