Pickens Plan One Year Later

One year ago today, oil maven and sometimes Republican political activist T. Boone Pickens announced a novel plan to dramatically reduce foreign oil consumption in the United States.  The plan outlined a strategy to displace foreign oil by using domestic natural gas as a transportation fuel.  The area where natural gas would have the largest immediate impact is in the trucking sector.  In order to ensure adequate supply of natural gas, Pickens proposed a dramatic increase in clean wind  electricity to displace electricity generated by natural gas power plants.

The plan is appealing but challenging.  It is appealing because it points us to two energy sources that the United States has in abundance: wind and natural gas.  Challenging because it requires very big changes to our infrastructure to make it happen.  That wind power will make up a huge proportion of our electricity supply is obvious.  But it will take decades and it is more likely to displace coal than natural gas generation.  Truck engine makers are starting to offer CNG based engines, but it will be a long time before fleets adopt these engines in any great numbers.  In terms of the passenger car market, there is only one CNG based vehicle on showroom floors: the Honda Civic GX.  Then there is what I call the alternative fuel paradox.  Higher adoption of alternative fuels will drive up the price of that fuel and drive down the price of traditional petroleum, thereby slowing alternative fuel adoption.  Finally, it admittedly does not address the carbon issue, though CNG would burn far cleaner in trucks as opposed to diesel.

Even though I have some doubts, I went ahead and signed myself up on PickensPlan.com today.  Since it is the one year anniversary of his announcement, he labeling July 8th as Energy Independence Day.  Having listened to this guy for the least year, I can say I am a lot more educated on America’s energy situation than I was.  It might be worth taking a look just for that.