>>Oil tycoon Pickens backs wind
The June issue of Fast Company runs an interview with T. Boone Pickens, the Texas oil tycoon who announced last month a plan to build 4,000 megawatts of wind turbines in West Texas, complete with his own transmission lines.
Pickens is out outspoken about peak oil, imported oil, global warming, gas taxes, production tax credits and ethanol, among other subjects. He wants the renewable energy tax credit renewed. He predicts that gasoline will sell for $6 to $8 per gallon within five years and advocates a gas tax to suppress demand. He thinks generous support for domestic ethanol is better than sending $700 billion a year out of the country for imported oil. He thinks we can supply nearly all of our incremental need for electricity through development of wind power.
And over the weekend he told Living on Earth “I think solar will be next, and I hope I’m still around to be in the solar deal.”
>>Khosla: Non-food biofuel coming soon, at $2 per gallon
Saturday’s San Francisco Chronicle ran a solid interview with venture capitalist Vinod Khosla, a co-founder of Sun Microsystems and now a partner at Kleiner, Perkins. Khosla is now heavily invested in concentrated solar power and biofuels.
Among other topics, Khosla discussed the current panic over corn-based ethanol. He said the role of ethanol in driving up food prices is “overblown.” In fact, he attributed much of the fuss to a misinformation campaign by threatened oil companies:
I have no question that in 10 years, there’s no way oil will be able to compete with biofuels. Even in five years. Now it will take a long time to scale biofuels, but I’m the only one in the world forecasting oil dropping in price to $35 a barrel by 2030. I’ll put it on the record: Oil will not be able to compete with cellulosic biofuels. If you do it from food, the food will get so expensive you can’t make fuel out of it.
Food prices have been going up. Biofuels are a very minor contributor to that. But there are massive PR campaigns trying to ascribe most of the blame to biofuels. The fact is, by far the largest contributor to food-price inflation is oil prices. Biofuels are less than 15 percent of it.
Nonetheless, Khosla said, turning corn into ethanol makes no economic sense when cheaper, non-food feedstocks are available. He hopes, within five years, to sell a non-petroleum, non-food-based motor fuel that can retail at $1.99. He’ll distribute it through Wal-Mart, thus competing directly with the oil companies. –Seth Masia
