Anyone with a backyard vegetable garden can appreciate how difficult it would be to grow enough food to feed a family of four year-round. Subsistence farming is hard, and subsistence farmers often starve.
The challenge is scale – how can we grow enough, with enough diversity of nutrients, in a small space? How do we create backup sources to save us in times of bad weather or crop failures? When there were a few million people on the planet, subsistence farming, hunting and gathering may have ensured survival. With close to seven billion people on the planet today, we need more comprehensive answers.
Our energy needs face a similar challenge. In part three of this series, we quoted Questar CEO Keith Rattie, who said carbon sequestration “will be hugely expensive and it’ll take decades to implement on any meaningful scale.” The expression “meaningful scale” hits home, because regardless of one’s position on global warming, nuclear power, “clean” coal, or “peak oil,” the vast and growing population of people on the planet require energy solutions on a massive, sustainable scale.
We have been impressed by The Pickens Plan to transform America’s energy production and consumption. America’s economic and industrial triumphs of the twentieth century were fueled by cheap oil, but longtime oilman Pickens pragmatically observes that, “The simple truth is that cheap and easy oil is gone.” Pickens calls for an effort equal to our energy challenge, which he calls “a crisis too large to be addressed piecemeal.”
His comprehensive plan is based on several pillars:
• Create millions of new jobs by building out the capacity to generate up to 22 percent of our electricity from wind. And adding to that with additional solar generation capacity; • Building a 21st century backbone electrical transmission grid;
• Providing incentives for homeowners and the owners of commercial buildings to upgrade their insulation and other energy saving options; and
• Using America's natural gas to replace imported oil as a transportation fuel in addition to its other uses in power generation, chemicals, etc.
Pickens wisely sees the value of natural gas as a “gateway” fuel, smoothing the transition from foreign oil to alternatives. In his plan, natural gas plays a big role in the generation of electricity, but perhaps a bigger – and certainly less conventional – role as a transportation fuel. Switching to natural gas as a transportation fuel reduces carbon emissions and our reliance on foreign oil, bolstering national security and the fight against global warming. Imagine America’s giant fleet of trucks and busses running on clean-burning, inexpensive natural gas, while massive wind farms on the great plains and solar plants in the southwest deliver electricity through a re-engineered national electricity grid to homes and businesses upgraded for better conservation and efficiency. That’s what T. Boone Pickens imagines – and these are not mere dreams, but practical ideas.
The Pickens Plan sees natural gas as a logical choice for large vehicles, but cars can also run on natural gas. Honda makes a Civic CNG, and other cars can be converted. Compared to a $77 barrel of oil, an “energy equivalent” amount of natural gas costs about $25, at present prices.
Naturally, one concern is the infrastructure of refueling stations, which is growing, but natural gas is also piped directly into many homes. Here in California, the governor promoted a tax credit for installation of in-home natural gas compressors, but the initiative did not pass. Imagine having a gas station in your own garage!
As we noted in part one of this series, breakthroughs in drilling technology have dramatically expanded access to America’s vast reserves of natural gas. In some ways, this is like getting a second chance to address our energy challenges (we appear to have failed our first test – responding to the oil crisis of the 1970s). President Obama vowed to make the United States energy independent within ten years. To do so requires immediate action, and natural gas must be a centerpiece of the plan. Do we have the political will to dream big, and choose an energy future that exploits America’s natural resources of wind, sunlight, and natural gas?