Editorial: Harnessing the wind is a big boost

Tuesday, Jan. 2, 2001 | 9:11 a.m.

It is encouraging that, if all goes according to plan, one of the biggest wind farms in the country could be in business within a year in Southern Nevada. As the Sun's Mary Manning reported last week, the Nevada Test Site Development Corp. announced that it had received an easement to designate areas of the federal government's Test Site for wind-power generation. If a wind farm is built along the size envisioned by its backers, its electricity output would be enough to serve a city of 85,000 people.

Deregulation of the electric industry has sparked a number of worries, especially the fear that the loss of government oversight would lead to skyrocketing costs. Another concern, and one which hasn't received as much attention as it should have, was deregulation's impact on the development of alternative energy resources. While wind, geothermal and solar energy are friendlier to the environment than nuclear power and coal, these renewable energy resources also have cost more to produce.

State regulators in the past have prodded utilities to devote at least a small portion of their generation to renewable sources of energy. Consumer advocates worried, though, that if a deregulated market took hold, over time there might be a tendency by users to avoid cleaner fuels in an effort to get the cheapest cost of electricity. But deregulation so far has partly resulted in higher costs for traditional types of energy, which ironically could make renewable energy resources, such as wind, more attractive if the price for all types of energy merge closer together. Southern Nevada's sunny climate also makes solar power an attractive alternative here as well. All in all, it seems as if Nevada is headed in the right direction to put this state on the cutting edge of clean, renewable sources of energy.