Boone on Bush: "Too Focused on Ethanol"
Craig Rubens - Policy
Following the launch of his massive publicity campaign on Tuesday, T. Boone Pickens started to make the requisite rounds on major media to push the Pickens Plan. He kicked off the day as a guest host on CNBC’s Squawk Box, then sat down last night with CBS’s Katie Couric to talk about America’s energy plan (embedded below).
In classically unequivocal Texan terms, Pickens laments that Bush does not share his energy vision for the U.S.:
I’d have to say that I wish that [President Bush] had seen what I believe I see about natural gas. Natural gas is really the only one of our natural resources in this country that can actually replace foreign oil and gasoline. And he went the direction of ethanol which I was not that interested in…I think he was too focused on ethanol.
Pickens, a longtime Republican supporter, tells Couric that he did show President Bush, a fellow Texas oilman, his energy plan — but to no avail:
He was interested and we had a long conversation about it and I went through my whiteboard presentation and all and he seemed to have interest in it but maybe just that day.
He makes Bush sound like a distracted schoolboy. Maybe Pickens should keep him after class.
In an op-ed in today’s Wall Street Journal, Pickens laid out his plan to solve what he sees as “the most serious situation since World War II.” In it he makes clear that while he’s confident America’s businesses can undertake his plan, he understands it will be policy that makes it happen. “The future begins as soon as Congress and the president act,” he writes. “We have a golden opportunity in this election year to form bipartisan support for this plan…We need action. Now.”
Meanwhile, out there on the Internets, the Pickens Plan has presence on MySpace (325 friends), Facebook (950 friends and 847 fans), Twitter (295 followers), YouTube (80 subscribers) and LinkedIn.
All told, the PR campaign is estimated to cost $58 million. But that’s just a drop in the bucket compared to the $12 billion T. Boone is putting into his wind farm and barely a droplet in contrast to the $1 trillion Pickens says the government will need to invest to make his energy switch plan work. Even though it doesn’t look like the current president will listen, we’ll see how the next one responds to heavily financed PR.
GE Blows Past $4B For Green Energy Investments
Craig Rubens - Energy
GE even gets to double-dip when it comes to wind farm investments, as not only do they add energy assets to the company’s portfolio, they boost the market for GE’s in-demand wind turbines. These three wind farms, which are being built and operated with IPO-ready Noble Environmental Power, will use more than 200 of GE’s 1.5-megawatt turbines to generate 330 megawatts of power.
GE has now invested in 76 wind farms with a total generating capacity of over 4,000 megawatts. As a point of comparison, T. Boone Pickens says he’s investing $12 billion, at last count, into his own wholly-owned 4,000-megawatt wind farm, which he wants to be the largest wind farm in the world.
GE’s milestone is a milestone for renewable energy overall, as clean power has the potential to generate significant revenue. GE estimates that renewables will compromise a quarter of their energy and water investments by 2010. Its plan is to invest $6 billion in renewable energy by 2010. At this rate, we wouldn’t be surprised if they blew past that goal far sooner.
Image courtesy of GE.
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