Court Ruling

Talk about your energy efficiency.

It  took an Arizona judge just eight pages to explain why a libertarian group’s 37-page argument against renewable energy incentives was wrong. A single paragraph did the trick, really; the rest was preamble, case-law and commentary.

Maricopa County Superior Court Judge Joseph B. Heilman ruled yesterday that the Arizona Corporation Commission’s authority to set the rates that utilities can charge for electricity, extends to rules and regulations that are “reasonable and necessary” to setting those rates.

The crux of the case is a set of rules known as the Renewable Energy Standard and Tariff (REST). It encourages the growth of alternative power sources by mandating that utilities generate a portion of their electricity from renewable sources such as solar, wind or biomass. The good news for the utilities is that REST allows them to offset some of the cost by raising electrical rates for all customers.

Supporters of energy diversification greeted Wednesday’s ruling with enthusiasm. The Phoenix Business Journal quoted ACC Commissioner Paul Newman as saying “This ruling gives the ACC the necessary tools to incentivize and grow the solar and wind industry in Arizona.”

Sandy Bahr, head of the Arizona chapter of the Sierra Club, showed her approval of Wednesday’s decision in a Facebook posting that read:

“Hooray! [T]his is an important decision for helping to keep what we have and for advancing renewable energy use in our state.”

Not surprisingly, the other side saw the ruling much differently. A press release issued by the Goldwater Institute

Goldwater Institute case

yesterday, quoted lead attorney Clint Bolick condemning  Judge Heilman’s apparent endorsement of the “unprecedented power-grab by a renegade agency” and warned that the plan will increase power bills for Arizona residents by “at least $2.4 billion beyond the cost of conventional generation.”

That last claim has raised some eyebrows around the Grand Canyon State. A “friend of the court” brief filed by the Arizona Center for Law in the Public Interest, points out that the REST rules had their genesis in a 2004 study by the ACC showing that Arizona’s dependence on volatile and dwindling fuel supplies would lead to higher electrical prices for customers. On November 14, 2006, the ACC approved the REST rules specifically to broaden the state’s energy mix and keep prices down.

Adam Browning, founder of the San Francisco-based Vote Solar Initiative, told The Phoenix Sun that a lot was riding on this decision. “If [the decision] had gone the other way,” he wrote in an email, “then the ACC would have been neutered, and the renewable rules would have been vacated.”

Amicus Brief

The Phoenix-based Goldwater Institute has indicated it may appeal Wednesday’s decision.

Parabolic trough system in the desert

As the popularity of solar and other clean renewable energy sources grows, environmental groups are playing a major role in shaping how the nation makes the transition to the new energy economy. One of the most visible examples of this renewed role for environmentalists is found in the the roll-out of Concentrating Solar Power (CSP) on public lands primarily in the Southwest.

That’s not to say that all environmental groups agree on all points. Todd Woody, who blogs for the NYT’s Green Inc., recently covered one contentious issue in the Mojave Desert. Over at High Country News, Judith Lewis wrote a fascinating article in May about a schism between environmentalists over “Big Solar” in the Mojave.

The Phoenix Sun has also reported on the Bureau of Land Management (BLM) plans for a Solar Energy Study Area (SESA) covering 670,000 acres in six Western states, here and here.

SESA map

Today, we’re looking at the formal recommendations made to the BLM by a coalition of  environmental groups that includes some of the best known green players (The Wilderness Society, The Sierra Club) and some that you may not have heard of before (Great Old Broads for Wilderness).

The recommendations came in a 50-page letter sent to the government and provided to The Phoenix Sun by the Grand Canyon chapter of the Sierra Club.

A full copy of the letter is available below, but here’s a brief outline of the green groups’ major concerns.

Oil and natural gas companies have been given the opportunity to lease and run roughshod over some of our most precious public lands….[this] is a chance to plan for development that does not ignore the other important uses and values of these lands.

Major Issues

• Siting

Avoid siting in wilderness areas, national monuments, national conservation areas, national historic and scenic trails, areas of critical environmental concern (and several other specified areas).

Give priority for siting to already impaired lands such as abandoned mines, developed oil and gas fields and other brownfields.

Consider availability to water, shovel-ready projects and proximity to workers to minimize the need for additional infrastructure such as roads.

• Right-of-Way Terms

ROW should not exceed the design life of the project.

ROW should require that companies exercise reasonable stewardship of the land.

ROW terms should change when applicable laws and regulations change.

Plans with the smallest footprints should be started first, to see if monitoring systems can handle them before scaling up.

ROW terms should require plans to and seeks to “avoid adverse impacts to land, air and water, and to cultural, biological, visual, and other resources, as well as to other land uses and users.”

ROW should allow for termination if holder fails to comply with terms.

Click above for full text

• Planning Criteria

Comply with applicable laws and policies.

Follow already announced plan to identify lands as “available for development,” “available with restrictions” and “not available.”

Coordinate plans with other tribal, federal, state and local governments.

Consult with tribal authorities to insure that cultural resources are protected.

Encourage public participation

The letter also includes specific sections on wildlife habitat, socioeconomic impacts and the importance of looking at a range of alternative plans.

When I talked with Sierra Club AZ chapter head, Sandy Bahr, she had an upbeat view of the SESA plan, confident that the current administration has a genuine interest in developing solar power facilities while protecting the local environment.

Signatories to the letter are:

Great Old Broads for Wilderness

Californians for Western Wilderness

Grand Canyon Trust

Soda Mountain Wilderness Council

California Wilderness Coalition

Western Environmental Law Center

San Luis Valley Ecosystem Council

Wyoming Outdoor Council

Southern Utah Wilderness Alliance

Sierra Club

Natural Resources Defense Council

Red Rocks Forests

Center for Water Advocacy & Local Green Party of Moab

San Luis Valley Water Protection Coalition

Western Resources Advocates

Defenders of Wildlife

Arizona Wilderness Coalition

Colorado Environmental Coalition

Friends of the Missouri Breaks Monument

Nevada Wilderness Project

Solarone Power Plant

It’s partly the florid language that makes me and some other Westerners uneasy.

“Arizona, the New Frontier! Armed with an abundance of sunlight, Arizona is the land of sunshine and opportunity.”

That palaver could have been lifted from a 19th Century swindler’s sheet, written to separate greenhorns from their golden coins. But, in fact, I just cut-and-pasted it from the Bureau of Land Management’s current website. The BLM controls vast areas of the West, (68% of Nevada, 40% of Utah, 17% of Arizona) and is pitching the opportunities for “solar development companies, or ‘prospectors‘” in the old New Frontier of the American Southwest.

Yesterday, Interior Secretary Ken Salazar (who oversees the BLM) designated 670,000 acres in six Western states as Solar Energy Study Areas. The Las Vegas Sun described these tracts of BLM desert lands as being “on a fast track for development” as giant solar power farms. To ensure that permits are issued quickly, Salazar announced that the BLM will open four new offices in California, Arizona, Nevada and Wyoming.

Now, I know we need to kick our addiction to fossil-fuel. And I also believe that using renewable energy sources like solar and getting serious about energy conservation are keys to a livable future. But I’m also aware of our history of “development” — the Western spin-cycle of boom and bust, hope and despair, professed love of the land and simultaneous destruction of it.

Sandy Bahr knows all of this, too. But, she says, “Maybe this time we can get it right.”

Bahr is the director of the Sierra Club’s Grand Canyon chapter, an organization which was working on land use issues before Arizona was a state. “We don’t need to get into those old conflicts this time,” she says.

Click above for BLM SESA maps

There’s plenty of “disturbed” land in the West, she points out. Why not build renewable energy power plants on the scars left by the old polluting ones? Why not recycle abandoned agricultural land that should never have been cultivated and let solar power companies buy water-depleting farms and use that land (some forms of solar power plants are water intensive, but still need less than agriculture)?

Transmission lines, which can interfere with migrating wildlife, don’t have to be a problem either, Bahr says. Route them alongside freeways, which already prevent animals from crossing.

There are cultural and human rights issues to consider, as well.

During a BLM sponsored public hearing on solar development in California in 2008, Carmen Lucas, a member of the Kumeyaay Nation, told the Bureau that before anything was built in his area, someone from the Kumeyaay community would need to examine the area to make sure it wasn’t an ancient burial site. The “need for speed,” he told the BLM, must not be allowed to trump Native people’s rights.

Over the next several months, the BLM will be making siting decisions for these new solar mega-plants. That, says Bahr, is when we’ll see how committed to meaningful change the nation really is.

This article appeared first in Mother Jones

By a margin of 39-12, the Arizona House of Representatives passed SB 1403 on Friday, June 26th, putting the solar jobs bill just one step away from becoming law.

Although the Arizona legislation has received national attention, final passage in the House was overshadowed by the debate — and eventual victory in the US House of Representatives — of the Waxman-Markey climate bill on the same day. The American Clean Energy and Security Act of 2009 (HB 2454) squeaked by on a vote of 219-212.

News of the Arizona win came as a surprise even to many supporters of the bill.

The Phoenix Sun, I’m embarrassed to admit, was among those who only belatedly learned of the victory. In my case, the news came in the form of an eMail from the Senator who sponsored the bill, Barbara Leff.

“Did you know that SB 1403 passed on Friday,” Leff wrote, adding, “I didn’t see a story on it.”

The bill may be the one bright spot in an otherwise dismal legislative session.

[Gulp]

The only item needed for SB 1403 to become law is a signature from Governor Jan Brewer.

There’s been no word from the Governor’s office, however, on whether or not she plans on signing the bill. She has met with several delegations of manufacturers who say their decision to set up operations in Arizona depends on the incentives granted in the bill. If the Governor doesn’t sign SB 1403, said one person involved in these meeting, the manufacturers said they would go elsewhere.

The Republican Governor is currently locked in a battle with Republican legislators over the state budget, and there is some concern that SB 1403 could become collateral damage in that fight.

Representative Michele Reagan, who sponsored the bill in the House, told me this afternoon that SB 1403 is “a positive step for Arizona, and one of the only things done year that will be moving the economy forward.”

Sandy Bahr, director of the Sierra Club’s Grand Canyon Chapter, agrees with Reagan.

“We’re happy it passed,” Bahr tells the Sun. “The bill may be the one bright spot in an otherwise dismal legislative session.”

——

Photo Collage : clockwise, from upper left, the sun over the earth from space, the Nellis Solar Power Plant, and the average solar energy available at the surface, with the black dots showing the total land area required to equal the total energy used in 2006, assuming a conversion efficiency of 8%. College by: Matthias Loster

SB 1403, “The Quality Jobs Through Renewable Energy bill” is sponsored by Republican Senator Barbara Leff, a 12-year veteran of the Arizona legislature. The bill would extend tax credits and other incentives to manufactures of renewable energy systems that move into the state.

Supporters (who range from the local Sierra Club chapter to the Arizona Contractors Association) say the bill is needed to help level the playing field among states trying to woo these businesses. New Mexico and Oregon already have large incentive packages, and while the Arizona bill doesn’t equal them, provisions contained in the bill would help close the gap.

The Sun covered the debate live, using twitter, under the hashtag #AZ1403.

Leff spoke passionately in defense of her bill. When another Senator complained that government shouldn’t be picking winners and losers among businesses, Leff said her bill targets a sector — renewable energy manufacturing — not a business and told her colleagues, “Shame on us if we don’t do this…we should be the number one state for solar, maybe number one in the world.”

While Leff pointed out that the bill includes all forms of renewable energy, the legislation will likely help solar manufactures most, and, more specifically, makers of large scale solar products of the kind used for solar farms.

Senator Ron Gould (R), asked some of the most pointed questions (although he admitted he hadn’t read the bill closely). Gould said that people were being deceived about how photovoltaic technology works. The desert heat, he said, makes PV panels 20% less efficient. Gould is almost certainly right that most solar proponents don’t know that heat lowers the efficiency of standard PV. I have no idea where he got his figure of 20%, however, and its use without context is misleading.

It’s true that as temperatures rise, electrical efficiency drops. But many other factors can either offset that drop or increase it.

Click on the image to download the text of SB 1403

For example, Phoenix has more sunny days than almost anyplace else in the nation. Also, a solar panel on a clear day in Phoenix when the temperature is 100° F can provide more electricity than an identical panel at 75° on a cloudy day somewhere else. The type of panel used also makes a large difference. Older traditional PV captures less sunlight in dim conditions (early and late in the day) than newer thin-film panels, which also capture reflected and scattered light better (the trade-off is that they need more space — but they’re far cheaper to manufacture).

Too, solar technology is going through a fundamental shift. It’s too early to know what the dominant technology for converting solar energy into electricity is going to be, but at the moment concentrated solar power is a hot item (pun unintended, but accepted). Giant mirrors focus and intensify light onto pipes filled with oil, heating it to 700° F. The heated liquid boils water which turns turbines and generates electricity. The hotter the air temperature, the more electricity this technology produces.

This may be far more than you wanted to know about solar technology, but what is important to keep in mind is that Senator Gould’s observation about temperature and solar power was glib and misleading. It was also irrelevant, since SB 1403 deals only with manufacturing of renewable energy products, not with generating electricity, a point Leff had to clarify many times.

In the end, of course, all that mattered was the vote. SB passed by a 2-1 margin and now moves to final consideration by the Senate next week, carrying endorsements from the statewide paper, area leaders and, most important, momentum.