The Obama administration is continuing its pledge to reach out to these higher education institutions in New Mexico with a $2 million grant to three community colleges to focus on green jobs training as part of the the State Energy Sector Partnership Program (SESP), a three year, six-million dollar bundle of funds established by the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act (ARRA).

Here’s the story from New Mexico Business Weekly:

The grant, funded through a $6 million award from the U.S. Department of Labor will allow Mesalands Community College in Tucumcari, Central New Mexico Community College and Santa Fe Community College to expand or develop occupational training programs in the wind, solar biofuels, green building and energy efficiency sectors.

Those colleges have been designated “centers of excellence” by Workforce Solutions. They will develop statewide green training programs for their local communities, and for other communities through a “train-the-trainer” approach that will help other New Mexico colleges set up energy-related curricula and courses, said Workforce Solutions Secretary Celina Bussey in a news release.

“The centers of excellence will assist in meeting the training needs for these emerging industries in New Mexico,” Bussey said. “The green energy curricula will be available statewide and will bring training to the areas where the work is taking place.”

Targeting New Mexico for green jobs training could not only good stimulus, say some economists, but targets an industry that’s growing in the Land of Enlightenment.

The solar industry alone employs nearly 100,000 workers, and New Mexico is near the top of the list of where green jobs can be found.

The New Mexico Independent previously reported on several large solar panel farms slated to offer thousands living wages.

The New Mexico state government operates a website where job seekers can link up with green employers, which can be found here. The site includes a listing of colleges that offer green jobs training, as well.

Kelly, who’s apparently moving from Minnesota (where Xcel is based) to Colorado (where Xcel is the state’s largest electric utility), went on to question those in Congress denying the science behind global climate change and the need to move away from fossil fuels.

Dick Kelly

“I think the science is pretty solid. Maybe we haven’t communicated it well enough,” Kelly said. “But I think people do believe we need a change in the way we generate and use electricity. We’ve got to get off fossil fuels. The quicker the better.”

Counters MinnPost interviewer Don Shelby: “But, there are a lot of people in Congress who wouldn’t agree.” That pretty much describes the four Republicans who make up Colorado’s GOP majority in the House.

Kelly responds: “I know it. All they are worried about is the next two or six years when they run for reelection. They just keep kicking the can down the road.”

Critics in Colorado, however, say Kelly has engaged in some pretty solid can-kicking of his own, investing heavily in coal and not proceeding as quickly on alternative fuels as he could have.

True, Xcel is now the No. 1 utility in the nation for wind generation, recently procuring 200 proposed megawatts rejected by Boulder in a bid by Xcel to keep the city from forming its own municipal utility (something voters will decide in November). And Xcel is well ahead of the state-mandated target of 30 percent renewable energy generation by 2020 – one of the most aggressive renewable energy standards in the nation.

But on Kelly’s watch the utility invested more than $1 billion on the new Comanche 3 coal-fired power plant in Pueblo – slated to churn out electricity (and heat-trapping emissions) until the year 2069. Xcel has steadily raised rates to pay for Comanche 3.

The state’s largest and most ardently climate-change-denying rural electric co-op, the Intermountain Rural Electric Association (IREA), invested $366 million in Comanche 3, and one of the state’s most progressive co-ops, Holy Cross Energy, chipped in another $100 million.

Leslie Glustrom of Boulder-based Clean Energy Action put the outgoing Kelly interview “in the vein of ‘I can’t believe I ate the whole thing.’ Burritos are only $3 mistakes and the indigestion lasts for a day. Coal plants are $1 billion mistakes and the ‘indigestion’ lasts for decades.”

Sen. Mark Udall

Mark Udall has tried several times in the past to model a federal standard after Colorado’s RES, which is the second most aggressive in the United States behind only California. Last year he and Colorado Sen. Michael Bennet tried unsuccessfully to at least pass a federal RES even when it looked like a comprehensive climate bill didn’t have enough votes to make it out of the Senate.

The Udalls’ latest bill would require utilities to generate 25 percent of their electricity from wind, solar and other renewable energy sources by 2025. Colorado’s RES, first approved by voters in 2004 at the 10 percent by 2020 level, has since been legislatively increased to 30 percent by 2020.

The latest Udall bill would require utilities nationwide to generate 6 percent of their power from renewable energy sources by 2013, followed by gradual increases up to 25 percent by 2025. Including Colorado and New Mexico, 29 states and the District of Columbia currently have some sort of RES.

“I was proud to lead the effort in Colorado to pass one of the country’s first Renewable Electricity Standards – and it has helped the state create over 30,000 new good-paying jobs and spurred the growth of one of the strongest renewable energy sectors in the country,” Mark Udall said in a release.

“We can do the same thing across the country with a robust national RES. A national RES would unleash innovation, helping America compete for renewable energy manufacturing jobs and lead in the global economic race.”

A recent PEW Environment report revealed the United States has dropped to third behind China and Germany in renewable energy investment.

The Udalls first introduced a RES in 2002 while members of the House. They later built a coalition in the House that won passage of a national RES amendment in 2007, but it died in the Senate. When both were elected to the Senate, they introduced another national RES bill in 2008.

“Americans want to put our nation on a path towards energy independence, and this bill is our best chance to get America running on homegrown energy while creating good jobs for hardworking Americans,” Tom Udall said in a release.

“Studies show that a federal RES would reduce energy bills, revitalize rural America, slow global warming and strengthen our energy security. With American innovation and ingenuity, we can put our people to work in a thriving, clean energy economy.”

While the bill may be able to make it out of the Senate – although even that isn’t a certainty – it has almost no chance in the Republican-controlled House. A climate change bill made it out of the then Democrat-controlled House last year but later died in the Senate.

Last week Mark Udall introduced a resolution in support of the Clean Air Act, which the GOP-controlled House – including members of the Colorado delegation — has been trying to dismantle in order to prevent the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) from regulating greenhouse gas emissions as a form of air pollution. The resolution was signed by 33 other senators and makes it clear that any anti-EPA bills that make it out of the House will likely die in the Democrat-controlled Senate.

Even as many politicians, environmentalists and consumers want renewable energy and reduced dependence on fossil fuels, a growing number of projects are being canceled or delayed because governments are unwilling to add even small amounts to consumers’ electricity bills.

The reason these projects are being canceled is twofold. First, renewable energy (wind, solar, etc.) currently costs more than traditional energy sources like coal and natural gas. Second, the United States has created uncertainty among investors by neglecting to pass policies at the federal level that incentivize renewable energy use.

The Times has a nice example of the problem lower down in the story:

In April, for example, the state public utilities commission in Rhode Island rejected a power-purchase deal for an offshore wind project that would have cost 24.4 cents a kilowatt-hour. The utility now pays about 9.5 cents a kilowatt hour for electricity from fossil fuels.

The state legislature responded by passing a bill allowing the regulators to consider factors other than price. The commission then approved an agreement to buy electricity from a smaller wind farm, although that decision is being challenged in the courts.

In the example, the cost differential between fossil fuels and offshore wind is staggering. But because cost is not the only factor involved in these decisions (others include public health and welfare), the state legislature passed a bill to broaden the discussion beyond the price issue.

Passing such legislation has proven difficult at the federal level. As it stands now, states offer a patchwork of regulations, but uncertainty abounds without federal rules. This drives investment to China.

The Times said:

In its most recent quarterly assessment of the renewable energy sector, the accounting and consulting firm Ernst & Young identified China as the most attractive market for investment in renewable energy.

I wonder if we can shift gears a bit and talk about coal for a few minutes. Obviously, if an RES goes into effect, then the country will have a mandate to produce at least some of our electricity from renewable sources. It seems that wind is the leading renewable right now. But as we depend more and more on wind, it seems like we’re going to have to build more and more electric lines, or electric transmission, to move that wind from one side of the country to the other. Right now, it seems like we’ll be moving it from the Midwest to the East Coast, where offshore wind hasn’t quite flourished yet. What kind of transmission investment do you think might come along with an RES?

We have done a fair amount of work on transmission from a couple of different perspectives. We’re certainly looking to reduce our dependence on coal in every aspect of that. So, one part of that fight is to stop transmission lines that will carry new coal to ratepayers. In the Southwest, we’re doing a lot of work in terms of transmission for solar.

But as far as transmission with wind, we want to make sure that a long-term transmission plan is developed that incorporates data that shows we’re reducing out dependence on coal. As we do that, transmission capacity will be freed up. We want to make sure that long-term investments in the electric grid are made so that there’s a decreased reliance on coal and an increased reliance on distributed power. If the context is broad enough to include those two items, then we’d consider supporting new transmission to make sure that clean energy is being brought to consumers from where it’s generated.

From a broader perspective, we support conservation and big investments in efficiency to reduce the growth in energy demand. We want to see the grid cleaned up so that we’re significantly reducing the amount of coal that’s being generated and natural gas to a certain point and there’s a corresponding increase in both wind and small-scale solar. And so investments in wind should be made with all of those things in mind, as opposed to adding more capacity again and again. Then there’s a separate set of factors regarding where transmission lines should be established that also guides out thinking.

What about offshore wind? Where do you see offshore wind in the next 20 or 30 years?

We expect it to grow significantly. Before the environmental impact studies have been assessed, we’re conceptually very in favor of it. We’re also quite intrigued by the idea of establishing a  large-scale backbone so that some of these individual wind farms can be connected to an offshore grid that can run power up and down the coast.

The Sierra Club has worked for six months to determine how to reduce the United States' oil dependence. (Flickr, The Sierra Club)

Despite the Gulf oil spill, a massive pipeline break in Michigan and broad concerns about global warming, ambitious climate-change and energy legislation is likely dead for the year. That poses a conundrum, going forward, for environmentalists: How to convince lawmakers of the need for legislation to sever the country’s decades-long ties to oil and to reform energy policy more generally?

[Environment1] The Sierra Club is in the process of trying to answer that question. For the past six months, it has worked on a massive study on how to reduce the United States’ oil dependence in an economically and environmentally beneficial way. The group is also building a coalition of environmental advocates and lawmakers to support the project, which will quantify potential oil-use reductions across every industrial sector.

“Over the next 20 years, how steep can we make cuts in oil consumption while allowing the economy to flourish and while creating more jobs rather than penalizing individual workers or communities?” Sierra Club Executive Director Michael Brune asked. “So, this will be a major priority of the club over the next several years — to build a broad based coalition of organizations and elected officials who will want to stand up for a very thoughtful and pragmatic, but visionary and aggressive plan to get off oil.”

In an interview with The Washington Independent, Brune, who took over his post just one month before the oil spill started, outlines the organization’s oil study, talks about the prospects for energy legislation and previews the upcoming mid-term elections.

Here is an edited-down version of our interview:

What is the major issue going forward for the Sierra Club right now?
Our top issue remains fighting climate change in a way that increases the availability of clean energy like solar and wind, while also improving the public health benefits associated with decreasing our reliance on fossil fuels.

Is the focus now on Environmental Protection Agency regulations, Congress or both?
I would say both for sure. We see great opportunity in EPA rulemakings to increase public health benefits by forcing utilities in particular to account for the cost of their pollution. A top priority right now is organizing around EPA’s hearings on coal ash, to make sure that coal ash is treated as a hazardous waste. But, over the next couple of years, we’ll be looking at a whole series of rulemakings, many of which are focused on stationary sources like coal plants, but we’re also looking at EPA rulemakings to cut our dependence on oil.

Is there a serious concern about challenges to EPA’s regulatory authority under the Clean Air Act going forward?
Yeah, certainly many threats have been made to EPA’s authority to act under the Clean Air Act, attempts either to gut the Clean Air Act or eliminate EPA’s authority. So, we’re taking those threats very seriously. We also think that should there be a public debate about these issues that the public overwhelmingly supports strong, effective and cost-effective regulations that have come out of the EPA for the last 40 years under the Clean Air Act. We think there’s broad public support for retaining its authority.

In terms of Congress, it doesn’t seem that anything is going to happen on cap-and-trade any time soon. Is that your thinking as well?
Well, you know, I think it is difficult to predict too far into the future. We think Congress should act. We know that members were put into office with the expectation that there would be a meaningful, substantive response to climate change and that Congress would enact laws that would put a down payment on scaling up clean energy. So, we know that the demand is there. But whether or not senators in particular will respond remains to be seen.

Putting aside cap-and-trade, there’s been talk of a narrower energy bill. It looks like Sen. Jeff Bingaman (D-N.M.) and Sen. Brownback  (R-Kans.) are introducing a renewable energy standard that they are hoping to get passed. Is there a specific RES target that you would like to see or is it that the policy needs to move forward as soon as possible?
Well, let me make a general point. There was far too much of a focus earlier this spring on a single bill to address climate change economy-wide. And, in reality, there are dozens of things that Congress can do to fight climate change and to increase energy security in the country. In regards to this particular RES bill, our focus is primarily on keeping it clean. We want to see a renewable energy standard that is focused on truly clean energy and doesn’t have absurd giveways to nuclear power or so-called clean coal or any one of the other handful of options. And then of course to increase those investments as quickly as possible.

Is there a number that’s being thrown around among your members now?
Yeah, but it’s not something I really want to discuss in the public right now.

What other things are you focusing on in Congress?
I’d say the top thing is a plan to get off oil. We just experienced the largest environmental disaster in our country’s history and in response, Congress has done nothing. There’s not even a plan to fully reform what used to be called MMS and there’s not yet a plan to hold oil companies fully accountable and to lift the liability cap. And most importantly, there’s no effective plan right now to significantly reduce our dependence on foreign oil. So, if there’s one thing that Congress can do in the next couple of months, it would be to challenge the oil industry and deliver us a plan to get off oil.

It’s been sort of an uphill battle trying to get an oil spill response bill to pass, something that is incredibly popular with the American people. And you’re right, it seems like the bill is getting held up on this idea of liability, whether or not an oil company should be held 100 percent liable for spilling thousands of gallons of oil into the ocean. What are your thoughts on that?
We shouldn’t be privatizing the gain and sharing the risk with the public. If oil companies are going to be benefiting from oil drilling, they also have to be able to absorb any of the risks associated with drilling.

Do you expect that Congress will pass an oil spill bill this year?
We do.

I wanted to also touch on the mid-term elections. It’s on everybody’s mind right now. What is the Sierra Club doing in terms of working with individual candidates?
So, there’s lots that we’re doing. The Sierra Club has 1.4 million members and supporters, so over the next several weeks, a big job of ours will be to educate our supporters about what’s at stake Nov. 2., trying to get people out to the polls and to engage our members to become volunteers. So, the Sierra Club endorses specific candidates.

We get very heavily involved in local and state propositions. Arguably our biggest priority this year is to defeat Prop 23, which would undermine the Global Warming Solutions Act, AB32, that was passed in California a few years ago. With that, we’re doing a massive voter mobilization drive. Individual members will be calling voters to encourage them to get out. We are also part of a coalition of groups that is doing advertising, thought we’re not doing any ourselves.

Are there any other races that are of particular concern for you?
We’re looking at the Senate races in Nevada and Missouri. Obviously, Harry Reid has been excellent in fighting the coal industry as well as supporting big investments in clean energy. We are also looking at the Florida race. Democratic Senate candidate Meek has a 100 percent League of Conservation Voting score. He’s been strongly in favor of Florida’s solar bills as well as the ban on offshore oil drilling. There’s obviously dozens or even hundreds of races in which the environmental voice is an important one.

There has been a lot said by the oil industry and Gulf coast lawmakers about the Obama administration’s offshore drilling moratorium’s impact on jobs, though there was a report that came out last week that said job losses might not be quite what people estimated. What’s the Sierra Club’s position on all of this? Should the moratorium be lifted?
No, I think that a full moratorium should be put in place. We’re mindful of the fact that we need to make stronger investments in clean energy jobs so that those who work in the oil industry who want to put food on the table for their families have viable alternatives in growing industries that they can work in.

To be clear, we’re not advocating turning off the spigot in the Gulf. There are more than 4,0000 rigs operating in the Gulf right now and we are not saying there should be no oil drilling in the Gulf, not until we have a clear plan to get off oil. But what we’re saying is that since it’s been proven now that oil drilling offshore is dirty and it’s dangerous and it’s deadly, we need to tighten up the safety regulations to make sure that disasters like this don’t happen in the future. And we need to stop investing in exploring for new oil and instead explore much more carefully and aggressively investments in solar and wind so that we’re not poisoning our coastlines as we’re trying to keep our lights on.

On pipeline safety. There have been a couple major disasters this year. Of course, the natural gas pipeline explosion in San Bruno, Calif. And before that there was an oil spill in Michigan from an oil sands pipeline. Looming over this you have a massive proposed pipeline project, the Keystone XL project, that is going to go from Canada to Texas. Has the Sierra Club been looking at the issue of pipeline safety through a new set of eyes now that we’ve had these disasters?
Yes, we have. There’s two things that we’re doing. Clearly, the cost of our reliance on oil — when you talk abut the Michigan spill, the Gulf oil spill and the Keystone pipeline — is so much higher than what we pay at the pump when you consider the foreign policy implications, the fact that our entire economy is held hostage to wild fluctuations in oil prices.

So, what we’ve done over the last six months since I started at the Sierra Club is to build out a much more aggressive, comprehensive plan for how our country can get off oil. Over the next 20 years, how steep can we make cuts in oil consumption while allowing the economy to flourish and while creating more jobs rather than penalizing individual workers or communities. So, this will be a major priority of the club over the next several years — to build a broad based coalition of organizations and elected officials who will want to stand up for a very thoughtful and pragmatic, but visionary and aggressive plan to get off oil.

And then, regarding natural gas, we don’t think we can simultaneously phase out coal, oil and gas at the same time. Gas will need to stick around for a while. But there the challenge is to have much higher and much tighter safety standards so we’re not in this disastrous position again and again and again where people are losing their lives due to an industry is ineffectively regulated.

On oil sands or, as some call them, tar sands. There were senators in Canada last week reviewing oil sands production in there. Is there a message you would like to send to them in terms of how oil sands should be treated? Because there’s an argument out there that it’s better to get oil from Canada, despite the high greenhouse gas emissions of oil sands production, because we’re no longer reliant on the Middle East.
I think that’s just misguided thinking. The Pentagon says that climate change is one of the top national security threats in the 21st century. We have to deal effectively with climate change. Importing oil from the tar sands is 2-3 times more greenhouse gas intensive than conventional oil. You don’t solve a problem by making it worse. So, I understand that the notion that we have oil that is under the sands of our neighbors to the north is attractive to people who think we can have a simply pipeline solve a lot of problems. But the reality is that if we rely too much on a different source of oil that is dirtier, that will accelerate climate change rather than reduce it’s impacts, we’re only going to be replacing one set of problems with an entirely different set of problems. The only effective way to address this problem systemically is to adopt a plan to get America off oil.

Can you be more specific about this plan?
We’ll have a plan that we can introduce probably in the next 3-6 months. It looks at every major industrial source of oil consumption, from the oil that’s used in medium- and heavy-duty trucks, light trucks, cars and SUVs, the oil used for pesticides and paints. Whatever the major source of consumption is, we’re looking at a major, comprehensive plan to phase it out where and whenever possible.

What’s the time frame of this phase-out?
The big challenge is political will. For example, clearly it is technically possible, one would presume, to produce nothing but plug-in hybrid and electric vehicles in the next couple years. Whether that’s politically possible, of course remains to be seen. If the United States were to mobilize as we did in World War II and completely transition the entire automobile fleet to produce a new technology, clearly that could be done.

What we need to do is measure the distance between what we can do and what we’re willing to do as a country and develop what we feel as responsible and pragmatic, but also aggressive tactics to achieve energy independence. To help inform that decision we would look at the cost of different decisions under different time scenarios, the benefits economically, environmentally or socially depending on our foreign policy and what would the oil savings be in real-world terms. Then we’d highlight a few different options. We’ll have the data shortly. Then we’ll figure out how to use it. We’ve commissioned this first study just as the Sierra Club, but we anticipate doing more with a broad coalition.

The announcement comes as the renewable energy industry has ramped up lobbying efforts to pass an RES this year and Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-Nev.) has left the door open to considering such a proposal. But it remains unclear when, exactly, the Senate might take up the bill and whether it will be coupled with other provisions or go forward as a standalone measure.

In a statement, Bingaman said he believes the Senate has the votes to pass the measure, which would require that a certain percentage of the country’s electricity come from renewable sources like wind and solar. Bingaman said:

I think that the votes are present in the Senate to pass a renewable electricity standard.  I think that they are present in the House.  I think that we need to get on with figuring out what we can pass and move forward.

Brownback, who hails from the wind-rich state of Kansas, called for a “sensible and modest” RES proposal.

The Department of Energy’s National Renewable Energy Lab estimated it would cost at least $43 billion to upgrade the nation’s electric system to move to 20 percent wind by 2030. (Flickr, Travel Aficionado)

By now, the Obama administration has made clear it wants to ramp up the use of renewable energy, calling it a key to the nation’s leadership in the 21st century. And some in Congress are hoping to pass a federal renewable energy standard, requiring the production of more wind, solar, biomass and geothermal energy.

[Environment1] Utilities recognize the shift to green energy as a major growth prospect. But they also recognize an impediment: Infrastructure. Indeed, across the country, utility and energy companies are preparing for a massive fight over how to deliver clean energy to people’s homes — and, more to the point, who will pay for the necessary infrastructure to get the energy there.

Behind the scenes, in recent months, utilities have battled over how to allocate the costs of the new high-powered electric lines necessary to move wind energy from one part of the country to the other. Despite efforts by federal regulators to referee the fight, some experts foresee further delays in the construction of the new electric, or transmission, lines they say are essential for meeting federal and state renewable energy mandates.

“A lack of transmission lines is the single greatest barrier to wind here in the Midwest. The lack of transmission has proved to be a huge barrier,” says Jamie Karnik, communications manager at Wind on the Wires, an advocacy group. Karnik says the Midwest produces about 10,000 megawatts of wind now, and needs to build at least 25,000 to 40,000 further megawatts of capacity to meet state and regional renewable energy goals.

Many utilities in the wind-rich Midwest would like to move excess electricity to the Northeast on new, high-powered lines. But utilities in the Northeast see Midwestern wind as a threat to its nascent offshore wind industry. While offshore wind is plentiful in the region, it has been plagued by regulatory delays and high costs. Cheap wind from the Midwest could keep the Northeast from developing its own local source of renewable power.

“As the nation looks to move to a renewable energy standard, a lot of that really comes down to how to meet the energy needs of the East coast,” Karnik says. “Certainly people who are building wind in the Midwest, have their eye on the eastern market.”

Utilities on both sides of this divide are drawing the battle lines over so-called cost allocation policies, which lay out a structure for how the costs for these lines are spread among ratepayers. One faction (including some Midwestern utilities and renewable energy advocates) proposes spreading the costs broadly over an entire region, arguing that new lines deliver broad economic and electric reliability benefits to all ratepayers. The other faction (including many Northeastern utilities) says costs should be paid by the specific beneficiaries of the new line.

Electric industry stakeholders — utilities, renewable energy developers, transmission companies — stand to lose or gain billions of dollars based on the structure of these policies. As a result, they are pouring significant lobbying resources into their development. “Needed transmission in the eastern interconnection would be about $85 billion,” says one lawyer following the issue who was not authorized to speak on the record. “The dollars involved here are huge and the regional economic impacts are huge. Utilities are keenly aware of that and that’s why they are fighting over cost allocation.”

A 2008 study by the Department of Energy’s National Renewable Energy Lab said it would cost at least $43 billion to upgrade the nation’s electric system to move to 20 percent wind by 2030. Others have put estimates significantly higher. A study conducted by the lab in January also said that any effort to meet the 20 percent goal in the Northeast would require “significant expansion of the transmission infrastructure.”

At the center of this fight is the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission, or FERC, a little-known agency that has often played second fiddle to the Department of Energy, but energy policy experts say has far more power over shaping the country’s energy policy. After months of discussions with industry stakeholders, FERC released in June a cost allocation proposal meant to assuage utilities’ concerns. It drew on elements of both utility factions’ proposals, giving some preference to projects that meet policy goals like renewable mandates, while ensuring that the costs allocated are at least “roughly commensurate” with the benefits delivered.

For the most part, industry stakeholders say they can work within the framework FERC set up: It gives utilities latitude to develop their own workable proposals. But as the public comment period on FERC’s proposal comes to a close at the end of this month, they also say the cost allocation debate might take years to resolve.

The lawyer following the issue said the ongoing battles between utilities over cost allocation could significantly impact states’ abilities to meet renewable energy standards. “I think it will affect it tremendously,” the lawyer says. “I think it’s going to continue to be really, really hard to build big lines.”

Rob Gramlich, senior vice president for public policy at the American Wind Energy Association, the wind industry’s national trade group, says he is “encouraged by what FERC is doing,” adding, “They clearly understand the challenges of the new clean energy economy and what that entails.” He says that FERC is working to expand a “Balkanized” electricity grid that was meant only to work on a local, rather than a regional basis.

In order to meet a stringent renewable energy standard, Gramlich says transmission must be built across regions in order to bring wind from the Midwest to states that don’t have many renewable resources. “To do that we’d need more regionalization of the type that FERC is pursuing now,” he says. “To do it cost effectively, by using the most economic resource areas, significant new transmission would be needed.”

But Gramlich notes that any rulemaking that FERC finalizes will likely be challenged in court, as some companies will “stand to lose a lot” no matter what proposal is adopted. Such challenges could delay a process that likely won’t even go into effect until 2012, given the various compliance periods allowed under the plan.

Joseph Kelliher — former FERC chairman and current executive vice president of federal regulatory affairs at NextEra Energy, the country’s largest renewable energy developer — says FERC’s cost allocation proposal is “critical and essential to translating conceptual renewable energy projects to real projects. They actually won’t get built until there is some clear conception of cost recovery.”

Kelliher also defends broad cost socialization, saying that entire regions benefit from new lines that carry renewable energy. “The notion that only ‘A’ and ‘B’ have to pay for that line and nobody else has to pay for anything, economists would look at that and say it’s a classic ‘free rider,’” he says. “Free riders tend to like the status quo and would like to get something for nothing. The current policy does discourage investment.”

At the same time, offshore wind is just not as cost competitive as onshore wind from the Midwest, Kelliher says. “The difference between onshore wind and offshore wind is about 400 percent. If transmission constraints don’t allow you to import good onshore wind from the Midwest for at least part of your renewable energy needs, you’re left paying” more, he says.

But Tim Fagan, director of public policy at the New Jersey-based PSEG, says broad socialization of costs puts the Northeast at a disadvantage because it favors Midwestern wind. “The concern is that we may end up with an overall less economic solution,” he says. “If the resources from the Midwest are able to have these long transmission lines paid for, that may competitively eek out other options.”

Fagan says Northeastern states need to be given time to develop local offshore wind and solar resources. “Eastern states are looking to develop offshore resources; they’re plentiful and they’re close to load,” he says. “In New Jersey, we’ve been aggressively developing PV solar.”

While a broad energy bill authored by Sen. Jeff Bingaman (D-N.M.) addressed some electric transmission issues, those provisions are not expected to come up for a vote in the Senate this year. Until then, electric utility officials say they will be watching Congress closely in the coming weeks to see if momentum is building for passage of a federal RES. Renewable energy advocates have been working feverishly behind the scenes during the August recess to convince key senators that the proposal could get the 60 votes necessary for passage.

“You’re beginning to see people stepping up and saying we can’t meet these mandates if we can’t get transmission built,” says one utility official who requested anonymity to speak openly. “All of this comes down to whether or not we have a federal RES. That has the potential to change things.”

Wind is God’s way of balancing heat. Wind is the way you shift heat from areas where it’s hotter to areas where it’s cooler. That’s what wind is. Wouldn’t it be ironic if in the interest of global warming we mandated massive switches to energy, which is a finite resource, which slows the winds down, which causes the temperature to go up? Now, I’m not saying that’s going to happen, Mr. Chairman, but that is definitely something on the massive scale. I mean, it does make some sense. You stop something, you can’t transfer that heat, and the heat goes up. It’s just something to think about.

This man was once the chairman of the committee, which this year passed the Waxman-Markey climate bill.

In South Dakota, the Rosebud Sioux tribe is working on a 30-megawatt wind farm that could bring some needed revenue for residents. Per capita income for tribal members is about $7,700 a year.

“We’re broke here,” tribal council president Rodney Haukaas told the New York Times. “We’re poor…The wind is free. There’s energy here all the time.”

The tribe has already had success with wind power, with a 750-kilowatt wind turbine that powers the Rosebud Casino.

According to the Times story, federal officials believe renewable energy could be the next casinos for Indian reservations in windy and sunny states. As we’ve reported, the Navajo Nation is moving in this direction for solar energy.