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Pickens, Home Depot Win in Senate's Energy Measure (Update1)
2010-07-28 19:51:34.223 GMT
(Adds wind-power data in final paragraph.)
By Jim Efstathiou Jr.
July 28 (Bloomberg) -- T. Boone Pickens, the billionaire
energy hedge-fund manager, and Home Depot Inc., the largest U.S.
home-improvement retailer, are winners in energy legislation
that fails to help solar-panel and wind-turbine makers.
The measure proposed yesterday by Senate Democrats would give
Pickens victory in his lobbying campaign for more use of natural
gas, providing $3.8 billion in rebates for cars and trucks
powered by the fuel. Home Depot would benefit from provisions to
channel $5 billion in rebates to homeowners who upgrade to more
efficient appliances or add insulation that reduces energy use.
The provisions were the main survivors among proposals to
reshape U.S. energy use under the measure that would also set
tougher rules for offshore drilling after BP Plc's Gulf of
Mexico oil spill, the worst in U.S. history. Absent from the
measure were limits on carbon dioxide or requirements that
utilities add solar and wind power to their portfolios.
"Boone's been in the natural-gas business all his life,"
Monty Humble, former senior vice president for Mesa Power LLP, a
company founded by Pickens in 2007 to build wind farms, said in
an interview. "As early as 1988, he advocated the use of
natural gas in vehicles. This is consistent with what he was
advocating."
Pickens couldn't immediately be reached for comment. In
April, Humble joined Alston & Bird LLP's legislative and public
policy group in Washington.
Awash in Gas
The U.S. is "awash" in natural gas, thanks to new
drilling techniques that make gas locked in shale formations
cheaper to recover, Pickens told the House Ways and Means
Committee on April 14.
"We are going to look like fools if we don't use natural
gas for transportation," Pickens told the panel. "The only way
we can solve the OPEC oil threat is by replacing their
expensive, dirty fuel with cleaner, cheaper American natural
gas."
In October 2009, Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid, a
Nevada Democrat who drafted the Senate oil-spill response bill,
called Pickens "a good friend and a real visionary."
The Senate bill would offer rebates to people who buy gas-
powered cars or trucks or convert conventional vehicles to gas.
It also would give grants of as much as $50,000 to companies
that put natural gas refueling stations into service between
2011 and 2015.
A House version of the bill doesn't include the natural gas
or energy efficiency provisions. Both measures could be brought
to the floor as soon as this week.
Rebates for Insulation
The Senate bill would offer rebates of as much as $8,000 to
homeowners who retrofit with energy-efficient insulation,
windows and heating and cooling equipment. The Home Star program
to cut energy use from appliances and air conditioners would
create as many as 168,000 jobs over the next two years,
according to the Alliance to Save Energy, a Washington-based
group the promotes energy efficiency.
"While we are disappointed at the limited scope of the
overall bill introduced today, Home Star is a creative solution
to the energy and economic problems facing our country,"
alliance president Kateri Callahan said in a statement.
The Home Star program would extend federal tax credits from
last year's stimulus bill that expire at the end of 2010,
according to Stephen Holmes, a spokesman for Atlanta-based Home
Depot.
Popular at Home Depot
"The previous incentive programs have been extremely
popular with our customers," Holmes said in an interview.
"Homeowners get cost savings on energy bills, tax rebates and
environmental benefits, and it would create more jobs for
contractors."
Pleas from environmental groups and renewable energy
manufacturers that the Senate bill include limits on emissions
that contribute to global warming or a renewable energy
requirement for utilities were rejected after Reid said there
weren't enough votes for the climate provisions.
"The U.S. wind industry is in distress," Denise Bode,
chief executive officer of the Washington-based American Wind
Energy Association, said in a statement. A renewable standard
"is a critical component to ensure the U.S. wind industry
thrives."
U.S. wind-power additions in the first six months of 2010
fell 70 percent from a year earlier, according to Bode.
Developers added 1,239 megawatts in the first half, down from
4,000 megawatts in the same period of 2009.
For Related News and Information:
Top oil, energy news: OTOP <GO>, ETOP <GO>
Nymex crude oil futures curve: CLA <Cmdty> CCRV <GO>
BP results by region: BP/ LN <Equity> FA GEO CHART <GO>
Natural-gas markets: NATG <GO>
Carbon market analysis: CARX <GO>
--Editors: Larry Liebert, Steve Geimann
To contact the reporter on this story:
Jim Efstathiou Jr. in New York at +1-212-617-1647 or
jefstathiou@bloomberg.net.
To contact the editor responsible for this story:
Larry Liebert at +1-202-624-1936 or
LLiebert@bloomberg.net.
