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Mike Johnston a New Energy Army member from Virginia was able to attend Monday’s National Clean Energy Summit. Here’s what he had to say.
The day before the National Clean Energy Summit I heard one of the Anchors on CNN describe the meeting as “Boone Pickens’ Dream Team”. This despite the fact that Al Gore, John Podesta and the Center For American Progress Action Fund along with other members of the panel have made significant contributions on their own. However, since Pickens has done such a high profile job of bringing awareness of this effort and the issues involved to the attention of a wide swath of the American people from all walks of life and political persuasions by launching his Pickens Plan last July I suppose he does have the bragging rights to calling this “his team”.
As I drove through downtown Washington on my way to the summit I noticed city buses going past with the logo “powered by clean natural gas” emblazoned on their sides. That seemed fitting in light of Boone Pickens efforts to switch our medium and heavy duty commercial vehicles over to natural gas on a national level.
I had a good seat for the proceedings right in front of the platform where the networks had their cameras set up. Most of the press was confined to an adjacent room but I was fortunate enough to be able to be in a great spot to watch history being made. After the obligatory bomb dog made his rounds of the room and the security guys were in place at strategic spots the forum participants entered and sat down. The main table was U shaped and the participants sat around the outside edge of the U facing each other. At that point I first noticed that Boone Pickens and Al Gore had been seated next to each other for the event and I smiled just a bit at the irony of it.
The irony was of course that Gore, the epitome of green, climate change activism was seated next to Pickens, a former oil man who is usually perceived as a staunch conservative. As the conference progressed though it soon became obvious that these two potential adversaries in a different time had been able to move past their differences in order to work together to achieve a common goal. That is pretty compelling evidence to me that the problems we face really are very serious. If we can all just learn to follow the example of these two men then I believe that we, as a nation can again achieve great things in the face of this adversity.
The forum opened with remarks by Senator Tim Wirth and then Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid. Their comments focused mostly on the challenges we face and the need to upgrade our existing grid and to create a Smart Grid in order to incorporate alternative forms of energy into our national portfolio as we move into a green economy.
They were followed by former President Bill Clinton who talked about how the coalition at that table had held together despite falling oil prices and he said he took that as a sign that, this time, America was indeed committed to developing a green energy economy. He went on to say that we must maximize the impact of the part of the recently passed Stimulus Package funds which is dedicated to green energy and upgrading the grid. He said that it is critical that people and businesses learn to use less energy and to use it more wisely as this is a great starting point for us which would create green energy jobs right now.
Next came former Vice President Al Gore who talked about the effects of Climate Change as being threefold (climate, security and economy) and pointed out that we are already feeling its effects in these three critical areas of our national life. In addition he pointed out that we are now shackled to the price and supply of oil with no way out except to diversify our energy supply and move into a reliance on domestic and renewable energy sources. He also pointed out the benefits of enacting a carbon cap and trade law to move us toward eliminating dirty energy sources. It was almost like hearing Boone Pickens speak because those ideas of reducing consumption of foreign oil and building a renewable, domestic energy economy were always basic tenets of his Pickens Plan.
T. Boone Pickens laid out his Pickens Plan in somewhat condensed form. He mentioned breaking our dependence on foreign oil for both economic and national security reasons as well as the fact that natural gas is the only viable, cleaner fuel that we have available domestically for commercial trucks. Those are a few of the main points in the Pockens Plan and ones to which everyone at the forum seemed to be in agreement with including President Clinton and Vice President Gore. Pickens has always advocated the smart grid and the distributed energy model so that too fit right into the overall plan being crafted by all present. In addition he pointed out again how vulnerable we are as a nation to oil supply interruptions. Even before Russia so graphically proved his point for him this winter by shutting off natural gas supplies to Europe because of a financial dispute with Ukraine. During the course of the conference all of the major speakers voiced support for Pickens plan to use CNG for commercial vehicles (even Clinton and Gore).
The final speaker that I want to mention here is Lee Scott, Chairman of The Board at Wal-Mart. Mr. Scott said that when his company first considered offering “green” products to their customers they expected general apathy from consumers in regard to those products. But he went on to say that they were surprised to find that, when offered a choice Wal-Mart customers DO care and would choose green products when they were offered as an option as long as one criteria was met, that being; that cost is not an issue in the decision (the products are equally priced with non green products). I think the same will be true in the energy market. most consumers will choose to purchase green energy as long as it is priced competitively with dirty energy. In closing Mr. Scott turned to Boone Pickens and told him that Wal-Mart was expecting delivery of the first of their natural gas fueled trucks shortly and that they were already running 5 trucks on fryer grease from their fried chicken operation as well as having some diesel/battery hybrid trucks (which could also just as easily be natural gas/battery hybrids).
Following the forum there was a brief press conference in the adjoining room where most of the press had been placed. Between the two events I had the chance to meet briefly President Clinton and other members of the panel. After the press conference I happened to end up riding down to street level on the same elevator as Boone Pickens and some of his entourage. As we exited the elevator I turned to Mr. Pickens, extended my hand and said “good job with the conference”. He shook my hand with a smile and thanked me. I found him to be very genuine in person. For all of the bashing he took from certain members of the press when he launched the Pickens Plan he held firm to what he believed was right for America and I respect that. You know, you can learn a lot about a person from the media in a superficial sense but until you are face to face with them and can look into their eyes you can’t really be sure of who they are and, for me, T. Boone Pickens passed that test.
Thanks for this great report Mike!
Team Pickens