In the age of the sound-bite, when one of green energy’s high-profile advocates backs away from a $2-billion project, you know that alternative energy is on life support.

Falling oil prices have hurt a lot of investors, even some of the nation’s so-called energy experts. One of the nation’s oil heroes, T. Boone Pickens, has lost billions in 2008.

I am not sure this country should follow the advice of a man that has lost over $2 billion so far this year. But then again, some of the nation’s most powerful men have lost far more than that in just the past few weeks.

If you spend any time watching your living room television set, you have seen T. Boone Pickens discussing his proposed energy plan. The 80-year old has spent over $58 million of his own money to tell the nation it must lose its dependence on foreign oil.

What…

Commodities across the board are being taken down by the deepening credit crisis. But energy policy is a big issue in the coming presidential elections.

Energy investor T. Boone Pickens says “natural gas is the fuel of the future.” He also says water will become an increasingly scarce commodity with major implications for the agricultural sector.

Chris Mayer agrees with Pickens. He says once the financial crisis ends natural gas and water stocks will attract big bucks.

As the presidential candidates spew nonsense about energy policy, and T. Boone Pickens’s stab at a constructive solution starts to look ever-more shaky, we are faced with this grim reality: Peak Oil is still a “fringe” concept.

Energy expert Dave Gonigam has serious reservations about T. Boone Pickens‘ energy plan.

When the Pickens Plan was first announced, Dave expressed concerns in The Daily Reckoning’s Desidooru Saloon blog about its finer details.

The problem is the Pickens Plan isn’t quite as free market as it claims. Take the proposed $5-billion sale of general bond funds to help finance alternative energy schemes in California. This is more like a back-door subsidy for Pickens’ natural gas agenda. More from Dave below…

The Pickens Plan, billionaire energy investor T. Boone Pickens‘ plan to reduce American dependence on foreign oil, has been getting a tonne of attention since Pickens launched the initiative at the beginning of the month.

And so it should.

First off, Pickens, a qualified geologist, knows a thing or two about oil and energy. In 1956 he founded Mesa Power. The company grew into the largest independent exploration companies in the US.

The British government gave a huge boost to wind energy stocks this week, opening bidding for offers to build up to 25 gigawatts of offshore wind turbines by 2020 — triple the amount previously planned.

The European Union has set a target date of 2020 for 20% of its energy to come from renewable sources. The British Wind Energy Association said Britain will contribute 15%, meaning up to 40% of the country’s power will come from wind energy by the target date.

“The richest investment opportunities can be found in the fast-emerging alternative energy sector,” says Mike Burnick in The Offshore A-Letter.

Solar stock Ersol rose to a new record after German engineering giant Bosch said it paid $157 a share, a premium of more than 60%, for a controlling stake in the company. This from The Guardian:

Shares in leading German solar stocks rose substantially on expectations that other big players, including oil groups, are on the prowl in a market that grew to €6.6bn last year and is forecast to top €18bn by 2020.

T Boone Pickens’ recent oil price forecast — he sent oil surging last month with a forecast of oil at $150 a barrel by the end of this year — may not have come true yet, but that diminished the legendary oilman’s status as oil oracle among investors.

When he’s not making oil price forecasts, Pickens is busy investing in energy. He recently announced that his investment vehicle Mesa Power was putting $2 billion into a Texas wind-energy project, boosting clean energy stocks in the process and delighting the wind-energy lobby.

Sky-high crude oil prices are threatening global growth for the first time in decades, according to Thomson Reuters, and are “spurring a desperate surge in interest in energy alternatives and new technology to keep conventional oil flowing.”

“The richest investment opportunities can be found in the fast-emerging alternative energy sector,” says Mike Burnick in The Offshore A-Letter.