Big oil to big wind

T Boone Pickens is famous for thinking big. He founded his Texan oil company, Mesa Petroleum, in 1956 with just $2,500 (�1,200) in the bank.

After a string of audacious takeovers he turned it into an independent empire that challenged the big oil companies, and today he is worth $3bn.

Now this straight-talking Southerner is launching the biggest and most audacious project of his career. This month he will make the first down payment on 500 wind turbines at a cost of $2m each.

The order is the first material step towards his goal of building the world's largest wind farm. Over the next four years he intends to erect 2,700 turbines across 200,000 acres of the Texan panhandle.

The scheme is five times bigger than the world's current record-holding wind farm and when finished will supply 4,000 megawatts of electricity - enough to power about one million homes.