EnergyStar

2 New Wind Energy ETFs: A Comparison

In the first paragraph, the stock symbols for the 2 ETFs are reversed.

Nobody Cares How the Energy Crisis Gets Solved

We do care when the price of gas keeps going up year after year. We do care when global warming increases the destruction of our communities through "natural" weather pattern disruptions - and it keeps getting worse each year. After a while, enough people in the US will be affected where a critical mass will make it happen. In the past, oil companies + utilities would mount a furious propaganda campaign with megabucks right before the election to frighten the masses into leaving the status quo - so they can keep right on polluting the air. The status quo is how we got into this mess. After all, it is our right to pollute and its "cheaper" this way. It is interesting that no one wants to live anywhere near a refinery. Talking about energy without pricing in its environmental damage is just more enablement of an foul addiction.

Implementing Pickens' Plan for Public Energy Policy

The price of NG to my home has increased roughly 5X in the last 6 years. If we increase NG demand dramatically as in the Pickens Plan, NG prices would likely keep on increasing (even faster?). Maybe we should learn from what happened to food prices when corn became a US ethanol answer to cleaner air, and lower cost gasoline.

Pickens is subtly highlighting the need for a new infrastructure to support adding renewables like windmills in rural / out of the way locations. Using the size of the US (and possibly Canada and Mexico too), wind will be blowing somewhere all of the time and those windmills can supply energy to where it is needed - if we can ship it efficiently. A national (international?) grid would benefit everyone (rural and city) but due to the expense and size of this massive project, it would take the US Gov. to fund and expedite. And voters resolve!

When I look at adding the monthly cost of fueling my car to the ROI for solar panels (in Los Angeles), it drops my breakeven period from 14 years to 7. Electric cars are looking better and better.

This approach takes advantage of ever improving efficiencies of wind turbines and photovolatic solar technologies. Take a look at the dramatic improvement in power generation with each generation of windmill (going back to 1995) and follow that trend out 5 - 10 years into the future. Pickens is using 6 MW windmills. With a national grid and supporting policy, groups / cities could fund adding a windmill in a remote rural location to pay for their power usage.