Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid appears to have joined investor T.
Boone Pickens camp, calling for a shift to natural-gas powered vehicles
for heavy duty uses.
The two told reporters on Monday they will hold a forum in Washington,
D.C. on February 23 to focus on bringing private investment to bear on
the nation’s energy crisis.
They will be joined by John Podesta, who heads up the Center for
American Progress. Podesta said the purpose of the forum is to put
policies in place to increase private investment in the transmission
grid.
However, Reid highlighted natural gas as a domestic alternative
to foreign oil/diesel in heavy duty fleet applications, a key element
of "The Pickens Plan."
"We need to see incentives, grants, planning dollars and some serious
effort put into public-private partnerships to accelerate the
deployment of heavy-duty natural gas vehicles and other clean-fuel
vehicles and infrastructure," Reid wrote in an e-mail to Dow Jones.
"Hopefully, the economic recovery package, the next energy bill and
maybe even the climate bill will expedite this shift away from greater
dependence on oil," he said.
The idea of shifting the nation’s transportation infrastructure to support natural gas–another fossil fuel–has been criticized
by many environmentalists and researchers who note that natural gas is
much less efficient as a vehicular fuel than it is as a fuel for
creating electricity. Thus, it would make more sense to continue the
development of electric vehicles, which can also run on renewably
sourced electricity as supplies grow.
However, electric vehicles are not suired for heavy-duty uses and long-haul applications.
Pickens said that there are about six million heavy duty vehicles in
the U.S., and that the U.S. can achieve a nearly 5% reduction in
foreign oil/diesel use if just 350,000 begin using natural gas as a
domestic alternative.
The forum will be patterned after a similar one held in Las
Vegas in August hosted by Reid. The meeting is intended to outline how
to put policies in place to meet Obama’s energy goals, according to
staff members at the Center for American Progress.
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