T. Boone Pickens

What do you guys think about this guy and his plan?

I only glanced through the video, but its amazing to me that a man as rich and successful as he is can misspell the word “Solar”.

What is his plan? Any Cliff Notes? Only reason I looked at this is this guy is a H-U-G-E benefactor of everything Oklahoma State University and I just wish Pitt had a guy like him.

http://www.pickensplan.com/theplan/

Yeah. Search for the word “solar” in the plan. 1.2 trillion dollars is about $4000 per citizen. I’d rather put that money toward solar panels on my own home than send it to the middle of the country.

I dont think taxpayers will be shouldering the majority of the burden. I would imagine that private companies will be putting up the capital to get this done.

If this plan were to come to fruition, it would be AWESOME for Western PA. We would become the Saudi Arabia of the United States with all of the NG under us. It would mean a ton of new jobs, and a SHIT FUCKING TON of royalty payments being put into our local economy.

Read on about the Marcellus Shale:

Interesting. More on the funding of the Pickens Plan (at the bottom):

http://www.coxwashington.com/hp/content/reporters/stories/2008/07/20/2008/07/22/ENERGY_PICKENS22_COX.html

THE PICKENS PLAN

  1. Private industry funds the installation of thousands of wind turbines in the U.S. wind corridor, providing 20 percent or more of the nation’s electricity supply.

  2. The private sector builds power transmission lines to bring the wind-generated electricity to population centers in the South, West and Midwest.

  3. The natural gas that has historically fueled power plants in those regions is redirected to the transportation system to replace imported gasoline and diesel fuel.

As long as the funding doesn’t come from federal taxes, I guess 1 and 2 sound like pretty good ideas. Not sure about directly replacing fossil fuel burning cars with CNG though. Can gas powered cars be converted easily (and inexpensively) to CNG? I don’t know much about that. Or, would it be anticipated that consumers will buy new CNG cars since the fuel is expected to be much cheaper?

I don’t think anyone would describe the conversion as easy or inexpensive, but it’s not terribly rare. Apparently it’s pretty popular in Europe and it’s gaining ground in Canada.