August 2010

Northern Arizona's mountainous forest region is about to get trimmed down and cleaned up.  Arizona's Four Forests Restoration Initiative (Initiative) was awarded a $2 million grant from the U.S. Forest Service on Aug. 17, the largest grant made under the newly created federal Collaborative Forest Landscape Restoration Program.  The Initiative is the result of a coalition between the timber industry, environmentalists, and local communities to restore healthy ecological values in Northern Arizona's ponderosa pine forests, including 2.4 million acres of the Apache-Sitgreaves, Kaibab, Coconino, and Tonto National Forests, while also boosting rural Arizona’s economic growth and fire safety.  Forests in the Western United States have been ecologically degraded by overly aggressive fire suppression practices as well as misguided forest management policies, with unsustainable levels of timber harvesting and cattle grazing in the earlier part of the last century followed by the opposite extreme of unduly restricted logging and grazing.  As a result, dense thickets of smaller, younger trees have grown up in place of old-growth trees, and the forest floor is buried in needles and leaves. read more

The Journal Science is providing free online access to its special issue: Scaling up Alternative Energy, until August 27, 2010.  The special issue "explores worldwide efforts to develop clean, renewable alternatives to fossil fuels" and is an excellent opportunity to find out what experts think about many of the issues currently being debated by politicians and the public.  The underlying message of the issue, is that developing renewable energy on the scale necessary to replace fossil fuels will most likely require more time and be more difficult than many proponents of renewable energy currently realize. read more

Gov. Jan Brewer announced Aug. 11 that Rioglass Solar, a solar component manufacturing company based in Madrid, Spain, will open a manufacturing and headquarters facility in the City of Surprise.  Rioglass manufactures curved glass mirrors for use in parabolic concentrators and has reached a deal with Abengoa Solar to supply all the mirrors for the planned Solana Generating Station, a concentrating solar power plant to be constructed near Gila Bend.  Rioglass will make a $50 million capital investment in a 130,000 sq. ft. manufacturing and headquarters facility and create 100 jobs.  The company also has plans for a second-phase investment of $45 million in an additional facility.  Welcoming the company, Gov. Brewer praised Arizona's "significant progress" in becoming "a global leader in the renewable energy sector."  Michael Bidwell, president of the Greater Phoenix Economic Council, noted Arizona's current position as an "established leader" in the renewable energy industry, which "just a year ago overlooked us." read more

With the death of the Senate climate bill, the spotlight moves back to the EPA and its impending regulation of greenhouse gases.  The agency's controversial "Tailoring Rule" will phase in regulation of these gases, beginning in Jan. 2011.  That is, if it can get the states to cooperate.  Texas, for one, is taking an "over my dead body" approach.  In an Aug. 2 letter to the EPA, the Texas attorney general, together with the head of the Texas Commission on Environmental Quality, minced no words in expressing the Lone Star State’s position: "On behalf of the State of Texas, we write to inform you that Texas has neither the authority nor the intention of interpreting, ignoring, or amending its laws in order to compel the permitting of greenhouse gas emissions." read more

The Salt River Project (SRP) has announced a plan to allow schools to receive solar electricity without any upfront costs by purchasing output from a single large PV plant. SRP believes this will be more cost-effective than installing PV systems at individual schools.  Under the program, schools will sign 10-year contracts to buy electricity at a fixed rate of 9.9 cents per kilowatt-hour (kWh).  Schools in SRP's territory currently pay 8.3 cents per kWh for their daytime electricity so, initially, the schools will pay a 19% premium for the solar power.  However, SRP's prices will almost certainly increase over the next 10 years.  The fixed-rate contract protects schools against price increases and could eventually allow them to buy electricity at less than the normal rate.  This new program is in addition to SRP's Solar for Schools Program, which will install PV systems at 14 Arizona schools this year. read more