Fort Worth Business Press: Gas, renewable energy key to Obama plan

Gas, renewable energy key to Obama plan
BY JOHN-LAURENT TRONCHE
February 02, 2009
President Barack Obama has served as the nation’s top executive for about two weeks, but he’s already racked up a few admirers among some in the energy industry – particularly natural gas and wind energy proponents – thanks to his efforts to kick-start a “new American energy economy,” as he puts it.
The 44th president is aiming to follow through on campaign promises to reduce the United States’ dependence on foreign oil imports while promoting increased funding for, and use of, alternative energy resources, which could include solar, wind and – good news for Barnett Shale producers during a time of grim headlines – natural gas.
In a Jan. 26 speech at the White House, Obama unveiled the American Recovery and Reinvestment Plan as a down payment on the changing energy economy – one which he said would put 460,000 U.S. residents to work, double the capacity to generate alternative energy during the next three years and improve efficiency in federal buildings, among other goals.
“Embedded in American soil, in the wind and the sun, we have the resources to change. Our scientists, businesses and workers have the capacity to move us forward,” Obama said in a speech announcing the plan.
The plan tackles a range of issues the president and proponents believe will give the economy a shot of adrenalin it so desperately needs. Among its energy-related aspects are goals of increasing the renewable energy capacity to power 6 million U.S. homes, adding or updating more than 3,000 miles of electricity transmission lines and “weatherizing” at least 2 million homes and modernizing more than 75 percent of federal building space, which could save $2 billion per year in lower energy bills, according to the White House document.
Of particular interest to renewable energy proponents is the Clean Energy Finance Initiative that aims to leverage $100 billion for loan guarantees and other financial support for private sector investment alternative energy resources and technology.
A related aspect of the plan includes holding domestic automakers to task for producing more cars and trucks with better fuel efficiency.
“Increasing fuel efficiency in our cars and trucks is one of the most important steps that we can take to break our cycle of dependence on foreign oil,” Obama said. “It will also help spark the innovation needed to ensure that our auto industry keeps pace with competitors around the world.”
President Obama didn’t actually mention natural gas by name in the speech – as he did solar and wind – but that didn’t stop former oil man and current alternative energy proponent T. Boone Pickens from issuing a statement that praised the president for his swift action to work toward goals similar to those of the Oklahoman and his eponymous Pickens Plan. The Pickens Plan is a push to increase awareness of alternative energy resources, which appears to be anything but oil.
“President Obama’s remarks this morning reasserted his commitment to making true energy reform a hallmark of his presidency by using the stimulus package to immediately begin work on creating a new energy economy and workforce,” Pickens said in his Jan. 26 statement. “He clearly understands the threat foreign oil dependency has over us – bankrolling dictators, unwillingly supporting nuclear proliferation, and funding both sides of the war on terrorism. He is sending a message to Americans: where leaders before him went quiet and failed to act on promises of energy reform the moment gas prices fell, he is not going to let a sleeping dog lie.”
Even before Obama was elected president Nov. 4, Chesapeake Energy Corp. CEO Aubrey K. McClendon – who, like Pickens, has been vocal in his support for more natural gas demand – praised the then-Illinois senator for what McClendon saw as support for something different than the usual.
“We feel like President Clinton’s policies greatly favored natural gas demand growth,” McClendon said during the Oct. 31, 2008, conference call. “We feel like President Bush’s policies have more favored coal than they favored natural gas and we look forward – if Senator Obama were elected – we look forward to four to eight years of federal policies that we think will impose some kind of carbon cost on fuels, and we believe that will be very favorable to natural gas and we also view that this administration will be very favorably inclined to try to do something about introducing natural gas into the transportation network in a more aggressive way than what’s happened in the past four to eight years. So we are looking forward to that with some optimism.”