Northwest Called Ideal For Green Power Push

Apr 15 - Seattle Post - Intelligencer

With a concentration of technical know-how, entrepreneurial spark and abundant natural resources - including wind, water, sun and cow poop - the Pacific Northwest stands perfectly positioned to ride the wave of a coming clean-energy revolution.

That was the message delivered yesterday to labor activists, environmentalists, business people and others determined to launch a renewable-energy campaign with an intensity rivaling that of the Apollo space program, which put astronauts on the moon.

The 10-year, $300 billion program, as envisioned by several dozen labor and environmental groups, would use tax credits, energy standards and other tools to drive increased research into energy- conserving technology and alternative energy sources.

The goal: serving 15 percent of the nation's energy needs by 2015 and 20 percent by 2020. It would simultaneously reduce the output of gases thought to unnaturally warm the Earth's atmosphere.

"Somebody's going to make a buck and solve these problems, and we want it to be us," said U.S. Rep. Jay Inslee, D-Washington, who led the Seattle forum. "Over the last 20 years, we've created the software industry, we've created the biotech industry, but our cars get less gas mileage than they did in the 1980s."

The United States would have no need to import oil now had the nation kept up the pace of energy innovations of the late '70s, but a "remarkably long history of inaction" since then let overseas innovators surpass this country in wind and solar development, Daniel Kammen, a researcher from the University of California- Berkeley.

A report Kammen released at the conference argued that more jobs can be created by developing renewable energy sources than by staying with fossil fuels.

Drawing on 13 independent American and European research efforts, the study estimated that 188,000 to 240,000 jobs would be created by pushing renewable energy, versus 84,000 jobs by staying on the nation's current path of intensive development of natural gas.

KC Golden, a former aide to Mayor Paul Schell now working with the non-profit Climate Solutions, said that this part of the country could become the Cape Canaveral of the energy-development campaign. Already the region is saving $500 million a year through energy conservation, he said.

"This is not a free lunch. This is a lunch we get paid to eat," Golden said. "The Stone Age didn't end because they ran out of stones, and the fossil fuel age will not end because we run out of fossil fuel. It will end because we decide and muster the political will and the technological advances to move forward."

The Northwest already is seeing investment in alternative energies, including the country's second-largest wind farm in the Walla Walla area, he said. But much more is needed, Golden and others said.

Sid Morrison, a former member of Congress and state transportation secretary, told the group of efforts to capture methane from cow manure at Eastern Washington's numerous dairies.

"One kilowatt per cow - that's our goal," he said, an objective four times better than the current average.

A sort of subdued and wonky pep rally, the gathering stopped just shy of being overtly partisan. But it was unabashedly about mobilizing voters - and particularly swing voters - in favor of a theme being pushed hard by Democrats in an election year.

"I truly believe that it's the voice of the Northwest and Washington state that's going to tell the rest of the country how to get this done," said Sen. Maria Cantwell, D-Washington. "If the last generation was smart enough to go to the moon, why can't we be smart enough to achieve energy independence?"

Bracken Hendricks, director of the Apollo Alliance for Good Jobs and Energy Independence and a former Clinton administration official, acknowledged that the campaign has a political agenda.

"Clean energy really can be the new engine of jobs and growth. It's also an organizing tool," he said. "There's a lot of work to be done, a lot of steel to roll, a lot of concrete to pour and a lot of iron to tie."

P-I reporter Robert McClure can be reached at 206-448-8092 or robertmcclure@seattlepi.com