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Energy The Green Dialogue Continues Desert Companion reader Susan Solorzano was our most thorough respondent to last issue’s request to share ideas about making Southern Nevada a greener place: Here’s her “top 9” list of what our community needs: 1. Recycling drop-off stations around the city, because many neighborhoods do not have recycled articles picked up from homes. 2. R eceptacles for recyclable materials all over the city—next to existing trash containers, in stores, malls, hotel rooms, casinos, etc.—so that people always have the option of placing trash in a recycle bin. 3. Community/neighborhood mulch gardens for dropping off and picking up mulch. 4. T o encourage people to bring their own bags to stores, which should offer $1 off to those who do.
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10 D e s e r t C o m p a n i o n
5. V isible use of solar and wind power in schools, offices, casinos, etc. Let people see the alternative energy sources being used. 6. Incentives to plant trees. 7. Community and neighborhood vegetable gardens and orchards. 8. B etter education so that people can understand what can be recycled. In other locales almost everything is recycled. Very little should be considered trash. 9. Teach people to appreciate the gentle, delicate beauty of the desert. You notice right away when you are in Oregon or Vermont, for example, that people are zealous protectors of their environment. Perhaps if we educated people more about our ecosystem, they would feel more protective. KNPR really helped me see this when I first moved to Las Vegas and listened to “Desert Bloom.”
of solar panels and other green equipment to set up shop. Even Iowa, a state with few green energy advantages, has made itself the second-largest windpower producer (it tops the list on a per capita basis) by offering small producers and large utilities a range of incentives to develop projects. But what works in one state doesn’t necessarily work in another. In fact, no one has done a comparison, probably because no two states have exactly the same patchwork of incentives and mandates for the use of renewable energy. North Carolina State University does maintain an online database (dsireusa.org), where you can sort through the complexities of evergreening state legislation. You can learn about an Oregon program so extensive that it gives rebates to timber companies that use wood chips for heating and pays companies to buy their employees bus passes to keep them out of their cars. But any effective comparison between states is much more of an art than a science. The closest thing to a common denominator is that most states with tax abatements offer them to counter the heavy upfront costs of renewable energy projects.
One giant step for Nevada—which has two solar farms in Boulder City and a model solar energy project at Nellis Air Force Base—was the Legislature’s move to entice larger-scale start-ups. The state’s new 55 percent property tax abatement applies to power projects producing more than 10 megawatts a year, and that standard is still low enough to let the industry grow quickly, allowing utilities to string together a number of smaller, decentralized power providers. (In California, for example, the utility PG&E has plans for a 500-megawatt project that could distribute electricity to as many as 300 locations.) Despite its late start, Nevada at least had good timing in rolling out its incentives. The state’s Department of the Interior has pre-screened seven areas on public lands where solar farms could be built if the environmental and regulatory process is streamlined. That should cut in half the time needed to get projects from the drawing board to full operation, gaining the state some needed speed. DC Ian Mylchreest is executive producer and business analyst for News 88.9 KNPR’s State of Nevada.