Navy Helps Advance Green Energy

Apr 10 - Las Vegas Review - Journal

Developers have often been reluctant to hunt for new geothermal energy because of the cost and risk associated with drilling down deep below the Earths surface.

So the Navy is increasingly doing the drilling for them, scouting for untapped reserves of heat beneath the surface of military facilities.

One of the Navys most recent geothermal discoveries, at Fallon Naval Air Station in Nevada, will culminate with a private power plant coming on line in 2008, officials said Thursday.

Under the deal, the Navy will share profits with the contractor, making industry more willing to partner in what is still a risky enterprise, said Wayne Arny, deputy assistant secretary of the Navy for installations and facilities.

The Navy is conducting similar activities at a handful of other sites, which officials see as part of a larger effort to open federal property to renewable energy development as an alternative to foreign oil.

Nationwide, 22 states have set out to reduce the use of fossil fuels through laws that seek to boost the use of alternatives. In Nevada, officials hope that by 2015, 20 percent of power will come from renewable sources.

The Silver State is seen as a hotbed of geothermal and wind energy, though 80 percent of those resources falls on federal property, Rep. Jim Gibbons, R-Nev., noted.

New development of geothermal and wind energy in my state will most assuredly come from federal lands, said Gibbons, chairman of the energy and mineral resources subcommittee that sponsored the hearing.

Besides Fallon, the Navy is also assisting the Army in geothermal exploration at a depot in Hawthorne.

Although the Navy pumps the revenue it collects from such projects into additional research, renewable energy advocates see a lack of commitment to the cause at the White House.

President Bushs 2007 budget plan calls for boosting funding for wind and solar energy.

But the proposal would shutter a $23 million geothermal research and development program, a move that industry officials say would slow efforts to bring down exploration costs.

Critics also charge that the renewable energy money called for in Bushs budget proposal falls short of what Congress authorized last year.

It appears that the president has not matched action to his words to the American people, said Rep. Raul Grijalva of Arizona, the panels top Democrat.

But others pointed to last years energy legislation that streamlined the environmental review process as encouraging the development of renewable energy on federal lands.

These changes have spurred increased interest in developing geothermal resources, said Marcia Patton-Mallory, biomass and bioenergy coordinator in the U.S. Forest Service.

Nearly half of all the nations geothermal production occurs on federal land and there are more than 400 geothermal right-of-way leases, she added.

But private solar power plants appear nonexistent on federal land. Both the Bureau of Land Management and Forest Service officials report no applications for such projects.