An III wind.(Editorial)

T BOONE PICKENS, THE TEXAS oil billionaire, has scrapped his plans to build a giant wind farm in the Texas panhandle. Ordinarily, that probably wouldn't bother us much.

But Pickens' commitment to wind energy could have been a big plus for Arkansas, which has hopes of becoming a mecca for wind turbine makers.

Only one of the four wind energy-related entities announced for Arkansas in the last 18 months or so is up and running, and it, LM Glasfiber, has had to cut jobs because of the recession.

Pickens blamed the power project going south on the difficulty of getting credit for it in the current economy, but just as big a problem was the lack of heavy transmission lines needed to link any wind generators to the power grid.

He's got 667 wind turbines (worth $2 billion) on order for what was to be a $10 billion, 4,000-megawatt complex. He says he will try to find other projects for them.

The recession has hurt wind turbine manufacturers and wind farm developers.

Pickens remains committed to wind energy as well as other alternative energy sources and we're glad of that. Someday we will need it.

Print Get the Mag Weekly Updates