T.Boone's Energy Plan

[Karen Robinson]

I don't know anything about David Morris, but
this is an interesting article.  Access the website to read about 70 comments.
Karen

How T. Boone Pickens' Energy Plan Just Got Killed
By David Morris, AlterNet
Posted on October 9, 2008, Printed on October 10, 2008
http://www.alternet.org/story/100806/
The financial bailout bill passed by Congress may
have once and for all put an end to T. Boone
Pickens' energy plan. Let me explain.

Until the financial meltdown obliterated all
other news coverage, T. Boone and his energy plan
were everywhere. His book, The First Billion Is
the Hardest, is number two on the bestseller
list. During the Republican and Democrat
Conventions his press conferences were attended
by a fawning media, virtually all of who filed
stories with the theme "oil man turns wind energy advocate."

Indeed, even the more than casual reader might
come away believing the Pickens Energy Plan was
all about wind energy. T. Boone's web site does
little to contradict that impression. It displays nothing but wind turbines.

But expanding wind energy is not the key element
in his plan. The reason is that that the plan's
goal is to reduce our dependence on oil and the
electric sector uses very little oil. Thus
expanding wind-generated electricity does little
to move us in that direction. Instead, the heart
of Pickens' plan is to purportedly use increased
wind energy to back out the natural gas in our
electricity system. Pickens wants to eliminate
our use of natural gas to generate electricity
and instead use it to in our vehicles.

In California, Pickens has been more upfront
about his intentions. The Texas oil and gas
billionaire has single handedly financed a ballot
initiative that would raise $3 billion for
incentives for vehicles using cleaner fuels. The
initiative heavily favors natural gas vehicles.
The biggest rebates would go toward the purchase
of heavy-duty trucks and transit buses fueled by
natural gas. Only natural gas vehicles would
quality for the largest rebate for passenger vehicles -- $10,000.

The primary beneficiary of this ballot initiative
would be Clean Energy, the nation's biggest
supplier of natural gas for transportation needs.
Mr. Pickens is majority shareholder of Clean Energy.

The Pickens energy proposal has a fatal flaw.
Transforming our transportation fleet to natural
gas will require massive investments in new
engines and new fueling systems. Although largely
buried in the fine print, Pickens isn't proposing
to use natural gas to entirely replace
transportation fuels derived from oil. His goal
is a 20 percent replacement. So after 15-20 years
and the expenditure of tens, if not hundreds of
billions of dollars we would then have a
transportation system still 80 percent dependent
on oil and 20 percent dependent on a fossil fuel
whose life expectancy is not much longer than oil's.

A far better plan, and one proposed by a growing
number of groups and individuals (including my
own, the Institute for Local Self-Reliance, in a
recent report titled Driving Our Way to Energy
Independence)is to electrify our transportation
system. Instead of converting part of our
transportation system to natural gas, only to
have to then convert it again to renewable fuels,
we should convert the transportation system to
electricity, and make that electricity
increasingly renewable as solar and wind power expand.

Electric vehicles have important advantages over
natural gas (or gasoline) powered cars. They are
more efficient. They are quiet. They generate no tailpipe emissions.

Moreover, their combined battery storage capacity
could usher in a more democratic energy system
where households generate transportation fuel
from their rooftop solar array and store it in
the vehicles' batteries, and, if needed, use
their electric vehicles as backup power plants for their homes.

Unlike natural gas cars, electrified cars also
lend themselves to being introduced
incrementally. There is no partial natural gas
car. On the other hand, there is a plug-in hybrid
electric vehicle, the first generation of which
will be introduced commercially in 2010. The
initial PHEVs might have a limited driving range.
As a result, initially electricity might power
only 25 to 50 percent of the total miles driven.
But as battery performance increases and costs
drop, electricity will provide a majority and
perhaps even 100 percent of the fuel used. Even
at lower percentages, if the backup engine for
the PHEV were a flexible fuel engine, then
biofuels could replace oil, bringing the total
oil displacement above 85 percent.

In June 2007, Senators Obama, Orrin Hatch (R-UT)
and Maria Cantwell (D-WA) introduced a bill that
would give handsome incentives to manufacturers
of electrified cars. After the House of
Representatives rejected the initial bailout
bill, the Senate added on some $110 billion worth
of incentives for a wide range of purposes and
industries. The Obama, Hatch, Cantwell bill was
one of them. It offers a tax credit of up to
$7,500 for electrified vehicles. The incentives
phase out after sales of electrified vehicles,
either plug in hybrids or all electric cars,
reach 250,000 in any calendar quarter.

The passage of that bill will accelerate the
already vigorous rush by manufacturers to develop
a high performance, long lasting and inexpensive
car battery. Companies are working on dozens of
configurations and in the last two years progress
has been swift. The incentives offered should
cover 25-50 percent of the cost of these new car
batteries, shaving the payback period for
electrified vehicles to under 5 years or less.

The financial meltdown probably has killed
Pickens' chances of gaining passage of his
natural gas initiative in California. Few voters
there will approve putting the state even further
in debt. And the passage of the Congressional
bailout bill should mark the demise of his
overall plan, as electric cars go mainstream,
leaving the idea of natural gas cars in the dust.

David Morris is co-founder and vice president of
the Institute for Local Self-Reliance in
Minneapolis, Minn., and director of its New Rules project.

© 2008 Independent Media Institute. All rights reserved.
View this story online at: http://www.alternet.org/story/100806/ 



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