http://www.nevadamagazine.com/index.php/issues/read/going_green/

This is a great piece. It is simply amazing to hear the rhetoric about renewable energy that is coming from both the Governor and his leading opponent Rory Reid. It is as if they believe that by this time next year we will be well on the road to recovery, though the development of renewable energy and recycling. It sort of makes me chuckle. I have lived in Nevada since 1990, and have been hearing that Nevada has the potential to be the Saudi Arabia of renewable energy since I first arrived. Apparently just wishing it so takes a very long time to make it happen.

I also fail to understand how the development of renewable energy will revitalize the state economy. Once in place, most solar, wind, or geothermal renewable energy plants will take very few people to operate and maintain. It certainly won’t reduce our costs of electricity, and in fact only becomes economic if the overall global cost of energy is required to carry the real costs of environmental degradation.

It is highly unlikely that the manufacturing of renewable energy systems and components will take place in Nevada. There is such an abundance of competition for this sector that a state that has little current manufacturing capacity simply will never catch up without a sea change in thinking about the necessary role that government and good governance must play in the change. For example just look Mariah Power, the Reno based firm that decided to take its manufacturing operation to Michigan: Manistee Michigan, offered a 43,000-square-foot plant that’s been manufacturing conveyor systems for the automotive industry. It has room to expand and skilled workers on hand to satisfy the contractual manufacturing agreement. “It saved us half a million in equipment costs,” says Hess of Mariah Power. “I’m getting a manufacturing plant without paying up front. There’s nothing like this in Northern Nevada.” In addition to the $1 million worth of existing steel-working equipment and tooling equipment at MasTech Manufacturing, Michigan also coughed up a $400,000 state grant. Meanwhile Nevada officials met to discuss how the University of Nevada might increase its output of mechanical and electrical engineers, and now, even that is a pipe dream.

The only bonus from renewable energy will come if somehow Nevada can tap into the revenue stream generated at these plants, and in this state with the smallest of all state governments that is not likely, especially given the fact that these potential projects are mostly on Federal Lands.

As you so accurately pointed out, Nevada does not have the capacity to undertake this effort, and with the continued calls to further choke down the size of government, and do away with our hard won educational advances, we appear to be moving in exactly the wrong direction.

You might be interested to know that the news that is swirling around out here in the Big Empty, is a renewed fear that the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service is about to place Sage Grouse on the endangered species list. If this happens, another major barrier will be place in the path of the development of renewable energy, and all other sources of resource based economic development in the West.