El Phoenix Sun

14-MW Array, Nellis Air Force Base, NV.

Tucson Electric Power Company’s (TEP) announcement yesterday that it intends to build a 25-MW solar PV power plant (twice the size of the largest existing system in the country and seven times larger than the giant array used as a backdrop by CA Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger the day before in announcing his own power initiative) outside of Tucson, Arizona, didn’t put a dent in the national news-cycle.

It should have. This is big news.

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Green energy jobs — and the new economy they are part of — will be the focus of the “National Clean Energy Summit, 2.0″ to be held in Las Vegas on Monday. The summit, now in its second year, is hosted by the Center for American Progress Action Fund, Senate majority leader Harry Reid (D-NV) and the University of Nevada-LasVegas.

Morning panel discussions will center on the macro economic case for clean-energy investment, energy-efficiency projects, and promoting the market for renewable energy and its infrastructure.

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Senate Deliberations

If it weren’t for mixed messages, the US Senate wouldn’t be sending any messages at all.

Yesterday, WaPo ran a story about how the Senate, once hot to trot on passing a climate change bill, had decided to rein it in. Climate legislation got its first hearing before Senator Barbara Boxer’s Environment committee on Tuesday. Afterwords, Grist’s Kate Sheppared noted, Boxer’s office was planning to vote on a bill in “early August.”

Two days later, Boxer announced that they’ll have a bill “as soon as we get back” from the Senate’s last-of-summer break. Translation: See you in September. A final vote may not come before December’s UN conference in Copenhagen on climate change.

Said Senator Chuck Grassley (R-IA), “I don’t even expect it to come up this year.”

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