Optimistic: T. Boone Pickens Expects Obama Administration to Implement Pickens’ Plan
Billionaire American entrepreneur T. Boone Pickens is optimistic that the Obama administration will bring the United States’ energy infrastructure into the new millennium by implementing his plan for energy independence.
After eight long years there is finally a cause for hope here in the United States. George Bush may still be in office, but right now all America’s problems are President-Elect Obama’s to solve (see Obama Recession, thanks Rush), but he seems ready for them.
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As New York Times columnist and Nobel Laureate Paul Krugman says, it is time for Obama to act swiftly and implement New Deal policies for the new millennium. Many have said that FDR’s borderline socialist policies failed because he spent too much money, Krugman feels that he did not invest enough. The Pickens’ Plan, as it is so poetically called, may be the starting point for such an investment.
Why is Pickens’ Plan important? Simply because it’s main goal is to divert all of our oil and natural gas to the transportation sector. Factories will no longer use natural gas because they will be powered either on site or through an electric grid powered by wind and solar. The plan stresses efficiency and centrality. It could also potentially save the US $300 billion in oil expenditures. Citing Obama’s plan to end dependency on foreign oil in the next ten years, Pickens expects that the first step will be implementing major parts of his plan.
The major parts of the plan involve the US specially equipping larger vehicles (buses, trucks, etc.) to run on natural gas. This would take a huge load off of our dependence on oil, in turn causing prices to drop because factories and businesses will have no need for it. Demand for oil would come solely from consumers, as would carbon dioxide emissions (the nitrogen oxide emissions will come from the natural gas burning buses).
Pickens has been criticized for the plan, but has responded “If you don’t like my plan, get a plan.” Of course he is a businessman trying to make money, but he does drive a hard bargain. During a recession time like this, a wind initiative would be a huge help to the country. It would create jobs as well as help stabilize our energy future. Pickens has also promised to invest $1 trillion in the project, which should certainly make it easier for the Obama administration to begin implementing the plan.
The plan can work, but only time will tell if some or all of it gets implementes. Pickens cannot do it alone, he needs the government to help. The Obama Administration seems to be attacking the transition with tenacity, which is a good sign for the plan and our energy future as well. I really hope that Obama’s message of change wasn’t just a campaign slogan. So far he has hit the ground running and I look forward to seeing where his administration will go from here.
Want more to read? Check out these links on economics and US energy policy:
- Depression Economics Return
- And for laughs, Rush Limbaugh again. Thanks to the Baltimore Sun for the article.
Source: Yahoo! News (via Biofuels Digest)
Photo Credits: Thanks to Tom Saint’s Flickr photostream under a Creative Commons License.
I’ve heard about the gearbox failures in wind turbines - apparently the lubrication and metallurgy problems haven’t been solved yet - kin dof liek the early dasy of steam boilers - BOOM! I expect htis wil get fixed- at a price. One aspect of Pickens plan seems fairly utopian ( at aleast as described in the post) - industry uses a lot of process heat - steam, hot air , flame treatment of metals etc - electricity is not an economical source of energy for these uses. The age of carbon fuels is not over yet - these applications are not going away soon. sure green chemistry is making advances, but on a gorwoth curve we are still in the lag phase. when exponential fgrowth occurs is anyone’s guess. those lag phases can last a long time.
“hydrogen and electric vehicles are not the logical end. You have to generate both using either nuclear, solar, wind or coal in any case you have to think about the cradle to grave costs of your suggestions. Hydrogen is inherently inefficient because it has to be generated from electricity at the moment.”
Actually Hydrogen gas is produced from natural gas at the moment, which is even worse. Producing it from electricity or genetically modified algae actually isn’t too bad efficiency wise.
Wind energy unfortunately is just not ever going to work on any appreciable scale, because the wind does not blow 24/7 nor can it be predicted on minute-scale accuracy required to regulate the power grid. Storing multigigawatt amounts of power to even out the flow is a pipe-dream. And then there is the trouble with transmission…
Solar is better in somewhat this respect, but the sun is only overhead for about 1/6th-1/4th of the day (dawn and dusk there is little light to collect), so however many megawatts a panel makes divide by ~4-6. If that didn’t make you go “ouch,” then a reality check might be in order.
So wind and solar are out for baseload power, we want to stop burning coal, and cut way back on burning gas (particularly imported gas), what does that leave?
Nuclear
Nuclear power plants are the only zero-emission gigawatt scale power source that can be run 24/7 reliably and predictably. Modern power plants are an order of magnitude or to safer than last-generation plants, and range from 50-150% bigger (AP-1000 1700MW model). And, coming in the near future, even more power from the same plants and fuel with advanced fuel rod designs.
Nuclear waste scare you? Actually, ~95% of nuclear waste is “unburned” Uranium/Plutonium, which can be recycled. The other 5% can be “burned” in a specialty fast-neutron reactor or safely buried for the ~500 or so years it will take it to decay (not 25,000yrs). With proper recycling, nuclear waste is not a problem, since the really nasty waste decays relatively quickly.
Bill:
10th
Has anyone heard Pickens say he would hold the price of natural gas at today’s levels.
The last time government promoted natural gas was in the early 90’s. They were forcing generating plants to convert to “cheap and clean” NG. Many cities in California were converting city buses and other vehicles to natural gas.
Well, have you looked at how natural gas prices have skyrocketed since then? If Pickens gets his way, what’s to say gas won’t double again in the next 10 years? Seems to me he’ll have a captive market.
“It’s safe to assume that if government spends more than 8 figures on a ‘plan’ then what’s going on here is a power grab.”
and if no one is on board to claim credit for this statement, I do.
This has ‘LAND GRAB’ and ‘WATER GRAB’ written all over it. It’s a plot to take the means of production away from independent people to invest in an energy source that is only at best 8.7 percent RELIABLE. This isn’t a solution, it a statist power grab. It’s a 5 year plan straight from Animal Farm. Many may have issues with Bill’s statements, but the fact is, they’re all true. With this in mind, I’m calling this what it is: a Power Grab. A plan with a goal to take the means of production (some of our best farmland and the water to use it) away from independent people (the farmers) and give it to the government, who will put it to little/no productive use. This is communism in implementation.
The pickens plan is rubbish. He wants the plan so that the heavy hand of government can appropriate all sorts of land to build windmill, mandate natural gas usage, etc, when a far, far, superior technology exists today–nuclear power. Current technology in nuclear power allows the construction of refrigerator size self-maitaining nuclear power plants that can supply energy for 20k people at a pop using far less space than the average windmill, at a far lower cost of operation per watt than a windmill, at a far higher availability than a windmill. They need to be refueled about once every ten YEARS, with about one truckload of fuel in that time frame. The only reason why we don’t have more nuclear plants now is because of scaremongering back in the 70’s the results of we are still living with today.
As far as solar, I’ve had to deal with the issues involved with solar first hand while on a bike tour. Trying to ride as self-sufficient as possible, I placed two solar panels on my bike with the sole purpose of keeping my cell phone batteries charged, with a nominal capacity of 9W, which should have been more than enough to charge the phone.
The panels received 8+hrs of sunlight/day charging the phone, and still the phone(a brand new phone and battery, BTW), couldn’t get a decent charge at the end of the day. If I couldn’t rely on solar power to charge a cell phone on a summer day, why would I rely on it to power the electrical grid?
“If you want unbiased news, you maybe should consider the reading AP articles”
HAHAHA. I love it when people drop a joke in the middle of a comment. Lessens the tension.
So how much could we do with algae bio diesel with a trillion dollars? Seems like it is completely renewable, can burn in existing diesel engines, can be moved thru exiting diesel pipelines, stored in existing diesel tanks and pumped at existing diesel pumps at gas stations already located all over the country.
“Many have said that FDR’s borderline socialist policies failed because he spent too much money, Krugman feels that he did not invest enough.”
Or some, such as a group of economists from UCLA in a recently published book, said that FDR’s socialist policies prolonged the depression by 7 years.
The creating of jobs is a pile of stupidity. ‘During a recession time like this, a wind initiative would be a huge help to the country. It would create jobs as well as help stabilize our energy future.’ If we have to subsidize it, it will cost jobs from where the money would have been spent otherwise. Right now it has to be subsidized. That’s not to say there isn’t a good reason to subsidize some level of wind production but don’t make it out to be a win-win setup when there are real costs involved. Burning down and rebuilding your house would create jobs but it would be wrong and would destroy value.
Biology and English Major at UW-Madison - good for you. Go Badgers! However, can’t the publication find someone with a little more relevant knowledge and experience to cover this type of thing? Though compared to others in journalism covering scientific topics I guess Anthony is way ahead of the curve. . .
Hi, I’m “Big Gas,” and I embrace the Pickens Plan too. I used to be “Big Oil,” but with the new plan, I switched to drilling the hundreds of thousands of gas wells that will be required to fuel the plan.
Oh, and by the way, drilling gas wells also creates thousands of good jobs.