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President-elect Barack Obama’s 30-point energy agenda asks for prominent changes to address carbon emissions, fuel efficiency, renewable power and efficiency.

If Obama acts out the energy plan he laid out during his campaign, American taxpayers will each get a $500 discount check — funded by a windfall profits taxes on big oil companies.

In addition to taxing oil giants more, Senator Obama’s detailed 30-point energy agenda demands big changes to address carbon emissions, fuel efficiency for vehicles, and domestic and renewable power and efficiency.

While many candidates’ platform assures are cast away when political opposition looms, the Obama energy plan seems constitutional to his promise to get the economy restarted, some experts say.

Some of the highlights of Obama’s energy plan includes:

·         Putting 1 million plug-in-electric hybrid vehicles (PHEVs) on the road by 2015 — cars that can get the equivalent of 150 miles per gallon.

·         Creating 5 million new green jobs by investing $150 billion over 10 years to stimulate clean-energy infrastructure and manufacturing such as wind-turbine plants and solar panels carpeting the nation’s rooftops.

·         Cutting US oil consumption, within 10 years, by the amount currently imported from the Middle East and Venezuela combined.

·         Requiring 10 percent of the nation’s electricity to come from renewable energy sources like wind, solar, geothermal, and biomass by 2012. By 2025, raise that to 25 percent.

·         Establishing an economy-wide cap-and-trade program that cuts US greenhouse gas emissions by charging for every ton of carbon dioxide that goes into the sky from coal- and natural gas-fired US power plants.

Can Obama do all that and more — or will governmental and economical obstructions ultimately turn the plan into a much more humble effort? How much was campaign window dressing, and how much energy shift will the US undergo?

Some components of Obama ’s energy plan are costly, but also vital to the rest of the plan. For instance, sales of pollution permits from the cap-and-trade program to limit CO2 emissions across the economy are key to helping fund the plan’s $15 billion per year (for 10 years) expenditure on renewable energy research and development.

But some say rising electric rates — the result of costs involved with greenhouse-gas emissions — could stir political opposition and derail implementation, especially given the economic depression.

While no one has recalculated the cost-benefit for Obama’s official energy plan, some earlier calculations for similar — albeit rosy — plans suggest that the net effect would still be an addition for green jobs and the economy.

The Apollo Alliance, a labor-environmental alignment, has put forward a proposition that contains proposals similar to those in the Obama plan. The alliance calls for a federal investment in clean-energy technology and green building that’s twice as large ($300 billion) as Obama’s. Their analysis calculates more than $1.4 trillion in savings and economic growth.

The pedigree of Obama’s plan also suggests that it is more, not less, likely to be implemented.

Much of the Obama plan accompanies the National Commission on Energy Policy’s (NCEP) 2004 plan, a consensus document in which — as in the SAFC plan — energy-security hawks joined environmentalists and industry. In fact, NCEP director and plan coauthor Jason Grumet is a likely candidate for an energy post in the new administration.

Besides the advantage of having been pre-vetted by energy, foreign policy, and industry experts, the plan also has something of an authorization. Obama often touted the need for a new energy equation during the campaign. Renewable-energy tax credits were blocked regularly in the US Senate this year. So an Obama mandate could help win over a Senate in which Democrats are now just three votes short of a filibuster-proof majority — with three races still in contention.

One of the fastest ways to lower energy costs is efficiency. Obama’s energy plan touts tougher efficiency standards and decries the Bush administration for missing 34 deadlines for improving energy-efficiency requirements for appliances and electrical equipment.

During its term of office, the Bush White House enacted just two new energy-efficiency standards, one for electrical transformers and one for home furnaces, both of which were considered too weak and are now being challenged in court by states and environmental groups.

If all 25 Obama-proposed energy-efficiency standards were acquired, they could economize the yearly equivalent of all the power produced by 57 large power plants.

An early test of the new administration — and its willingness to risk industry displeasure — will come in June. That’s when a new rule on commercial lighting — to improve the efficiency of those ubiquitous four-foot-long fluorescent tubes used in office buildings nationwide — comes up for final approval.

It’s a big deal. If the Department of Energy enacts a tough rule, it could have one of the most significant energy-efficiency impacts in US history, saving the equivalent of $66 billion in power costs over the next 30 years. That’s enough to power every home in the US for one year.

A strong rule could mean that the US could essentially replace 15 large power plants with the energy savings and slash carbon dioxide emissions by 950 million tons. The Bush administration could still propose a weaker rule in its waning days.

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Barack Obama recently met with oil tycoon turned alternative energy advocate T. Boone Pickens, who funded devastating attacks on 2004 Democratic White House pick John Kerry.

Thomas Boone Pickens, Jr. is an American business man who chairs the hedge fund BP Capital Management. He was a well-known takeover operator during the 1980s. With an estimated current net worth of about $3 billion, he is ranked by Forbes as the 117th-richest person in America and ranked 369th in the world. Pickens has given more than $700 million away to charity.

Pickens has begun speaking out on the issue of peak oil, claiming that world oil production is about to enter a period of irrevocable decline. He has called for the construction of more nuclear power plants, the use of natural gas to power the country’s transportation systems, and the promotion of alternative energy. Pickens’ involvement with the natural gas fueling campaign is long-running. He formed Pickens Fuel Corp. in 1997 and began touting natural gas as the best vehicular fuel alternative because it’s a domestic resource that, among many advantages, is clean (Natural Gas Vehicles or NGVs emit up to 30% less pollution than gasoline or diesel vehicles) and reduces foreign oil consumption. Reincorporated as Clean Energy in 2001, the company now owns and operates natural gas fueling stations from British Columbia to the Mexican border.

The current Democratic presidential candidate Barack Obama also declared that Pickens has a lot longer track record than that, when asked about how it felt to be meeting the man who “swiftboated” Kerry’s campaign, as the two headed into a brief tete-a-tete at a resort hotel in Reno, Nevada.

According to Obama, Pickens is a legendary entrepreneur and his stand on energy issues is something not to be taken lightly. Obama further clarified that one the things he thought it was necessary to unify the United States around was having an intelligent energy policy.

Pickens in 2004 donated millions to a shadowy group of Vietnam War veterans calling themselves “Swift Boat Veterans for Truth,” who ran ads questioning Kerry’s honesty and his record in Vietnam, where he was wounded three times and awarded the Silver and Bronze Stars for valor.

The former Texas oilman has since launched a “Pickens Plan” to wean the United States off its dependence on foreign oil, investing in wind farms and stumping for alternative energy at the US Congress in Washington.

In June 2007, Pickens announced the intention to build the world’s largest wind farm by installing large wind turbines in parts of four Texas Panhandle counties. The project would produce up to four gigawatts of electricity. Pickens’ Mesa Power LP will undertake the construction. If completed, the farm would generate more than five times the 735 megawatts produced at the present largest such farm near Abilene.

“Everybody knows that if we keep on going on the same track that we’re going, that we are giving our wealth away, we’re funding both sides in the war on terror,” the Illinois senator said.

Obama further stressed that over the longer term, the United States government was simply going to be putting enormous pressure on ordinary families in America who are simply not going to be able to afford skyrocketing gasoline prices and home heating prices. Therefore, it is very necessary that the country is unified around the issues of energy.

Pickens did not speak to reporters, but reportedly smiled awkwardly as Obama was asked about his activities during the 2004 campaign.

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