Culver joins push for national energy standard

Des Moines Bureau

DES MOINES – Renewable energy proponents, including Iowa Gov. Chet Culver, made a push Monday for Congress to establish a national renewable electricity standard that will spur more investment in U.S. manufacturing related to wind, solar and other alternative energy sources that will mean more good-paying “green-collar” jobs and a cleaner environment.

Culver participated in a conference call in which industry leaders warned that renewable energy sectors and wind energy in particular is experiencing a slowdown of investment, manufacturing startups and electricity generation due to the lack of a clear direction from Congress and the Obama administration on the future on U.S. energy policy.

They urged Sen. Majority Leader Harry Reid, D-Nev., to include a renewable electricity standard in an oil spill and energy package expected to get proposed in the U.S. Senate as early as this week or to push ahead with the issue as a stand-alone bill they predicted has bipartisan support and the 60 votes needed to clear any procedural hurdles.

If those efforts fail, former Senate Majority Leader Tom Daschle said he was certain the issue would surface as an amendment to other legislation yet this year. He expressed confidence there would be enough Senate votes for a first-ever federal renewable electricity production threshold.

“Entire industries and hundreds of thousands of jobs are literally at stake, so the time to act is now,” he said.

In recent years, Culver said Iowa has significantly expanded it wind energy production, growing from 38 to 78 wind farms and generating 20 percent of the state's overall power from renewable sources – a share he expects to grow to 30 percent in coming years and make Iowa a net exporter of energy. The industry has been powered by nine new wind-turbine production facilities that created about 2,300 direct jobs and a “domino effect” of about 200 of “supply-chain” small business in 26 counties.

However, Culver said things are being to plateau nationally in the absence of a federal standard that would give investors more assurances that there will be stable U.S. growth for the future in renewable energy.

“If we really want to get to the next level and build on the success that we've had, we need Congress to step in and raise the bar. That will create the

incentive for the other states and the manufacturers to make more investments,” he said. “We've come to the point where we have to have action from the federal government to build on what we've been able to do to date.”

Denise Bode, chief executive officer of the American Wind Energy Association, said new production dropped from 4,000 megawatts last year to about 1,200 megawatts so far this year as investors pull back due to a lack of a long-term commitment. “We are going backwards,” she said.

Lewis Hay III, the chairman and CEO of Florida-based Next Era Energy, estimated his company – the country's largest renewable energy generator in wind and solar energy -- would invest about $1 billion more per year in wind energy production and another $1.5 billion for solar production per year with the potential to create 40,000 jobs over the next five years if an RES is in place. He said the potential investment would be considerably less without it.

Without a national standard, Hay warned “the U.S. in serious danger of losing the clean energy race.”

Last year a Senate committee approved a measure that would have required electric utilities by the year 2021 to produce 15 percent of their electricity from renewable sources like solar, geothermal and wind. About one-fourth of that standard could have been met through energy efficiency measures.

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