Joshua Brown thinks the media is missing the real story on the American Power Act, a bill that was introduced in the Senate yesterday by Senators Kerry and Lieberman. Brown is a money manager who also blogs for Forbes, and he went through the bill with a fine-tooth comb. One of his principal observations centers on a key tenet of the Pickens Plan:
Buried in the proposed legislation is a provision that I feel could be nothing short of revolutionary for America, the natural gas trucking subsidy. There are 3 million 18-wheelers on the road right now, mostly running on diesel fuel. Converting that fleet to compressed or liquified natural gas would mobilize a brand new industry here in America.
Brown also singles out several of the most important benefits to converting 18-wheelers to run on domestic natural gas instead of imported diesel fuel:
The good news is that this bill doubles the subsidy for buyers of nat gas trucks to $64,000. Combined with the $1 per gallon difference between diesel and nat gas fuel, this brings the payback on buying a cng or lng truck down to a one-year time frame. We’re talking Tipping Point with those economics, not to mention the positive impact on the environment as nat gas burns cleaner. Then you add in the anti-terror support aspect because every truck running on domestic gas is one less truck feeding the Middle East. This is a win-win-win.
Read Brown’s entire blog post HERE.