Editorial: Get energized about energy

Friday, Nov. 4, 2005 | 9:25 a.m.

For all of the optimistic talk about Nevada becoming a national or even global center for the production of renewable energy, little in the way of tangible progress has been made. The potential certainly exists in this state, as noted Saturday by former President Bill Clinton, who was in town to deliver the keynote speech at the Nevada Development Authority's annual meeting.

In his talk to the authority, a nonprofit organization that works to attract businesses, Clinton said that if he were in charge of economic planning in Nevada or Las Vegas, he would "start by making a complete and total commitment to a clean energy future, because I think you can create more jobs there than anywhere else." Clinton said opportunity in this emerging field is wide open for the Nevada business community.

We were delighted that Clinton chose Nevada's potential for producing renewable energy as a central theme for his speech. History has proven that for the state to get moving on this subject, it takes someone of high public stature to endorse it.

The last time renewable energy made a splash in Nevada was because then-Gov. Bob Miller, then-Sen. Richard Bryan and Sen. Harry Reid (currently the Senate minority leader) all noted Nevada's nearly limitless potential for using solar energy to produce the "energy of the future" -- hydrogen.

That was in February 1993, when Miller, Bryan and Reid attended an international energy conference at UCLA. Reid followed up the meeting by holding Senate hearings on hydrogen. Bryan spoke of the environmental and political problems caused by oil, saying, "We need to reorient the focus of the Energy Department, which is now mesmerized by nuclear energy and fossil fuels." Miller touted Nevada as a state "willing to try new things," and said hydrogen research and production would be a logical next use for the Nevada Test Site.

For the next several years Southern Nevada was a hub of renewable energy activity, as businesses and nonprofit scientific and engineering associations presented ideas for using millions of acres of surrounding desert to place solar collectors, whose gathered energy would be used to separate hydrogen atoms from water.

Envisioned were manufacturing plants for building the collectors, installation businesses for getting them set up and an expanded utility industry for selling hydrogen and excess solar energy.

Possibly because conventional energy prices were still reasonable, or because the proposed technology was too land-intensive, or because reliance on foreign oil wasn't the issue that it is today, the political and entrepreneurial will eventually fizzled.

It's a different world today, and we hope Clinton's speech brings back the old excitement about a large-scale renewable energy industry in Nevada.