Santa Fe is a most walkable town, as long as you stay within the tourist quarter of fine-art galleries, restaurants, cathedrals and cozy Spanish courtyards. My role as co-chair of the meeting, sponsored by Law Seminars International, left me little time to do much else.

Besides, walking around for a few days was the least I could do as penance for the gas burned during the posted 75-mile-per-hour drive up from Albuquerque. In finding a balance between cost and convenience, many visitors to the quaint state capital, to Taos or to the nearby San Juan Pueblo find it best to avoid the tiny Santa Fe airport in favor of flying into Albuquerque and driving as fast as the law allows to get where they're going.

Just a few weeks before, governors from states throughout the West convened at this same hotel, their agenda topped by passage of an ambitious resolution supporting accelerated development of 30,000 MW of renewable resources and increasing energy efficiency by 20 percent throughout the West. The resolution was jointly sponsored by New Mexico’s Governor Bill Richardson, the former federal Secretary of Energy, and by California’s Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger - who saved some energy by appearing on video rather than in person.

I don’t know about you, but whenever such esteemed personages set lofty goals, I worry about how the plan is going to work and who will be responsible for its success. As a Californian, I’ve witnessed passage of a “zero-emissions mandate” for cars and the total restructuring of the state’s electric services industry. You know how they turned out.

I raised these misgivings to the LSI conference audience and warned that they, as energy professionals, utility managers, researchers and regulators, were the people who would be expected to turn the governors’ resolution into reality. To give credit to the foresight of the conference organizers, especially my co-chair Steven Michel, we already had scheduled on our agenda some folks who were not only working on the problem, but also offering practical solutions toward reaching the goals.

Renewable portfolio standards have taken root in the Southwest and California, and even before load-serving entities have met their initial benchmarks (20 percent in California by 2017; 15 percent in Nevada by 2013; 5 percent in New Mexico by 2006 rising to 10 percent by 2011; and a modest 1.1 percent in Arizona ASAP), states are seriously considering accelerating the due dates or upping the ante.

Arizona Corporation Commission chair Mark Spitzer expressed his interest in doubling the state’s RPS benchmark, but talk off the dais with others from Arizona revealed that Governor Janet Napolitano is considering a ten-percent goal. Meanwhile, California has on its table a proposed law to move the 20 percent deadline ahead to 2010. That’s a Democratic-sponsored bill Arnold is sure to sign if it passes.

Although the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission has no clearly defined role in this issue, our special guest, commission member Suedeen Kelly, expressed strong support for increasing the nation’s reliance on renewables. “It’s my personal goal to see FERC does its part to make wind power and renewables viable,” she told the group. “At my request, and the other commissioners agreed, we’re going to make it one of our priorities to review all regulations on the books to see if they need to be reformed to accommodate renewable energy.”

Where FERC could play a role is in transmission interconnection rules and the siting of interstate lines that connect remote renewable sources with loads. Kelly noted discussions between Wyoming and California to construct high-voltage transmission to bring in wind (and coal) as new sources for California. Even where FERC has no direct authority, Kelly—who opposes FERC’s standard market design directions—commands a bully pulpit she seems willing to use, especially in promoting state cooperation on regional planning for resources, networks and RTOs. “I have personally met with the governors of New Mexico and Arizona and a representative of the governor of California to ask them to be active in plans,” she revealed.

Top-down pressure on decision makers is fine, but putting renewables and efficiency at the top of the Western “loading order” of resource preferences will really depend on ground-level actions. Plying that field for many years have been such entities as the Western Resource Advocates and the Southwest Energy Efficiency Project, represented at our meeting by Ron Lehr and Gail Ryba, respectively.

Lehr, an independent consultant and energy attorney, along with John Nielsen of WRA, recently compiled a report called “A Balanced Energy Plan for the Interior West” that not surprisingly promotes “a rich endowment of renewable wind, solar, geothermal, and biomass resources, and a significant but largely untapped potential to use electricity more efficiently.”

Among the benefits of creating a new equilibrium in energy policies, Lehr noted:

• Reducing the cost of electricity production in the region by $2 billion per year;
• Saving the region an added $5.3 billion per year in the event of even higher natural gas prices;
• Reducing carbon emissions by 40 percent; and
• Decreasing power-sector water consumption in the drought-stricken West.

SWEEP filled in the gaps in describing the energy-efficiency potential in the Southwest. “Thirty percent of projected energy use could be mitigated if we used off-the-shelf technologies and practices,” Ryba said. This could easily exceed the goals of the Western Governors, and would almost completely offset expected growth in energy demand through the year 2020. A “business as usual” case foresees electricity use growing by 2.6 percent per year during that period, she said, while a “high efficiency” scenario caps new load to 0.4 percent annually.

Back to renewables. Attorney John Wellinghoff called renewable resources, “The 25 percent solution by 2020.” Wellinghoff projects 15,500 MW of new renewables in seven interior Western states, meeting half of the governors’ goal without even factoring in the potential development in California and the Pacific Northwest. Northern Nevada alone has potential for 1,160 MW of geothermal and up to 2,600 MW of new wind, he added.

Potential and reality are two different things, Wellinghoff admits, but scoping activities are already underway for a Nevada Energy Park at High Rock that would host as much as 1,160 MW of new geothermal and wind capacity. The area boasts a direct connection into the Los Angeles Basin, via the Pacific DC Intertie (coincidentally now being upgraded for reliability and added transfer capacity).

All well and good, you might say, but who is going to step up to the plate and make financial commitments for renewables, efficiency and clean technologies?

Well, Public Service Company of New Mexico for one. Bill Real, senior vice president of policy, expressed PNM’s commitment to environmental sustainability, which translates to reliance on efficiency and renewables. Queried about the “business case” for such a commitment, Real readily ticked off the financial and resource practicalities: reducing fresh water use, reducing pollutants, and reducing waste streams. “We will be a leader in provision and promotion of renewables,” Real said.

Besides, pointed out Ben Luce, president of the New Mexico Solar Association, local public opinion surveys are showing a vast majority of support for cleaner alternatives. So, there’s some evidence that the WGA resolution is not simply a pipe dream conceived under the harsh desert sun.

As people start putting these plans into practice, I think the tourist industry might be a good place to start. The El Dorado Hotel could use a major retrofit of its lighting and cooling system in guest rooms—perhaps the managers might take a Disneyland vacation and see how the city of Anaheim’s electric department has infused the local hospitality infrastructure with efficiency and sensible comfort technologies.

And then there’s the Santa Fe airport. A better facility, expanded to handle the low-cost airlines now competing throughout the Southwest, would remove the need for a long-distance, high-speed commute from Albuquerque. Just a thought.

Arthur O’Donnell is Energy Central’s Editorial Director—Newsletters. The Business Electric is found exclusively on Energy Central.

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