Green Options

T. Boone Pickens’ kicked off a “virtual march” on Washington, D.C. today, organizing the collective power of over 4.5 million people to flood Congress with e-mails, calls and faxes in support of clean energy.

Hong Kong tycoon Stanley Ho is most famous in business for his vast and infamous casino empire and unofficial title as one of Asia’s richest people (his estimated US$8 billion net worth earned him the 113th rank in Forbes’ 2007 list of “the World’s Billionaires”). Might news of his recent clean energy joint venture with Portugal’s top power company bring him a new title: “the Chinese T. Boone Pickens“?

According to Macauhub, a government-sponsored news publication-cum-commerce division that reports business-related news in the Pearl River region and in Portugese-speaking countries, Ho has created a renewable energy partner firm with Portugal’s Energias de Portugal (EDP), which will be known as EDP-Energy Solutions Asia.

The White House and Congressional leaders announced that a bailout of the carmakers was imminent. The House signed on, but the Senate opposed the deal. The Big Three and the U.A.W stood united. The final breakdown in negotiation with the Senate occurred when Senator Corker of Tennessee and the U.A.W. came to an impasse. But the bailout will happen. Apparently, Bush will do it with some of the money from the financial bailout.

According to the latest proposal, a “Car Czar” would be appointed to oversee the rescue. It’s unclear how this “Czar” could be more effective than a U.S. trustee appointed by a Chapter 11 Bankruptcy judge. A trustee might be more likely to be free of special interest and partisan bickering. There are strong special interests in the Congress over the automotive industry.

Billionaire American entrepreneur T. Boone Pickens is optimistic that the Obama administration will bring the United States’ energy infrastructure into the new millennium by implementing his plan for energy independence.

After eight long years there is finally a cause for hope here in the United States. George Bush may still be in office, but right now all America’s problems are President-Elect Obama’s to solve (see Obama Recession, thanks Rush), but he seems ready for them.

T. Boone Pickens brought his one-man clean energy road show to New York City and the studios of The Daily Show on Wednesday.

Is Sarah Palin’s Natural Gas Pipeline Really a Maverick Move Towards Energy Independence or Republican Politics as Usual Favoring Big Energy Business?

Move over, T. Boone Pickens. You’re about to be overshadowed by Babcock and Brown.

Australian developer Babcock and Brown has announced that it is working on a 79.5 MW wind farm in the Texas Panhandle— but the company has much larger ambitions than a single farm. Majestic Wind Farm is only one part of a $1 billion effort company to build 567.5 MW of wind power throughout Texas, Wisconsin, and South Dakota. But there’s more.

T. Boone Pickens, billionaire Texas oil man, has been pushing his come-to-Jesus revelations in television — and YouTube — commericals lately. Which is to say, he’s figured out there’s money to be made, and an energy independence to be had, in alternative energies.

Some may question Pickens’ motivations and his methods of doing business with the Pickens Plan. I admit I could learn more about those aspects of Pickens. But as I do so, I’m writing now of my early impressions of the man, and why I am glad to see his face on T.V.

Nothing is more precious to general America than money. So money, profits, wealth accumulation, etc. has to be part of the process of converting people from any one way of life to any other way of life. Sense and science just aren’t enough for a significant, influential, voting portion of the public.

You wouldn’t necessarily expect Bill Clinton and the Democratic party to have very much in common with oilman and 2004 “Swift Boat” funder T. Boone Pickens (who helped finance the ads that slighted John Kerry’s service in Vietnam during the last presidential election), but these are strange times we live in.

Big Oil, Big Money, Big Slap in the Face.

Unfortunately, I fear that slap won’t register properly with enough people in the status quo, those who cling to oil and more oil as if it’s the only way forward.

During a commercial break from MSNBC’s coverage of the final night of the Democratic National Convention held in Denver, the American Petroleum Institute, the trade organization for the Oil and Natural Gas Industry, ran a spot touting domestic oil and gas reserves that Democrats are keeping us Americans from reaching.

New York City is famous for many things, but wind power generation is not one of them—yet. New York City Mayor Michael Bloomberg spoke yesterday at the National Clean Energy Summit in Las Vegas about his renewable energy policy proposal for the city.

Bloomberg expressed interest in off-shore wind farms, small-scale wind installations, and and tidal power systems, noting that some estimates predict that wind energy could supply 10 percent of the city’s energy needs within 10 years.

Of course, there are barriers to Bloomberg’s proposal. Many people complain about the unattractiveness of wind turbines, and these complaints certainly can’t be ignored in such a densely populated city. And at least one study claims that urban rooftop windmills are actually net carbon emitters.