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StumbleSUN EDITORIAL:
Brighter day ahead
State government takes a good step toward spurring solar energy industry
Sunday, June 13, 2010 | 2:04 a.m.
Nevada should be the nation’s leader in renewable energy, given the abundance of resources — solar, geothermal and wind. Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid, D-Nev., has made a strong push to pave the way for the renewable energy industry to come to Nevada.
Most recently, Reid announced last week with Rep. Dean Heller, R-Nev., new legislation that would set aside federal land in Lincoln County to be leased for solar energy development. Reid has also worked to bring tax breaks and other support for renewable energy companies, which have helped bring companies to the state and create jobs for Nevadans. For example, a solar company announced this year that it would build a manufacturing plant in Clark County and create nearly 300 jobs, and Reid was credited for his work to bring a Chinese wind turbine manufacturer to Southern Nevada. There are also plans to build a solar plant near Primm.
However, under Gov. Jim Gibbons’ leadership, the state government has been slow to follow Reid’s lead and make a concerted effort to develop the industry here, but it recently took a step in the right direction. As Stephanie Tavares reported in Friday’s Las Vegas Sun, Gibbons announced a plan to bring solar energy to state property. Nevada will ask developers to submit plans to build small-scale installations with their own money. In return, they can charge a fee for electricity or enter into a lease-to-own deal with the state. The companies would also receive tax breaks for providing renewable energy.
The state is basing the plan on a similar project done at the Nevada National Guard headquarters. The expectation is that solar panels would be placed over parking lots, on the tops of buildings and in vacant lots.
Environmentalists applauded the plan. “We’re very pleased to see a good idea come out of this administration’s energy office,” Nevada Conservation League spokesman Scot Rutledge said.
Putting solar panels on buildings and parking lots would reduce many of the concerns that environmentalists have about large-scale solar plants. No large transmission lines will need to be built, nor are animals or any land disturbed.
Increasing the number of solar projects should also help spur the economy and create jobs. State leaders should make renewable energy a priority.
Other states have done similar things, as have other government agencies. There is a solar plant at Nellis Air Force Base and the Southern Nevada Water Authority has installed solar panels at two of its treatment facilities. As well, many companies in Clark County have installed solar panels, as has the Springs Preserve, and have had good success with them.
The state’s plan is a good move and worthwhile. We hope this plan will encourage other governments and businesses to follow suit.
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New Mexico has a great program to train solar employees. Gibbons should resign now, his legacy is a parking garage of a steak house. Has he endorsed: "spend it all Sandoval?
If anyone can find any new new in the paid ad for Reid let me know.
Reid and Pelosi have be in control of Congress since January 2007. Not much there there for 42 months of work including 3 energy bills.
The LV Sun says "The state's plan is a good move and worthwhile. We hope this plan will encourage other governments and businesses to follow suit."
Is this editorial the type of Corporate spending on elections the Sun railed against with the Supreme Court ruling? Or, does the Sun consider its own corporations endorsements of candidates and advocating for their election to be "special" corporate funding of elections?
Is the Sun really against corporations being able to advocate in elections or just against the competition where the Sun's own corporate influence enjoyed a limited monopoly of spreading its influence?
A study in Italy and another study in Spain concluded that 2 jobs are destroyed for every 1 green job created within their countries. We should expect roughly the same results here.
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A Gift Of Duality
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The simultaneous resignation of Gibbbonss and Sen Ensigennn would be the best stimulus at getting the state to move forward.
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Then, mabye a new A.G. in D.C. would get the job done in prosecuting the AWOLBush war criminal and his henchmen.
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Thanks For Reading My Post
Patrick-R_Gibbons, the education policy analyst of NPRI/NV has gotten it wrong again-intentionally! What is with this propagandist? Does he want Nevada to fail? Does he want NV not to have a future? Does he not want NV citizens to have jobs?
Is Gibby like Nero? does he want to play his propaganda violin to help NV deteriorate into ashes?
Why would you support a bill by Reid and Heller that supports stream lining approval of massive development on public lands? The Lincoln County attempt to streamline development of renewable energy follows the SWIP power line which also happens to follow the proposed pipeline that SNWA wants to build. Many of the plans for big solar (Dry Lake, Delemar Valley and Coyote Springs) are wet cooled. Harvey Whittemore will use the big ground water allotment he won for his failed Coyote Springs development to develop Bright Source, 600 acre feet of water. Big solar may be the next big water grab.
Also, the Minerals Management Service also did a streamlining review of the BP oil rig. Look what happened. Sorry if it bursts your green bubble, but massive developments need planning.
Large CSP solar plants use hazardous materials and the plans need to be well thought out, not stream lined. Reid is too slow to learn from a big disaster. So is Heller.
Don't be fooled by big development scams that are fronts for water grabs.
Hmmm...focusing our solar efforts on decentralized PV generation at the location of use - no large remote plants - no transmission lines - lower breakeven points - what a concept. There is hope - when it comes to solar, we may actually use common sense, and start catching up with rest of the developed world that uses solar power.
Those are Federal Trust Lands..that are being sold cheap to pay for government.
Clinton sold the Naval Oil Reserves (oil fields) to Occidental Oil (Al Gore) for 3.5 billion dollars..
Obama is making a list of Federal Lands (western lands) to be sold for development. The expect 9.8 billion dollars will be used to pay down the debt...
That is cheap cheap cheap..Who is going to buy and develop your land?
That is your land..guard it carefully and use it wisely
RayLuca, your statement that the rest of the world "uses solar power" is simply not true...you know it, I know it, even Mr. Sun knows it...why end your admirable thoughts with a lie?...as for common sense, how sensible is it to believe 'announcements' and 'plans' and 'create jobs' and 'tax breaks' and all of the other pablum in this opinion?...all too common, but none too sensible...
Gee I guess the fossil fuel industry creates lots of jobs: cleaning up oil spills, fighting oil fires, digging people out of collapsed coal mines, cleaning off birds, manufacturing and setting booms, dealing with health issues and building and burying coffins of dead employees.
How many people have been killed in the solar or wind industry? Not many.
The chuckle heads from the Right Wing think tanks use pea-brain logic and "bring your own crayons" data collection.
Cato institute was funded by David Koch, fossil fuel industry owner. Look up Koch's environmental and health and safety record.
Replacing the horse with the car reduced the number of jobs, but still 20% are automotive related.
Electric cars have less parts, and are easier to fix. Changing out an electric motor or a battery pack. In fact, many fossil fuel cars and hybrids have electrically driven components already. Electric power steering, electric air conditioning compressor and blower, electric anti-lock brake pump, electric windows, electric seat, electric wipers, electric windows, and so on. Powering them down the road electrically is a logical transition.
Likewise mining coal or drilling oil, transporting it, remediation of mining sites, power plant maintenance, transporting the power represents more activity than setting up a solar facility, maintaining it and transporting the power. A photovoltaic solar panel on a roof of a home or business is a relatively simple system. Even conservative Clint Eastwood installed solar panels on one of his businesses.
From Bloomberg, http://www.bloomberg.com/apps/news?pid=n...
"Subsidizing renewable energy in the U.S. may destroy two jobs for every one created if Spain's experience with windmills and solar farms is any guide.
For every new position that depends on energy price supports, at least 2.2 jobs in other industries will disappear, according to a study from King Juan Carlos University in Madrid."
Yup, propaganda, backed by academic studies...
Mred, I do believe electric cars are mostly powered by coal burning fire plants which make up well over 50 percent of electric sources in America.
Hmmmmmm....I see the little free trader is against doing much in the area of solar...
No surprise there! He claims to be a believer in the freemarket system but he normally writes off anything that he really doesn't understand or anything that doesn't fit his weird agenda...
He has convinced himself that a "little government seed money" here or there is ALWAYS a waste of time and causes more problems than it solves....
I wonder if our present Interstate Highway System, and the Great Transcontinental Railroad would have ever been built with out government aid and intervention?
Of course the little free trader has repeatly said that a privately build and financed railroad was built across the northern part of the United States, reaching Seattle in 1893...
He's absolutely correct about that, but what he didn't point out is the fact that the Great Transcontinental was completed in 1869, some 25 years before the Great Northern was built...
In other words, this country got a head start on the use of a transcontinental railroad by utilizing government funding and land grants...
Who benefited from that? The American people, of course....Not to mention commerce and trade and the Union Pacific & Central Pacific Railroad companies...
The little free trader refuses to recognize the fact that the Great Transcontinental speeded up the settlement of the West, provided jobs to thousands of Americans, and paid for itself several time over before the Great Northern was able to move its first railroad car of goods from St. Paul, Minnesota to Seattle, Washington.
Actually, some 25 years before, but who's counting?
So much for progress as pushed by a certain freetrader!
Gibby said...
"....I do believe electric cars are mostly powered by coal burning fire plants which make up well over 50 percent of electric sources in America."
That's where the use of solar comes into the picture. Solar can be used to provide electricity
for the power grid. Solar can help power electric cars....pretty simple stuff!
The use of electric cars for 20% of our population would make a huge difference in our over-all energy picture...
Coal can be replaced with solar and wind.
Go back to the sand box at the stink tank.
Mred and El lobo,
I didn't say I was against green energy. I merely stated that currently, government subsidies in green energy result in killing more jobs than it creates. It is not economically viable at this time. Sometime in the future? Yes, most certainly, though I bet it will never be a big player.
El Lobo,
You still don't seem to have the capacity to understand alternatives, compliance costs, opportunity costs and unintended consequences. The transcontinental rail road was the 19th century equivalent of the bridge to nowhere.
It may have sped up the development of the west (development that would have occurred anyway) by wasting millions up millions of dollars in wealth. I already supplied you with the link to the stories of corruption and waste on this issues - conveniently you ignored it.
Both of you seem to have a dogmatic faith that government can simply spend money to solve problems because you don't pay attention to simple economic facts - how efficiently resources are being allocated.
...mred, you and your buddy, el lobo are just strange...'change out battery packs'..???....say what?...when the battery is developed further, the electric car and solar energy will be viable...we A-L-L know that...why do you pretend that day has come?...it is a transition...we are well on our way...but, it isn't here yet...and moreover, when that day does come, please do not believe there will be zero potential environmental danger or zero potential danger to human beings in producing electricity...
Big Oil and Big Coal are destined for the dustbin of history. The sooner we make the transition into solar, wind, geothermal, hybrid auto's the better off our society will be.
Europe and even China has surpassed us and are not even looking in their rear view mirror.
The sycophant pawn supporters of the radical extremist right wingnuts do not want America to advance into our "Bright Future" because they get paid to protect an Industry that is it's last chapter.
Gibby continues to amaze me.... No befuddle me!
He actually believes that the building of the Great Transcontinental Railroad was not worth the money spent doing it.....
Yes, there was some coruption (what's new?) but the benefits of the road was worth the cost 100 time over...
Gibby needs to read a lot more on the building of the road.... He knows very, very little but what's new?
A good book to start with is "Nothing Like It In The World" by Stephen Ambrose.
There's several others that also tell the story....
Gibby's statement saying, "The transcontinental rail road was the 19th century equivalent of the bridge to nowhere" is the biggest bunch of "horse hockey" to ever come down the pike.
Does Gibby really believe that??? Wow!
Gibby actually believes that the country would have been better off if we had waited 25-50 years and allowed private builders and investors to finally build the road with no government help!
By that time, we had three transcontinental railroads up and running due largely to government money and land grants...
The wealth created by those three transcontinental railroads can't even be measured.
1) Yes it wasn't worth it: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cr%C3%A9dit...
a) The U.S. spent millions more on the railroad than it was initially worth
b) the railroad had to be ripped up, bridges imploded and rebuilt etc all along the track because --the primary motivation was government subsidies
2) The west was hardly populated when the project began and when it ended. Thus all the money that was spent on the project was money that could not be spent elsewhere on things people would be willing to pay for themselves.
El Lobo, once again in your fantasy universe you assume that the money government spends is either spent on the project or disappears into thin air.
Poor, poor, pitiful Gibby and his cohorts post misinformation and when that misinformation is proven untrue, they post more misinformation to support the original misinformation.
Unbelievable!
check this out: California's biggest population growth http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/California#... - before the railroad was completed. In fact the decade from 1870 to 1880 was slower than in 1860-1870 while the track was being built.
Only Nebraska and Wyoming had faster growth after the railroad than before and the bulk of Nebraska's growth would have been on the eastern side at Omaha just across from Council Bluffs Iowa.
Vidi you prove stubbornly resistant to facts - even when links to those facts are present. With your continued misuse of Nazi references I'm starting to think you're the same person as El Lobo.
patsy; do we need some eggheads or pencil pushers from the cato institute or the AEI to tell us how to think? werent the boneheads from AEI pushing for the iraqi invasion? chill out pat, and let the law of supply and demand take its course.
Poor, poor, pitiful Gibby usually posts links to right wing organizations/groups that also uses misinformation.
Gibby seems to get upset when I post information about propaganda that he, the radical extremist wingnut politicians and sycophant wingnut bloggers parrot over and over.
Just type into you search bar: "Propaganda Techniques of German Fascism" and then compare to the above mentioned people.
Gibby.....Gibby.....
You amaze me with your brain-dead approach to everything....To hear you tell it, the building of the Great Transcontinental railroad was a total waste of time, energy & money....
Historians don't say that......Stephen Ambrose says just the opposite. But I'm sure you know more on the subject that what Ambrose learned from all of his research on the topic! Right?
Your statement saying "Yes it (railroad) wasn't worth it" is truly the words of a completely out of touch, "bought and paid for poster"....
That's funny......weird but funny!
I see you did reluctantly admitted that the building of the railroad did speed up the settlement of the West.
But your comment that "the west was hardly populated when the project began and when it ended" shows a complete lack of understanding concerning the long terms impact (20-25 yrs.) that the completion of the railroad had on not only California but the far West in general...
Of course, the early population growth in California came about due to the discovery of gold in 1848.
After the completion of the railroad in 1869, population growth was steady with 300,000 to 400,000 people entering California each decade, up through 1900.
So from 1870 to 1900, the population of California increased by approximately 1-million people.........560,247 (1870) to 1,4850,053 (1900).
I would say that the building and completion of the railroad had a huge long term effect (30 yrs.) on the population of California.
Maybe all those people would have ended up in California with out the building of the railroad, but I doubt it....
I'm sure that's what you believe....
El_Lobo; thanks for fighting the people's fight!
Patrick is probably correct that most programs of the 1900s that the government undertook would have been done by private companies. The part in question is WHEN and would the result have been the same or better? Most times if a pro corporate entity (NPRI) is against something I question if it is because it will not benefit business. Like removing patent protections to allow for free competition in the market.
"How many people have been killed in the solar or wind industry? Not many."
12 people have been killed by the BP disaster. I know of at least 17 that have died in construction accidents building wind farms over the last two years. No, not too many people died on either, but high tech jobs can be dangerous. The environmental impacts of both are very serious. A badly planned development project does not need human fatalities to be bad.
"Coal can be replaced with solar and wind."
Extreme ignorance here. Kind of like saying, the Federal Government will stop climatre change.
Solar and wind do not run 24/7 and there is still little if any storage capacity. Molten salt can store heat for three hours after sunset. That's the best they can do. To replace coal, you would have to plaster every windy area with turbines (for the night), build a power grid that can handle power surges nation wide and several trillion dollars later, you would still need a fossil fuel to sustain the wasteful life of internet bloggers who think they would die if they lost their I phone.
Getting off coal is a nobel ideal and I sure wish the people who made ignorant statements like "wind and solar will replace coal" would actually make the conservation efforts needed to back up their words. Stop waiting for Obama to save yoy. As it stands now, climate change preachers have come up with no solution, nor do any of them take any responsibility for the fact that they just filled their SUV up at the Shell station...
El Lobo,
Do you hate facts? Or just hate thinking about them? You can't twist the facts to suit your political agenda.
First, you didn't even address my points about the corruption and waste. Second you distorted my points about population growth. Whooptydo if the population doubled in the 30 years after the railroad was built. Before the railroad was built it tripled in a 10 year period between 1840 and 1850.
And once again you've demonstrated you don't understand opportunity costs. The railroad was a very clear waste of money that transferred wealth from one sector of the economy to another. There was VERY CLEARLY not enough demand to justify a transcontinental railroad in 1870. It allowed the west to grow faster than it would have at the expense of something else growing slower than it would have.
Do you not get this very simple fact? I don't know how many other ways it can be repeated. EXAMPLE
Ultra Cool Elobo Thinking Store: ON SALE NOW:
Blue Jeans: $100
Polo Shirts: $50
El Lobo has $100.
If El Lobo buys a pair of blue jeans does he have enough money to buy 2 polo shirts?
The opportunity cost of buying the jeans is 2 polo shirts. Get it?
Cali's pop doubled with the discovery of that shiny stuff fetching $1273 an Owe ZEE, bro!
It had nothing to do with overpriced Chinese polo shirts.
By like sign the dams on the Columbia, nuclear power and medical advances allowed the US to grow faster than it would have at the expense of something else.
So prosperity and freedom are now to be halted for your think tank conclusion that the opportunity costs of such constructs fail to defray their residual value?
Gibby.....
You need to take a few dozen of your economics books and sell them at a local yard sale as "door stops."
That way, they might actually be useful to some one.....
Again, you continue to say that many of America's historians, who have researched and written about the benefits of the Transcontinental railroad, were all wrong with their assumptions.....
Wow! I didn't realize that you know more than many of America's brightest historians....
Shame on them for writing something and not checking with you before they published it....
Gibby knows best. Any one who has a different view that Gibby is wrong, dead wrong!
I stand by what I said earlier about the importance of the transcontinental railroad.... Lincoln knew what he was doing when he pushed for, and signed into law, legislation calling for the building of the railroad....
The railroad paid for itself many times over and it speeded up the settlement of the West, not to mention, it increased trade with China, India and other far off trading destinations....
Lincoln thought that it would take a hundred years to settle the West, but due to the railroad, the West was settled in less than 50 years....
The frontier closed in 1890, largely because of the railroad....
Like the Interstate Highway System, the Transcontinental Railroad was a real plus for this country....
I have NEVER read where a historian said anything differently.....
But Gibby knows differently....Wow