Thursday, September 11, 2008

The Pickens Plan

I've taken a look at the Pickens Plan over the past couple of months, and while it is a great start, it could be better. The expansion of utilizing wind energy is the absolute greatest part of this plan, and it is great to see someone finally taking strong action to change the way America produces energy. The only part I disagree with in this plan is the push for using natural gas to power vehicles. These vehicles would need to be converted to run on compressed natural gas, and the infrastructure to fill up these cars is mainly only available to homeowners who have natural gas piped to their homes. While natural gas burns cleaner than gasoline, it still produces a significant amount of CO2 .

I believe we should skip natural gas and push towards using the extra electricity to produce Hydrogen. Greater push should be made to get fuel cell or pure electric vehicles on the road. The Pickens Plan is only meant to help in the next ten years to give people more time to develop other energy sources, but the sources are available now, and we should push to use them. The natural gas will still be used to heat homes and power stoves so it will definitely not go to waste.

However, I do support the Pickens Plan because it is action, and it is action in the right direction.