Do you mean the tax rebate? If so, that wasn’t specifically his idea.
Well, Sapphire Energy is being awfully cagey about the costs, but L.A. Times ran a big article on them in the Business section saying (as in, just days ago) that they expect to have green crude up and running at commercial rates within 5 years. There was a small nugget in there about the price per barrel being “within the range of regular crude” but since that’s a moving target right now, who knows what they’re really saying.
It seems like Arch just wrote them a blank check.