another recent interview with Matt Simmons can be found at http://www.financialsense.com/fsn/main.html (in the section of August 9 interview with the experts)

at 15'15" he talked about the plan to build the biggest offshore wind farm (on 90 to 95 platforms) in the gulf of Maine with the equivalent electric generation capacity of 5 nuclear power plants.

at 17'30" in response to the interviewer's comment of that's electricity but "we have a liquid fuel problem", Simmons: we'll have enough electricity to create liquid ammonia from ocean water through electrolysis.

at 17'57" Simmons: "And once the liquid ammonia is there, we can then start experimenting of what you have to do to dilute the energy and actually to have a replacement for auto gasoline. So that is really the holy grail. Will that be odd that turns out that liquid ammonia from our oceans through electricity turn out to be the savior?"

(the "dilute" part is confusing, not sure if it is transcribed correctly.)

in the same interview Simmons also gave this opinion: if we put our act together, we can pull ourselves out of this deep energy hole in seven years.

again, the wind in the gulf of Maine they try to catch (especially in the winter) is part of the polar winter cyclone which is almost constant with very high energy densities (3-4 kW/sq.m.) Simmons has, understandably, his attention on the energy issue. the original proposal (http://tinyurl.com/5lqvup) is to catch the polar ocean wind to solve both the energy and the (polar, at least) climate change problem.