The Industry Standard - Can Pickens’ plan swing sentiment to Obama –- and cleantech? - Comments

There is a Public Discussion

scotty — Sun, 13 Jul 2008 11:26:51 -0700

There is a Public Discussion Forum For Pickens Energy Plan : www.pickensenergyplan.com. It would be great if you participate there.

I think that this is all

Aron — Thu, 10 Jul 2008 09:32:50 -0700

I think that this is all about liquid natural gas! You build a wind farm and say that you care about the integrity of the environment meanwhile you build the massive infrastructure necessary to get us hooked on LNG instead. Here comes the railroad....

Pickens has the right idea.

serena1313 — Tue, 08 Jul 2008 14:49:17 -0700

Pickens has the right idea. I also believe investing in clean energy makes good business sense as well as a wise investment in our planet, our future and our health.

Nuclear power is terribly expensive and dangerous. Storing nuclear waste is a big problem. A typical reactor generates 20 to 30 tons of high-level nuclear waste annually. There is no known way to safely dispose of this waste, which remains dangerously radioactive until it naturally decays. The rate of decay of a radioactive isotope is called its half-life, the time in which half the initial amount of atoms present takes to decay. The half-life of Plutonium-239, one particularly lethal component of nuclear waste, is 24,000 years.

And there is the matter of whether the plants could safely withstand the intensity and frequency of storms and climate changes, earth quakes and such.

According to Mark Hertsgaard, the Nation's environmental correspondent: "he argument against [nuclear energy as way to replace coal and drastically reduce greenhouse gas emissions] is that -- separate from any safety or nuclear proliferation concerns, which are substantial -- the main point at this juncture is that nuclear is just wildly expensive and not going to be supported in the marketplace. In fact, economically speaking, if you go nuclear, you make climate change worse, because you can get seven times greater reduction if instead you invest in energy efficiency above all. That is the quickest, cheapest and above all the fastest way to reduce greenhouse gas emissions. And per dollar of investment, you get seven times more reduction in greenhouse gas emission with energy efficiency. So really you if you go nuclear you are making the problem worse because in the real world there is a scarcity of capital, there is only so much to go around, and if you invest it in nuclear, that means you are not going to be investing it in things that are going to be delivering a bigger bang for the buck."

Clean energy is a win-win proposition.

Can Pickens’ plan swing sentiment to Obama –- and cleantech?

Venture Beat — Tue, 08 Jul 2008 10:36:30 -0700

When investing, it helps to have people on your side. Usually that means other business people, and sometimes regulators, but billionaire oilman T. Boone Pickens is taking the sentiment to a new level with a just-announced public campaign aimed at bolstering domestic power sources.

The multi-million dollar media and advertising thrust by Pickens will attempt to swing common opinion away from foreign oil, and toward alternate energy investments –- which includes wind power, as well as natural gas for transportation.

Pickens, who made his fortune in oil and private equity, is the man behind plans for the world’s biggest wind farm, a risky play sizable enough to significantly multiply or divide even his ample assets. For a big win, he needs the support of the government to help build supporting infrastructure –- hence the big move.

The idea is intriguing, because although the root of Pickens’ fortune is in oil, he’s throwing his weight behind renewables. And he’s doing it during an election year. While John McCain spends most of his time talking about nuclear energy, which Pickens says will take “too long”, and offshore drilling, Barack Obama vocally supports all cleantech (including biofuels, which the World Bank appears ready to blame for sharp increases in the cost of food).

Though Pickens clearly has the most interest in wind, his rhetoric is centered around weaning the country off oil, which will take solar, biofuels and many other initiatives – making a clear match of his message with Obama’s.

It should be interesting to see how the energy debate plays out. Pickens isn’t the only one talking up clean energy. Al Gore’s $300 million awareness campaign about global warming just got underway, and the rest of the world is spending more time talking about the issues every day. The claim is that the ad campaigns are bipartisan, but in the current race, they seem to favor the more progressive Democrats — whereas Pickens himself has delighted in bedeviling Dems, including former presidential candidate John Kerry.

Cleantech as an investment sector is still picking up speed – the Cleantech Group this morning reported another record quarter, with $1.5 billion invested in green technologies in the United States alone. If Gore, Pickens and others get their way, there will be another flood of investment at all levels. The only question is, how high can the tide go?