Nevada city actively seeking ecopower development

Carson City, Nevada, has launched a private-public initiative called Team Nevada, with the aim of drawing businesses willing to invest in renewable energy technology.

According to this article, the project also has backing from the Nevada Commission on Economic Development and renewable energy investment engine NV Energy.

From wind to solar to geothermal, Nevada offers a lot of renewable energy potential. To harness this, Nevada is building a 250-mile long grid that runs north-south, enabling renewable energy projects to tap into the delivery system.

Smart states are getting ahead of this trend. Every state has an economic development commission of some sort. Now is the time for state business interests to convince government to establish separate commissions to go after cleantech. Or at least to have working groups within the existing commissions.

Renewable energy sources account for biggest chunk of new U.S. energy sources in 2007

Renewable energy sources are gaining enough traction to account for the biggest piece of the pie when it comes to gains in U.S. electrical output.

General electrical capacity increased by 2.3% in 2007, according to Electrical Power Annual 2007. Total 2007 electrical capacity was boosted to 4,157 million megawatt-hours, up from 4,065 MWh in 2006.

Net summer capacity increased by 8,673 MW, with wind power accounting for 5,186 MW.

Renewable energy remains but a drop in the bucket, however. Renewables generate 105 million MWh annually, just 2.5 % of total electrical capacity.

The Obama administration needs to put more money into this sector. Reducing energy costs - and doing it more cleanly - will be a bellweather issue this century. We need to get a head start on the world so we can export the technology.

Global warming is dead, long live global warming!

It was a beautiful sunny day yesterday, and today it's turning bitterly cold and windy. So, today, I'm all for global warming.

But with the state of the economy and other issues taking precedence, Americans are less and less concerned about global warming, according to a survey by the Pew Research Center for the People & the Press, conducted Jan. 7-11 among 1,503 adults.



What's telling about the results of this survey is the fact that Americans are thinking more about domestic issues these days. There is less of a global mindset. Take a look at the following chart, which was available on the same Pew survey page.



Americans haven't been so focused on their own country's issues since the mid 1990s, which is ironic since things seemed to have been going pretty well at the time, at least compared to now.

Getting back to how we view changes in weather patterns, the term we probably should be using is climate change. On average, many areas are indeed getting warmer. But they're also getting colder in the winter. Maybe the Earth's axis is changing, or other developments may be causing overall climate change.

The media needs to get over the misleading term "global warming." Not every area is going to get warmer. Some scientists predict the coming of a "little ice age."

We may be experiencing man-induced climate change, and that is something we can address by reducing carbon emissions and other air pollutants.

Regardless of your thoughts on global warming, climate change, et. al., it does behoove us all to reduce our reliance on carbon-based fuels. Doing so will reduce pollution (thus reducing allergies, thus reducing health care costs) and it will reduce our reliance on foreign energy sources (thus reducing our need to assert ourselves in far-flung conflicts, thus reducing our military expenditures and loss of life).

As a tool to get the public's attention, the mantra of global warming has had its time. Now it should die, and we should focus on the other benefits of alternative energy sources.

Intelligent city design is part of the solution

While there is much to be gained from perfecting alternative forms of energy production such as wind, solar and tides, we should not overlook the benefits of smarter city design.

Using control networking infrastructure, cities can reduce energy usage by 10-20%. This video, which is basically a Youtube ad for a company called Echelon, does a decent job of explaining the concept.



As individuals, we can do a lot by using fluorescent lights and installing better home insulation and windows. As citizens, we should demand that our municipalities and state governments employ smarter design and efficiencies in public spaces.

In these tough economic times, doing so surely beats the alternative, which is reduced services.

Building for the future

For the past couple years, I've been telling friends that if the U.S. spent 40% of our defense budget instead on renewable energy technologies, a great deal of our problems would be solved.

No one looked at me as if I had the answer, but I still feel that doing this would be a great boon. We would go from a nation with a warmongering image to a nation that is helping find a new way forward, toward greater energy independence, not only for ourselves but for all other nations.

And as other nations purchased this technology from us, we would go back to an exporting powerhouse.

Of course by reducing our dependence on foreign energy sources, we would have less need to flex our muscle in the Middle East. The jihadists there would have less reason to hate us, and they would instead rightfully focus their energies on their own repressive governments.

In reading this interview that President-elect Obama gave to Time magazine, I am struck by a sense that he gets this too. Obama said, "The drop in oil prices, I do think, makes the conversation about energy more difficult, not less necessary. More than ever, I think, a wholesale investment in transforming our economy — from retrofitting buildings so that they're energy-efficient to changing our transportation patterns and thinking about how to rebuild our electricity grid — those are all things that we're going to need now more than ever."

I would suggest that we redeploy big chunks of our troops stateside, with the purpose of upgrading the electrical grid, installing community wind machines, bringing public buildings up to date as far as energy efficiency. The U.S. Army Corps of Engineers could go to work installing machines like the Vivace that use low-speed water currents to generate electricity. This would mean we wouldn't have to dam our rivers to garner kilowatts. And it might be more fish-friendly than some turbine-based projects that have been proposed.

If we do this, it is not an easy conversion, but it is one that sets the nation up for energy independence for the long haul. And if we quit messing with other nation's business just so we can have oil, we will be less feared, more respected. We can flex our military muscle in areas like Darfur and other genocidal hotspots. Working with regional allies, we can go after truly despotic dictators like those in Myanmar.

Really, aren't we better than trading bullets for oil? Is that how we want to heat our houses? Is that how we want to say we were able to drive to work?

As the post-beat bard sang, "The answer is blowing in the wind." And it's rippling in the waters.