I’m making it my mission to understand the two candidates’ energy plans — and, by extension, their environmental philosophies — inside and out. This was a good “starter” on Obama’s plan:

On paper, Sen. Obama’s plan looks like a way to easily finance continued, long-term support for renewable energy—support that has been tripped up in Congress by budgetary “pay-go” rules and Republican opposition so far. And many in the clean-energy game figure if they can just get long-term price support for things like wind and solar power, the private sector will take care of the rest. […]

But will $150 billion be enough to really make a difference? Subsidies aside, renewable energy can’t make a go of it without a major overhaul of the nation’s electricity transmission grid, as the Department of Energy, T. Boone Pickens, and Al Gore have all pointed out recently.

And the estimated price-tag for creating a “transmission superhighway” ranges from about $60 billion to upwards of $200 billion—just to get the juice from wind farms and solar plantations to homes and businesses where it’s needed. That’s assuming Washington finds a solution to the regulatory morass….