With the United States reliance on foreign oil increasing from 24% imported oil in 1970 to almost 70% imported oil today, consumers across the country are wondering what we can do to change these figures.  T. Boone Pickens isn’t just your typical consumer, he has years of experience in the oil and gas industry and has come up with the Pickens Energy Plan which has a green motoring component.

Pickens Plan Basics
The Pickens Plan is an all-encompassing energy plan with a goal of reducing the United States’ reliance on foreign oil.  The main component of the plan is to harness wind power.  How does wind power make a car go vroom?  Well, it doesn’t, at least not directly. 

According to the Pickens Plan website, “We currently use natural gas to produce 22% of our electricity. Harnessing the power of wind to generate electricity will give us the flexibility to shift natural gas away from electricity generation and put it to use as a transportation fuel — reducing our dependence on foreign oil by more than one-third.”

Natural Gas Vehicle (NGV) Statistics
NGVAmerica reports that there are more than 8 million natural gas vehicles used in the world but only just over 120,000 of those are driven in the United States.  Even though there aren’t a large portion of NGVs on the US roads, there are more than 1,100 NGV filling stations in the United States with more than half of those open for public use.

Benefits of NGVs
The most obvious benefit of using a natural gas vehicle is the cost savings.  The NGVAmerica site states that “Natural gas costs, on average, one-third less than conventional gasoline at the pump.”  In today’s prices, that would be the equivalent of about $2.65 per gallon.

Another benefit of NGVs is the reduced emissions.  A run of the mill NGV can reduce carbon monoxide emissions by 70%, non-methane organic gas emissions by 87%, nitrogen oxides emission by 87% and carbon dioxide emissions by approximately 20%.  These are some serious emission reduction numbers.

The goal of T. Boone Pickens and others who support the Pickens Plan is to work with the new President to reduce America’s dependence on foreign oil.

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