Green

Energy in motion

Last week a celebration was held after the Spring Valley Wind Farm, located in White Pine Country a half hour east of Ely, began operating. The farm is the first wind energy project in Nevada, and will provide power for Las Vegas. It consists of 66 Siemens 2.3 megawatt turbines, and, according to NV Energy, “employed up to 225 workers [to construct]. About a dozen full-time permanent positions are required to keep the wind farm operational.” The turbines will generate around 150 megawatts, enough to power 45,000 homes.

The farm is situated on around 7,500 acres of land, but the turbine footprint is 77 acres, leaving the rest of the land open for hunting and cattle grazing. In the past, the farm has faced opposition by organizations concerned about the turbines’ impact on the environment.

Club vote

The Toiyabe Chapter of the Sierra Club has announced its endorsement of legislative candidates Skip Daly, Sheila Leslie, Debbie Smith, Teresa Benitez-Thompson, Mike Sprinkle and David Bobzien. Key to the endorsement was the candidates’ opposition to Senate Bill 271, which proposes removing Nevada from the Tahoe Regional Planning Agency (“Political science,” May 3). All of the candidates voted against the bill, except for Sprinkle, who was not in the Assembly.

Lake clarity

Last week the Tahoe Environmental Research Center at the University of California, Davis released the “Tahoe: State of the Lake Report 2012.” The report is released annually, and highlights factors impacting the lake, including its “clarity, physics, chemistry and biology,” according to the report.

The report discusses the unusual winter of 2010-2011, noting its low temperatures and high precipitation. However, the average water temperature increased by 0.6 F, indicating change in the lake’s infrastructure. Scientists then tested the lake’s stability and found that stratification—separate levels of water with different temperatures—lasted longer than usual, indicating a potential impact of climate change. In 2010, clarity improved but fluctuated in 2011. The report says that algae Cyclotella might be the cause. In 1968, clarity was 102.4 feet. The lowest level in 2011, the second worse recorded, was 51.5 feet. The report also discusses present and future research projects. Scientists are investigating surrounding areas of the lake, including a study done on the impact of the 2007 Angora fire, which was shown to have no effect on the water. Others are looking at the mortality of trees in the Tahoe forests.

—Ashley Hennefer

ashleyh@newsreview.com

ECO-EVENT

Learn how to build a hoop house at a workshop hosted by the Rail City Garden Center. Different sizes of hoop houses and covering raised garden beds will be discussed. The workshops, part of the Rail City Garden Center’s Green College Seminar, are free and presented by Pawl Hollis. Sept. 8, 11 a.m. to noon, Sept. 9. RSVP at 355-1551.

Got an eco-event? Contact ashleyh@newsreview.com. Visit www.facebook.com/RNRGreen for more.

PHOTO/DENNIS MYERS

“Scientists say this is genesis—the beginning,” said Harry Reid about global warming in his opening speech at the summit.

On the horizon

National Clean Energy Summit

Tapping into the West’s natural energy sources—Nevada, especially—was the focus of this year’s National Clean Energy Summit, hosted on August 7 in Las Vegas. by The fifth annual summit, headed by Sen. Harry Reid, used social network-

Ashley ing for weeks leading up to the event, including a virtual town hall hosted on

Hennefer Twitter (“Tweeting Reid,” Aug. 2), to get the public to participate in converashleyh@ sations about clean energy. Reid opened the summit with a speech about the newsreview.com importance of addressing climate change. “Scientists say this is genesis—the beginning,” Reid said. “The more extreme climate change gets, the more extreme the weather will get. In the words of one respected climate scientist, ‘This is what global warming looks like.’… The seriousness of this problem is not lost on your average American. Alarge majority of people finally believe climate change is real, and that it is the cause of extreme weather. Yet despite having overwhelming evidence and public opinion on our side, deniers still exist, fueled and funded by dirty energy profits. Those people aren’t just on the other side of the debate. They’re on the other side of reality.” Attendees included former U.S. president Bill Clinton, who delivered the keynote address. In his keynote speech, Clinton touched on the success of green efforts—primarily solar—in countries like Germany and China. Also in attendance were energy business leaders such as Tesla Motors cofounder Elon Musk, Revenge of the Electric Car director Chris Paine, and secretary of the interior Ken Salazar, among several others. The summit also presented the University of Nevada, Las Vegas’solar decathlon. Bellagio, the hotel hosting the summit, participated with a presentation on sustainable lunch foods. Musk, Paine and representatives discussed options for reducing dependence on oil. Despite the positive response the Tesla Model S, released in June, has received from electric car advocates, Musk addressed the challenges Tesla will face during the last half of the year—balancing production with cash flow. Musk also talked about another new project—SolarCity, a collaboration with Walmart, in which solar panels and batteries will be installed in Walmart stores. The project is in early stages and is expected to begin in 2013. Money was also on the agenda for the summit, with several panels dealing with consumers and job creation. One panel, moderated by Las Vegas Chamber of Commerce member Kristin McMillan, facilitated talk about offering energy consumers different renewable energy options. But wind energy stole the show, with several new energy projects announced for Western states, including Nevada’s first wind farm in Spring Valley (see Greenspace for more information). Other projects include a 140 megawatt set-up in Kern County, Calif., a 57.6 megawatt farm in Idaho, and a 21 megawatt farm in Hawaii. According to an announcement made at the summit, wind energy production in the U.S. has reached 50 gigawatts— enough to power 13 million homes. In 2008, the U.S. was producing 25 gigawatts of wind energy. In the end, though, much of the summit came down to politics needed to implement proposed changes to the U.S.’s approach to green energy. Salazar announced that the Senate Finance Committee had agreed to extend the tax cut for wind energy production, a measure which, according to Reid, is likely to pass later this year. Ω