Don't help, but help

DEAL SPIN: Berkshire Hathaway's MidAmerican Energy is building windmills under David Sokol.





Mr. Sokol is considered a top candidate to one day succeed Mr. Buffett, and his rising status at Berkshire puts a spotlight on his company's wind-power plans. MidAmerican has spent about $4 billion on wind projects and has billions more in the pipeline to finance wind and other alternative-energy projects around the country.

Sokol is CEO of MidAmerican Energy. Wind power will be viable if fossil fuel prices go higher, as Buffet is said to believe will happen.

Messrs. Buffett and Sokol aren't on an environmental crusade. MidAmerican owns a vast number of coal-fired power plants, among the biggest emitters of greenhouse gases. Electric-power companies in the U.S. produce about 40% of the country's energy-related carbon-dioxide emissions, according to Energy Department data.

Fair enough. They're in business to make money for their companies.

Earlier this year, Mr. Sokol testified before Congress against legislation supported by many environmentalists to establish a market to trade carbon credits, arguing it would "impose a huge and unacceptable double cost on customers."

Government should stay out of the market, for its presence is onerous. Banks and Wall Street said the same thing, o, three years ago.

Mr. Sokol, who has said the wind-power industry still requires government support, also is trying to solve one of the longstanding problems of alternative energy -- how to store excess energy when the wind is blowing and transmit energy when it isn't.

But whilst the government shoiuld stay out of the market, lest it hamper competition and the American people, it should subsidize the market this capitalist is in to make a profit. Curious logic it is: stay out, but help.

T. Boone & Democrats: gas & wind

Well, it answers one question I had when I first read about Boone Pickens's proposal to use natural gas as a substitute for petroleum and wind power as a substitute for gas: where'll all that gas come from?

The United States imports about 65 percent of its oil, costing the country about $700 billion a year, Mr. Pickens says. By comparison, most of its natural gas comes from North American sources.

Most is a loose word, not terribly specific, although generally assumed to mean more than half, maybe even much more than half.

Now, Boone is something of a slippery character: Mr. Pickens once gave millions to a group that undermined U.S. Sen. John Kerry's Vietnam War service and offered $1 million to anyone who could prove that the Swift Boat group's charges against the presidential candidate were false. Now he's stopped donating to such groups as he preaches a clean-energy gospel that's won over Democrats such as Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid.

Now he's seen the light, and won't do the Swift Boat thing?

"I can be most effective as a nonpartisan, and I think the Democrats know me to be an honorable person," Mr. Pickens said Friday, adding that he's talked to Al Gore and the two agreed on "95 percent of what we talked about."

Wonder what that 5% is; intriguing: Boone agrees with Al Gore on 95% of things? Dang. Still, though, Boone Pickens is a business man, and his latest venture is wind energy.

His ideas align perfectly with his business ventures, which appears to make Democrats enthusiastic – not cynical – about his pitch. "If Pickens can show it's very profitable, that's a very important point," said Daniel J. Weiss, director of climate strategy for the Center for American Progress, a liberal think tank. "That will help steer investors toward those kinds of investments."

T. Boone is back

He made a fortune in petroleum. Now he is moving on.

A renewable energy company founded by billionaire T. Boone Pickens said Thursday it's buying 667 wind turbines from General Electric Co. to start what it expects will be the world's largest wind energy project.

The project's $2 billion first phase — one of four planned — will make enough to power more than 300,000 average U.S. homes. When completed in 2014, it will become the world's largest wind energy project, with more than 4,000 megawatts of electricity, enough for 1.3 million homes, Mesa Power said.

The deal is a major investment for Fairfield-based GE, which in January announced it would focus more efforts on building its renewable investment business because of the high price of oil. GE has called renewable energy its fastest-growing business.