So far, the plan hasn’t made Pickens money. It’s cost him. When he came up with the plan, he launched a $43 million television and Internet campaign to build a grassroots army.

And he says that army is still active. It’s knit together by a website created by Pickens and regular email updates from the Texas oilman. The Pampa wind farm was delayed because Pickens didn’t have the easements he needed to install lines to carry electricity from West Texas to more populated areas—Pampa is 348 miles from Dallas, for instance. “We don’t have transmission in there until 2013. Everything that could go against you, it did go against you.”

It’s a common problem for wind or solar projects in remote locations: getting the transmission lines built from a plant to the population centers that can use the energy. And there’s something else stacked against wind power right now. The price of natural gas is at $3.50 per thousand cubic feet. To make wind a strong competitor, that price has to be more like about $7.

If Pickens’ plan came to fruition, the costs of natural gas and wind would likely be closer to one another. The price of natural gas would rise, because it would be used in transportation and, presumably, would be more in demand than it is now. That would again make wind an alternative energy that actually could bring profits. “It all fits like a glove,” Pickens says.

Pickens thinks there’s enough drive to action in Congress that something very close to the plan he started pushing last July will become a reality.

The House has already passed a comprehensive climate bill, and Pickens says that legislation contains at least the outlines of a Green Bank that could be used to help finance alternative-energy projects. That bill is still on hold in the Senate. He expects Congress to set up new rules that allow the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission, instead of a hodgepodge of state and local governments, to establish easements for power lines. And he points to bills introduced in both the House and Senate that would encourage the development of use of natural gas in trucking fleets.

“I think by now the Pickens plan is moving along,” he says. “It’s quicker than I thought. People think we have failed in what we’re doing. We haven’t failed.”

Pickens’ idea for natural gas in transportation gets applause from an unlikely source. “I’m not a fan of Boone,” says Gheit, “but having said that, this is something he said that happened to make sense. Oil becomes the biggest disaster in our foreign policy, in our domestic policy. We have an abundance of natural gas. It’s the cleanest fossil fuel we can get our hands on. It’s right before our eyes. He’s right. What is wrong with his idea? We don’t have to prove anything. It’s right here.”

Correction: As originally published, the story said T. Boone Pickens' planned wind farm was near the small town of Parma, Texas. It should have read Pampa, Texas, and has been corrected.