T. Boone Pickens seems an unlikely ally in the fight for sustainable energy changes.  His father was an oil man, and Pickens himself worked for Phillips Petroleum after his graduation from Texas A&M.  He founded Mesa Petroleum, which grew into one of the largest independent oil companies in the world.  All of that aside, Pickens is one of the loudest voices out there campaigning for alternative energy.  He's released an energy policy proposal, called the Pickens Plan, in which he wants to promote the creation and use of alternatives to oil, since oil is limited and unclean.  And Pickens should know.

A recent article by CNET reports on Pickens' cry for a federally funded loan program to finance wind developments on a large-scale.  Pickens, speaking from the Clean-Tech Investor Summit, promoted his Pickens Plan and the need to convert our energy needs, and vehicle needs, to run on cleaner forms.

To get the ball rolling, Pickens put down $2 billion worth of turbines from General Electric, to be delivered in 2011.  He wants the government to follow his lead, creating a wind-bank that would give people who want to develop wind farms a financial boost.  It would take a small part of the $825 million in federal spending from the Obama supported stimulus package, and Pickens argues it would also be cheaper than continuing to spend money on oil.

Pickens is also a supporter of cleaner, natural gas.  He wants vehicles to run on natural gas, and thinks that there cannot be a cut from foreign oil without it.  He has called for an investment of $28 billion to buy 350,000 heavy trucks that can run on natural gas.

To read the CNET article, through CNN, click here.  To read more about the Pickens Plan, click here.