Pickens Plan District Group MD-08

Comment

Comment by Chandrashekar Tamirisa on October 29, 2009 at 6:26pm

Please visit the following pages to submit a letter to your member of Congress on the NAT GAS Act:

http://www.capwiz.com/pickensplan/issues/alert/?alertid=13702871&type=CO

Also, please visit the following page regularly to participate in the latest featured activity:

http://www.pickensplan.com/myenergy/

We are working to make sure that all your online activities are also reported to your district leader and state leader without you having to report it separately. What matters is that you continue to participate.

Thank you for everything you have been doing. It is time to keep up the pressure to get the NAT GAS Act and the energy bill passed.

Chandrashekar Tamirisa
State Leader, Maryland.

Comment by Chandrashekar Tamirisa on October 7, 2009 at 5:52pm

Update on UMD Boone Pickens event.

The Student Government Association is proud to announce that it is hosting T. Boone Pickens. The founder of the Pickens Plan will speak about his plan for reducing our reliance on foreign oil and the future of energy in the United States. The event is scheduled for 10:30 a.m. on Friday, Oct. 16 in the Atrium of the Stamp Student Union.

To RSVP or for more information, please e-mail SGAcommunications@gmail.com .

Comment by Ed Matricardi on October 6, 2009 at 10:40am

Thanks Chandra!

PS- Boone will be at the UMD event on 10/16 and this is a great opportunity to meet him - and even get a quick picture!

Comment by Chandrashekar Tamirisa on October 6, 2009 at 8:45am

Pickens Pan event at University of Maryland, College Park on 10/16 at 10.30 A.M.

The following details are tentatively available. It is likely that House Majority Leader Steny Hoyer could also be there. Please attend. Your support is more necessary than ever before to get a sound bill passed. Talk to your District Leader and keep watching this page should any thing change between now and 10/16.

WHAT: MD event at UM College Park
WHERE: Stamp Student Union
WHEN: Fri. Oct. 16
TIME: 10:30 AM

Thank you,
Chandrashekar Tamirisa

Comment by Chandrashekar Tamirisa on September 28, 2009 at 6:06pm

NIST came out with the smart grid interoperability standards draft today.

Please use the link www.pickensplan.com/lte to submit LTEs to your local papers. One of mine was recently published by the Montgomery County Gazette. This tool should make it easier to let you also send letters to the editors of your local papers.

Thank you for all of your participation. We are close to the finish line and it is time to close the deal on ACELA and the NAT GAS Act.

Chandra

Comment by Ed Matricardi on July 8, 2009 at 7:08pm

Happy Energy Independence Day

Today is the one year anniversary of the release of the Pickens Plan...

Thanks to your support and Boone’s dedication, we have been able to get Congress’ attention on Energy Independence. In fact, the Dallas Morning News wrote a good recap of our first year that you should check out...and use as inspiration to redouble your efforts in the coming months to finally get America off our addiction to foreign oil.


T. Boone Pickens fueling dialogue on clean-energy efforts
Sunday, July 5, 2009
By ELIZABETH SOUDER / The Dallas Morning News
esouder@dallasnews.com

In July of last year, Dallas billionaire T. Boone Pickens began a $60 million advertising campaign and speaking tour designed to persuade Americans to stop using foreign oil.

The oilman-turned-environmentalist proposed a seemingly simple plan: Convert cars, especially big fleets operated by companies and municipalities, from gasoline to domestic natural gas. And start generating more electricity from wind.

By the end of this year, Pickens predicts, Congress will finish passing laws to implement his plan. And within two years, oil imports will drop.

"We have gotten everything we went after," he said. "I have people say it didn't go very fast. Go back and compare it to other things. I think we've moved very fast."

But oil import data don't yet show much direct impact from Pickens' campaign, and a key new natural gas law hasn't made it out of legislative committee. He's persuaded some companies and municipalities to buy natural gas-powered fleets, but the numbers remain tiny.

Still, Pickens' $60 million bought remarkable influence. Because of Pickens, the term "foreign oil" entered the presidential campaigns, executive speeches and everyday discussions.

And he brought many of his conservative followers into the discussion about clean energy through his warning about energy security, allowing them to discuss alternative energy without stepping into the thorny debate about whether humans cause climate change.

"When you have a successful investor from Texas, someone from a state that, some people say, doesn't care about clean energy, to have him come out as the champion, caught a lot of people by surprise and brought a lot of attention to the incumbent [energy companies] in Texas being part of the solution," said Paul Dickerson, a former executive with the U.S. Department of Energy and head of Haynes and Boone's clean technology practice.

Pickens would probably also benefit from his plan. Pickens invests in companies that produce natural gas and sell natural gas vehicle fuel, and a company that builds wind farms.

His retort: "If I'd wanted to make money, I would have kept my $60 million."

On a mission

Instead, Pickens said, he felt he was on a mission that only he could accomplish.

"I felt like it was a mission that you had to tell the American people, you now knew something that affected their lives, their future, their children and grandchildren and everybody else, generations to come. And you had properly analyzed it, you knew what the problem was, and you had a solution for the problem," he said.

Pickens has presented his plan to Republicans and Democrats, to top executives and blue collar workers, to President Barack Obama and Dallas Mayor Tom Leppert.

Rep. Joe Barton, R-Arlington, a longtime supporter of more domestic drilling, credits Pickens with persuading House Speaker Nancy Pelosi to support natural gas vehicles.

"Apparently natural gas is not a fossil fuel," Barton said, tongue in cheek. (Of course, natural gas is a fossil fuel.)

The Sierra Club doesn't oppose Pickens, a longtime Republican supporter who decorates his office with Ronald Reagan memorabilia.

"We haven't given out a wholesale endorsement of the plan, but at the same time, we think that natural gas is a good bridge fuel as we transition to a full clean-energy economy," said Josh Dorner, a spokesman for the Sierra Club.

Natural gas burns more cleanly than oil or coal. Used in a vehicle, natural gas emits 70 percent less carbon monoxide, 87 percent less nitrogen oxide and 20 percent less carbon dioxide than gasoline vehicles, according to lobby group NGV America.

Electric cars might be cleaner than natural gas, but only if the power is generated with cleaner technology, such as wind or solar. Most power in Texas comes from natural gas-fired plants.

Environmental Protection Agency administrator Lisa Jackson, appointed by Obama, said Pickens "points out some really important policy issues."

For example, Pickens rightly talks about the importance of building transmission lines to carry wind-generated power from rural areas to population centers, she said.

Drop in imports

U.S. oil imports dropped 14 percent in June from the year before, according to the government's Energy Information Administration. But that probably is due to the ailing economy rather than a shift to alternative fuels.

The number of natural gas vehicles on U.S. roads has risen in the past two years by only about 8 percent to around 120,000, according to Rich Kolodziej, president of NGV America, a natural gas vehicle lobby group. That's hardly enough vehicles to account for the oil import drop.

However, Kolodziej said, demand for natural gas vehicle fuel rose about 25 percent last year as older models, which could use either natural gas or petroleum fuels, are replaced with new, natural gas-only vehicles.

Natural gas costs less than gasoline or diesel. How much less changes constantly. But the vehicle technology can be costly, and stations to fill up aren't always convenient. With few refueling stations outside of major cities, natural gas vehicles aren't as attractive to regular drivers who expect to use their cars for road trips.

But the nation's supply of natural gas is growing rapidly.

A study released last month from the Potential Gas Committee, associated with the Colorado School of Mines, estimates that the U.S. has 2,074 trillion cubic feet of natural gas reserves, 35 percent more than in 2006. The committee said the amount grew partly because of new technology, like that developed for the Barnett Shale.

Pickens said once all of the planks of his energy policy become law, it will only take a couple of years for oil imports to decline for good.

That's only if the tax incentives are sweet enough to offset the extra costs and, in some cases, the inconvenience of using the technology.

Congress has passed the wind portion of the Pickens Plan, and wind power capacity has already risen 50 percent during the past year. The stimulus bill includes money to upgrade the power grid, and Congress has passed incentives for wind and solar energy. In Texas, new transmission lines to accommodate more wind power will cost electricity consumers around $5 billion.

Still, Pickens is missing incentives for natural gas vehicles themselves.

In April, two representatives from Pickens' home state of Oklahoma, Dan Boren and John Sullivan, introduced legislation to extend and create tax incentives for natural gas vehicles and fuel. The bill hasn't been voted out of House committee.

The bill would extend natural gas fuel, vehicle and infrastructure tax credits for 18 years. The credits are scheduled to expire this year and next. It would also provide incentives for auto manufacturers to produce natural gas vehicles, and require half of all new, federal government vehicles to be capable of operating on natural gas by 2014.

Pickens Army

While Pickens hasn't accomplished everything he wants in the halls of Congress, he has amassed a following of 1.6 million people, known as the Pickens Army, through his Web site. Members write letters to their legislators, encouraging them to adopt the Pickens Plan.

He is also meeting with executives, including those at Wal-Mart Stores Inc., to stump for his favorite fuel.

Last week, AT&T Inc. said it would spend $350 million converting 8,000 of its vehicles to run on natural gas, the largest such fleet in the country. AT&T chief executive Randall Stephenson chose to include natural gas in his alternative fuel fleet after an hourlong meeting with Pickens.

Pickens is indirectly connected to the company that will carry out the conversions, BAF Technologies. Pickens sits on the board of natural gas fuel supplier Clean Energy, which loaned BAF money, according to Clean Energy spokesman Bruce Russell. The loan is convertible into a 49 percent stake in BAF.

Comment by Chandrashekar Tamirisa on July 3, 2009 at 10:31am

Having added the responsibility of State Director of Maryland to my Pickens Plan volunteer efforts, I would like to take this opportunity to thank all the District Leaders both in MD and elsewhere and the members in the various districts. In particular, the District Leader discussion group started by Christine Steinman provided an excellent forum for us all to get off to a rousing start (it would in fact be a useful extension to begin a State Director discussion group).

I will be starting a group for all MD District Leaders, me included for District 08, so that we can keep each other posted on the activities within each CD to aggregate the state efforts both in Annapolis, in the Congress and the Executive as well as, most importantly, in the communities and businesses we interface with.

Thank you and a Happy 4th!

Chandrashekar Tamirisa

Comment by Ed Matricardi on July 1, 2009 at 4:47pm

Take Back Our Energy Future

A video reviewing the first year of the Pickens Plan has been completed and is available for you to view. It has snips of Boone talking about what he's done, where he's been, and why it is so important for America.

It also includes scenes of Army members, President Obama, former Vice President Gore and interviews with many of the leaders of the drive to reduce America's dependence on foreign oil.

You can be among the first to view the new video by clicking HERE
http://www.pickensplan.com/boonecam/2009/07/01/take-back-our-energy-future/

Comment by Chandrashekar Tamirisa on June 27, 2009 at 3:02pm

The Sierra Club MD chapter's meeting today was very productive. It is clear that tangible possibilities are arising particularly in the area of financing energy efficiency projects and it is also encouraging to see both sides of the energy debate coming to a consensus that both energy demand and energy supply, if energy sources are diversified, are just as low-hanging fruits as each other and CNG and RES are an important part of it in the next decade.

What is noteworthy is that there seems to be a burgeoning realization based on my conversation with Highland Beach's very forward-looking mayor Sanders that if the transition costs of moving to clean energy are incurred upfront as they have done in their town and as is happening across several towns in the United States and in major cities, perhaps we do not need cap and trade. Besides the extraordinary work Highland Beach has done, my own electricity bill is evidence of this: why have cap and trade, if as a homeowner I can get 100% wind power for a few cents more per KWH than coal or other polluting power?

This brings us to the issue of financing energy reform which the government cannot obviously pay for in entirety, whether that be the big projects such as the smart grid or the smaller projects such as weatherizing homes and buildings. This is an issue that came up repeatedly at the heart of PP and two companies have presented ways to precisely deal with this problem.

The first sells energy performance contracts to large customers and recoups its investment through customer energy savings. The second does the same for residential customers and works though local governments by recouping its investment through property taxes. Both create local clean energy jobs. It is this kind of financing that is needed to leverage both money supply and fiscal incentives in a down economy (where home equity lines of credit have dried up and employment uncertainty is high) to not only reduce employment uncertainty but also create a channel for increasing household investment and real estate values once again.

Wind in MD has potential in the agricultural parts of the state, but in the more densely populated areas solar is a better option and it was heartening to find Montgomery County taking the lead in trying to bring entrepreneurship in this area to the state along the I-270 corridor, a long overdue and delayed priority.

In all if the momentum from the Washington Energy Summit can align money supply and fiscal incentives to bring together diversification of energy sources and raise energy efficiency, yesterday's close vote in the HR need not necessarily lead to a cap and trade bill but to the broader transportation (NAT GAS or a bill that includes NAT GAS and other transportation projects such as high-speed rail) energy bill as I have said in my blog article on my page.

Sierra Club has energetic leadership in Alan Wase in MD and perhaps she can double up to volunteer on PP for her MD legislative district.

Chandra Tamirisa
District Leader MD-08
State Director, MD

Comment by Chandrashekar Tamirisa on June 24, 2009 at 4:55pm

You all may have read Ed Matricardi's post below. Thank you for your support this past year. As the first anniversary approaches, I am happy to take up the responsibility of State Director for MD for the Pickens Plan. I have added a picture of the state's legislative districts on the MD district page along with the MD-08 Congressional district map.

As a part of this effort, please volunteer to lead your respective legislative districts so that we can reach out to the local community organizations in each of the districts on behalf of the Pickens Plan. Please let me and Ed know if you would like to volunteer to lead this effort in your MD state legislative district.

I will be attending a Sierra Club event in Annapolis on Saturday, June 27th on behalf of the Pickens Plan.

Thank you,

Chandrashekar (Chandra) Tamirisa
State Director, MD
District Leader, MD-08

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