There's been a lot of talk lately about Boone Pickens' energy plan. Polls show nearly 90 percent of Americans support it. It calls for replacing the 20 percent of our electricity made from natural gas with wind power over 10 years. That would free up enough natural gas to power 40 percent of our cars and trucks, thereby eliminating 30 percent of our oil imports. Sounds great. We'd be boosting our economy with $210 billion and creating lots of jobs.

But hold on a minute. Can we really switch 20 percent of our electricity production to wind in 10 years and 40 percent of our vehicles to natural gas? If that sounds tough, Al Gore is calling for us to close the 70 percent of our power plants using fossil fuel within 10 years and replace them with wind, solar and geothermal. But it's even tougher than you might think.

When a utility company makes electricity we use it immediately. None is stored because we have no way to store it. So our power plants run 24 hours a day, supplying our very predictable demand. But wind and solar energy aren't available on a steady, 24/7 schedule. Winds tend to die down at night and in the summer. On some days there will be little wind. Meanwhile, solar power is still in its infancy and is still much too expensive -- several times that of wind power. So at times, most of our electricity must come from another source.

That means we'll continue to need almost all of our existing power plants. Using them as a backup would be very

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inefficient and would make them terribly expensive to operate, if that's even possible. So we need a base load of full-time power plants with wind and solar providing some of our needs. It's hard to say, but at this point it's probably only practical to supply about 20 percent from wind and solar. Denmark hopes to get to 50 percent, but their North Sea location gives them a more constant wind source.

Back to Boone Pickens' plan. It's a lot more reasonable than Gore's plan. It would reduce the trade deficit, boost our economy, and natural gas is cheaper than gasoline. Also it's non-controversial because it doesn't require drilling for oil. What's more, there's already one production car that burns natural gas. It's the Honda Civic GX. After a $4,000 tax credit, it's about $6,800 more than a regular Civic. You'll save about $450 in fuel each year, so in 15 years you'll break even. Did I mention it has half the trunk space of the regular version and a range of 170 miles? And don't ask about fill-ups. Replace 40 percent of our vehicles with these things in 10 years? Get real, Boone.

In addition, wind power would require lots of wind farms and long transmission lines. That would mean lot's of negotiating with land owners, municipalities, states, the feds and environmentalists, not to mention the inevitable lawsuits. Just consider the efforts to run pipelines and transmission lines through York County. For reference, the European Union suggested that they could boost their wind power from 3 percent to 12 percent in 14 years. Again, Pickens calls for going from 1 percent to 20 percent in 10 years.

You should also know that Pickens only recently admitted that he also favors drilling for oil. In fact, he explicitly says we need to drill in ANWR and offshore. Why? He knows that his plan still leaves us buying $500 billion of foreign oil. He also knows that we'll continue to need oil for decades to come. Drilling opponents say it will take too long, but the alternatives take even longer.

So Pickens plan is better than Gore's, but it's still unrealistic. Meanwhile, we already have a lot of hybrid car models. The Camry hybrid is bigger than the Civic GX, costs about the same, is rated 33/34 mpg, and has a range of about 570 miles. Soon there will be plug-in hybrids that will use less gas. As battery technology continues to improve, all-electric vehicles will flourish. So the hybrid-to-electric vehicle progression is well underway and promises an easier transition. But like everything else, it won't be complete in 10 years.

It's hard to keep so many facts straight. For example, I got an e-mail from Sen. Casey's office. It indicated that we import almost half of our oil. Actually, the figure was 67 percent in 2007, so be careful what you read. And on MSNBC, Nancy Pelosi said, "I believe in natural gas as a clean, cheap alternative to fossil fuels." She didn't misspeak. Two other times in the interview she echoed the notion. Note to Nancy: it is a fossil fuel and we have to drill for it. This newspaper suggests that you e-mail your senators with your thoughts. When you do, ask them whether they know the whole energy story.

Jim Ogden lives in Dover Township.