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Innovators Finding Energy Solutions

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By THOMAS L. FRIEDMAN

The Tampa Tribune

Published: July 30, 2008

What would happen if you cross-bred J.R. Ewing of "Dallas" and Carl Pope, the head of the Sierra Club? You'd get T. Boone Pickens. What would happen if you cross-bred Henry Ford and Yitzhak Rabin? You'd get Shai Agassi. And what would happen if you put together T. Boone Pickens, the green billionaire Texas oilman now obsessed with wind power, and Shai Agassi, the Jewish Henry Ford now obsessed with making Israel the world's leader in electric cars?

You'd have the start of an energy revolution.

The only good thing to come from soaring oil prices is that they have spurred innovator/investors, successful in other fields, to move into clean energy with a mad-as-hell, can-do ambition to replace oil with renewable power. Two of the most interesting of these new clean electron wildcatters are Boone and Shai.

Agassi, age 40, is an Israeli software whiz kid who rose to the senior ranks of the German software giant SAP. He gave it all up in 2007 to help make Israel a model of how an entire country can get off gasoline and onto electric cars. He figured no country has a bigger interest in diminishing the value of Middle Eastern oil than Israel.

Agassi's plan, backed by Israel's government, is to create a complete electric car "system" that will work much like a mobile-phone service "system," only customers sign up for so many monthly miles, instead of minutes. Every subscriber will get a car, a battery and access to a national network of recharging outlets all across Israel

His company, Better Place, and its impressive team would run the smart grid that charges the cars and is also contracting for enough new solar energy from Israeli companies - 2 gigawatts over 10 years - to power the whole fleet. "Israel will have the world's first virtual oilfield in the Negev Desert," said Agassi. His first 500 electric cars, built by Renault, will hit Israel's roads next year.

Agassi is a passionate salesman for his vision. "Today in Europe, you pay $600 a month for gasoline," he explained to me. "We have an electric car that will cost you $600 a month" - with all the electric fuel you need and when you don't want the car any longer, just give it back. No extra charges and no CO2 emissions.

T. Boone Pickens is 80. He's already made billions in oil. But now he's opting for a different legacy: breaking America's oil habit by pushing for a massive buildup of wind power in the United States and converting our abundant natural gas supplies - now being used to make electricity - into transportation fuel to replace foreign oil in our cars, buses and trucks.

If only we had a Congress and president who, instead of chasing crazy schemes like offshore drilling and releasing oil from our strategic reserve, just sat down with Boone and Shai and asked one question: "What laws do we need to enact to foster 1,000 more like you?" Then just do it, and get out of the way.

Thomas Friedman is a columnist for The New York Times.

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