UK Coal fired up to bring clean "energy" out of the collieries

More than a dozen of the UK's former coal mining sites are to be redeveloped as wind farms under a scheme to turn old energy into new.

UK Coal, once the main part of the National Coal Board, has announced a joint venture with Peel Energy that would see 14 former colliery locations used to erect 54 turbines generating up to 133 megawatts of electricity per hour, enough to power 80,000 homes.

Pickens' wind plan hits snag - Nov. 12, 2008

NEW YORK (CNNMoney.com) -- Billionaire oilman T. Boone Pickens is delaying his massive Texas wind project, citing a drop in natural gas prices and the tightening credit market.

"With natural gas prices where they are, you can't kick off a wind project, you're not economical." Pickens said Tuesday at a news conference in Arizona.

But Pickens, who has spent millions over the last few months promoting his "Pickens Plan" to wean the United States off foreign oil by switching to wind and natural gas, said natural gas and oil prices will rise again in less than a year, and characterized the setback as temporary.

A spokesman for Mesa Power, Pickens' company that is building the Texas wind farm, laid the blame more on the credit markets.

"The capital markets are problematic for everyone and...may lead us to scale back a bit," Jay Rosser, a spokesman for Mesa, said in a statement. "But we are still going forward with our wind business."