October 27, 2010 - Global warming, energy independence and good 21st-century jobs are three compelling reasons why Washington must do a lot more to promote renewable energy. Congress seemed to get it in 2005 when it directed the Interior Department to approve enough wind, solar and other projects on public land to produce 10,000 megawatts by 2015 — enough to heat, cool and light five million homes. Not much has happened since.
The George W. Bush administration was fixated on oil and gas exploration. The Obama administration was slow to get going. Until a little over three weeks ago, the Interior Department had approved more than 73,000 oil and gas leases since 2005, but only one offshore wind energy project and not a single solar project.
Things are beginning to turn around. In recent weeks, Interior Secretary Ken Salazar has approved six large-scale solar power projects on public land — five in California, one in Nevada — that together will provide enough power for as many as two million homes.
He also gave final approval to the country’s first commercial offshore wind farm, off the coast of Massachusetts. And a group of companies including Google announced plans to build an underwater transmission system to carry wind-generated power from public lands on the Atlantic Coast to Eastern cities.
All this is very good news. But this country had already fallen far behind Europe and China, which are investing heavily in the industries that manufacture wind turbines and solar panels. Three things need to happen, quickly, if there is any hope of catching up:
GENEROUS SUBSIDIES Renewable energy projects will require significant federal help until they can compete with cheaper and dirtier fuels like coal, oil and natural gas. Congress has provided a variety of tax credits and loan guarantees, but the support has been erratic. When the production tax credit expired at the end of 2003, development of newly installed wind capacity fell from 1,687 megawatts to less than 400 the following year.
Investors will remain cautious until Congress commits to multiyear programs of support. Most immediately, it needs to extend a grant program for new wind and solar projects that was part of the 2009 stimulus package. Grants worth more than $2 billion have since jump-started hundreds of projects, creating thousands of jobs.
FASTER APPROVALS It took three to five years of complex negotiations before the Interior Department signed off on the new solar projects. The Cape Wind project off Massachusetts had to run a gantlet of state and federal agencies and needed nine years to get a final permit.
Mr. Salazar has reorganized the old Minerals Management Service, which regulates offshore wind projects in addition to oil and gas development, to make it more responsive, and directed the department to identify promising sites and develop a swifter regulatory process. The bureaucracy now has to deliver.
TRANSMISSION Updating and expanding the electrical grid to accommodate new sources of energy will be the biggest challenge, and will require partnerships among states, federal authorities, the utilities and private investors. The Google project could be crucial to delivering wind power to Eastern cities, but major investments will also be needed in the West and Southwest. President Obama recently declared that no industry has greater potential to create jobs than clean energy. He is right. But it is never going to happen unless the administration and Congress do a lot more to push it ahead.