Energy Visionaries: T. Boone Pickens and Shai Agassi

By Bob Difley

Sometimes it takes a certain indefinable caliber of a person, one who not only sees the big picture but have the chutzpa, vision, and means to go after it. Such is the case of T. Boone Pickens, who is changing the energy landscape with his grandiose plans for alternative energy sources, one of which is to build vast wind farms to generate energy from our windiest areas, like Texas. Another is to rally people to his Pickens Plan and the power of numbers to influence the new president and the congress “to make major changes towards cleaner, cheaper and domestic energy resources.” As he says on his Web site,
“America is in a hole and it’s getting deeper every day. We import 70% of our oil at a cost of $700 billion a year – four times the annual cost of the Iraq war.
“I’ve been an oil man all my life, but this is one emergency we can’t drill our way out of. But if we create a new renewable energy network, we can break our addiction to foreign oil.”
And then there is also Shai Agassi, who plans to bring electric cars into the mainstream faster than any major car manufacturer thinks possible. And it looks like he might just pull it off, if it’s any indication of the number and status of the people jumping aboard his bandwagon. In an article in the September issue of Wired Magazine, writer Daniel Roth follows Agassi from his electrifying speech in December 2006 at the Saban Center for Middle East Policy Conference on how to get the world off oil.
At 38 he was the youngest of 60 prominent invitees (Bill Clinton, former Israeli prime minister Shimon Peres, and Supreme Court Justice Stephen Breyer among others) and he presented his audacious plan to install a nationwide grid of charging stations for his electric cars, which he would sell cheap and make money off drivers’ electricity usage and from leasing the expensive batteries—instead of selling them along with the car—an idea no one had thought of yet.
His working model figures that the average driver would pay about $1,050 per year for electricity and battery depreciation compared to $3,000, the current driver’s annual average for gasoline at $4 a gallon (15,000 miles at 20 mpg).
Agassi also had the money to back his plan, having sold his software company for $400 million. But he needed somewhere to set up a trial, a small island nation, where a nationwide charging station infrastructure was feasible as a test. Working with an enthusiastic Shimon Peres, Israel seemed like a good choice for his initial set up (maybe not an island, but surrounded by hostile countries on three sides and the Mediterranean Sea on the other). Today the building of the infrastructure is well underway, and another test is in the works in Denmark. Keep an eye on this project, it just might change the way we drive in a much shorter time frame than anyone thought.
The more I look at world changing plans, electric vehicles (EVs) seem to be at the top of my list, though I think we should continue to pursue all modes of fuel and energy generation. The mission and goals that personal transportation in America–if not the world–will embrace in the future, could be labeled the Transportation Triumvirate (TT): (1) Reducing dependence on foreign oil, (2) Reducing use of fossil fuels (America uses a quarter of the world’s oil), and (3) The creation of clean, cheap, and efficient vehicles and fuel (we are far behind the European and Asian miles-per-gallon standards).
EVs fit into this TT plan even better than hybrids and diesels. Here’s how:
• Central energy production for charging batteries (i.e.: power plants, wind farms, and solar arrays) is much more economical than the energy produced by individual vehicles burning their onboard fuel supply.
• Fossil fuels are needed only for central electricity production in coal fueled power plants (which can all be set up to both scrub and sequester CO2 before it reaches the air) and from solar, wind, and other alternative energy sources.
• Pollutants, particulates, and greenhouse gasses of EVs are zero.
• Noise level is next to nothing–more coming from the tires on the road than from the motor.
So what are the negatives, or problems? Two major ones, when once resolved, will push EVs forward like Usain Bolt out of the starting blocks. First is the battery. They are expensive, bulky, heavy, and take too long to charge. But there is a lot of venture capital money flowing into breakthrough battery technology, and improvements are coming quickly. The next generation lithium batteries show much potential and new concepts are in the works to replace batteries with a newer technology. Secondly, charging time is currently in hours instead of minutes, which works for those who commute each day the number of miles that is within the range of the EV’s battery. Drive to work, drive home, plug it in, charge it overnight.
But what about those that do not return home every night, like us RVers. That’s where Agazzi’s charging station infrastructure comes into play. His plan is for charging stations as ubiquitous as gas stations, battery exchange stations (much like swapping barbeque propane tanks), and the development of short term charging solutions. Grid power would benefit also, since most at-home charging would occur overnight when electricity demand is low. Old, spent, batteries would be recycled, so nothing goes into land fills or produces toxic waste.
Grid electricity generation would be the key to it all, and could go in different ways. Solar and wind could supply part of a regional power plant’s needs, reducing both coal use and the distance fuel had to be moved to get to the power plant. Nuclear would have to be considered, plant safety as well as disposal of nuclear waste. New, small scale, regional nuclear power generators are being built in China, without the size or capacity to wreak havoc on the neighborhood in case of accidents or terrorist attacks. But mainly, going to centrally generated electrical power instead of individually fueled vehicles would reduce our need for oil immediately, since power plants do not use oil for generating electricity.