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Tom Friedman and the Pickens Plan »

Thomas Friedman Takes a Close Look at the Pickens Plan


What’s your take on how Boone and his Pickens Plan are coming along?
The fact that you have someone who made his fortune in the oil and gas business looking at where the country needs to be 30 years from now and concluding that we can’t drill our way out of this problem and concluding that shipping $700 billion a year abroad to countries that don’t have our best interests at heart is not in our national interest, that’s when you get what I call American nationalists like Boone Pickens stepping across the aisle. That really gets a lot of people’s attention.

What do you think about his New Energy Army marching on Washington when President-elect Obama and the new Congress are sworn in?
I think he’s on the right track.

Why do you say that?
How did we get civil rights changes in this country? It happened basically when people took to the streets and politicians saw them, understood there was an aggrieved community there that wanted action, and the politicians decided that the cost of inaction on their part was greater than the cost of action.

The same thing has to happen on energy. There is only going to be real legislative change and support of renewable energy when enough politicians decide that the cost of inaction is greater than the cost of action. And bringing lots of people, and I don’t mean five, ten, twenty, but hundreds of thousands of people to bear on Capitol Hill to drive that point home is really essential.

Congress also plays a critical role in incentivizing research and development, which brings to mind an anecdote from your book Hot, Flat, and Crowded. You were talking with Jeffrey Immelt, GE’s chairman and CEO, and he pointed out that the political climate in Europe was far more conducive for developing clean energy solutions.
I think what appeals to the big energy players about the European market is that you have national renewable portfolio standards that cover the entire European market. Over there I think it’s 20 percent by 2020, whereas in the States we have about half the states having renewable portfolio standards for clean energy, and every one of them is different. And so you’re very, very divided and chopped up in a complex market over here. And I think that very much affects where companies like a GE are investing.

The present state of the American economy also has a role to play, doesn’t it?
Yeah, I don’t want to say a lot, but there are some very exciting venture capital projects working and the question is how much are they going to be starved for capital in the current environment? I’m very worried about that because a lot of them got their first or second round of venture capital investing and now they are thinking about IPO money or whatnot to go to the next level and it’s becoming very hard for them.

How closely do you think the major oil-exporting countries are watching us to see whether or not America develops a sustainable energy policy?
I think they’re watching, but I think so far they’re not afraid because they’ve seen this play before. They know when global oil prices go down, it tends to kill the renewable energy industry. Happened in the ‘70s and ‘80s. And so I don’t think they’re exactly quaking in their boots yet. But I think they’re watching very closely especially when they see the politics shift and they see people like Boone or Wal-Mart, people from the corporate sector or even from the traditional energy business such as General Electric adopting new positions that gets their attention. They haven’t seen yet any really scale alternative to oil. Until they do, I don’t think they’ll be all that worried.
REMARKS CONDENSED AND EDITED BY ERIC O’KEEFE

This entry was posted on Tuesday, November 4th, 2008 at 9:00 pm by Eric in Pickens Plan.
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Comments4 Responses to “Thomas Friedman Takes a Close Look at the Pickens Plan”

November 5th, 2008 at 2:27 pm

Jeanie Houtz


I was so convinced that my fellow voters in California were going to pass 7 and 10. Yet when I got up Wednesday morning and saw that both measures were defeated, I was stunned. Seriously, what is it going to take? I think Mr. Pickens just might have an uphill battle, but I'm with him 100%. I was wondering if anyone out there knew of any publicly-traded companies out there that I could purchase stock from who is working on wind/solar/CNG? Obama got millions and millions of dollars in contributions to win the Presidency. Let's forget about the politicians and let us raise millions and millions of dollars for the companies who do bring us the alternative fuels.

November 5th, 2008 at 6:32 pm

John T


I live on the other side of the US, so i am not at all familiar with issues 7 and 10, per se. One pushes for 20% of the electric power to be generated by alternatives. I am not surprised if costs are going to be increased for the consumer. Very few people will sign up for a plan that costs more, even if it is right to do, for green house gases or reducing oil imports. The biggest reason alternatives do not save money in my mind is that the source of the energy is owned and operated by a third party, not the citizens themselves. Third party owners will take all the profits from the new sources, and do their best to pass on the capital costs to the consumers in things like service charges. I saw this in New Jersey. There are several solutions, one is to get the consumer themselves to own and operate the alt energy asset, on a small scale it is usually solar. Secondly, for municipalities, the municipality should fund and own the asset by floating bonds, with interest paid to the bond holders. The bonds should for the most part be owned by the citizens in the municipality. This way they get the interest on the bonds. Secondly, the municipality should sell the electricity to the utility for a profit. The profit would in turn be issued as a credit to individual electric bills based on a per kwh basis. This will not happen with a third party owner, they pocket the profits. As for Obama's ability to raise contributions, he obviously has a lot of skill in this regard. So, let's leverage that skill. Let's ask the public to donate money for alternative energy solutions. If every person in the US donated only $1, we would have enough money for 300 wind turbines. Then you take the "electricity produced" and sell it to utilities and offset "electric generation" charges. The annual revenue would be $75 million/year (1/2 mw actual from 1.5 mw turbine, and $0.06 electricty generation charge). Then like a progressive chain letter, purchase 75 turbines more in the second year, about 95 in the third year, about 110 in the fourth year, and 135 in the fourth year and on and on, keep rolling the savings into the purchase of new turbines. I think we can easily get a campaign going to get people to donate money for this. I would also think the average donation would be well in excess of $1/person. By making it voluntary, no one will be upset (expect those that don't like wind turbines, but we can install other technologies as well). I would venture to guess we could raise $3 billion. That would be 3,000 turbines (@$3 million each). This is also equal to 50,000 jobs in year one, and 12,500 in year two. These people would be paying payroll taxes, so I would also ask the government to kick back this tax to help fund even more.

November 6th, 2008 at 10:14 am

David DeZan


Even though I'm from Massachusetts, I read the summary's of prop 7 and 10. Without a doubt, it should be very disappointing to Californians that prop 10 didn't pass, this would have been a nice incentive to get alternative energy businesses going. Prop 7 however seems to go a little too far, essentially being anti-business. It called for a 20% change to renewable energy generation in 2 years with penalties for non-compliance. They should have scaled it back to 5 years, no penalties but with state tax incentives and/or other incentives. When you force businesses to comply with unrealistic goals that are driven by PC objectives and not the realistic ones that a capitalist economy demands, you hurt them and their customers and eventually wind up costing the people a whole lot more money.

November 6th, 2008 at 2:08 pm

Brad McQuiddy


I am reading "Flat Hot and Crowded" right now. What a scary and enlightening book. Everyone who is going to put gas in their car or uses electricity should read this book. I highly reccomend it. I support the Pickens plan. Everyone should. Read Flat Hot and Crowded. It will get you moving.

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