Though the US government may be stalling on energy policy, the Western Interconnect should move ahead with its own initiatives, said former Arizona state energy office director, currently Southwest representative of the Western Grid Group, and independent energy consultant Amanda Ormond, in a press conference call on Wednesday.
“We have a vacuum in energy policy and we want to West to get focused,” Ormond said. “Part of that is being globally competitive.” She said she hopes the West can develop products good enough to export them globally.
The conference call was timed with the public release of a report that stressed the importance for the Western United States in moving forward to clean energy policy. Coming with a broad base of support in various environmental, renewable electrical generation companies, and energy policy groups, including the Western Grid Group, the report is titled “Western Grid 2050: Contrasting Futures, Contrasting Fortunes” and was written by Carl Linvill, director of the Aspen Environmental Group.
Former Colorado Governor Bill Ritter joined the call and spoke of his own success in expanding the state’s renewable energy portfolio and closing down coal plants. He said a system of national carbon pricing was perhaps the most important thing the country could do for future energy policy, but that the states in the Western Interconnect could find their own way to move forward.
“The West stands at an energy crossroads,” Ritter said, explaining that nearly $200 billion will be invested in energy infrastructure in the region over the next two decades and that building new transmission, in particularly, was extremely important.
Carl Linvill, who wrote the report, emphasized that when Western states built transmission and new generation, they would aim to do make it “smart from the start.”
“The choices we make for next 10, 20 years will lay the foundation for what we can get out of the grid by 2050,” Linvill said.
The groups plan on releasing a second document in September that will outline various policy and investment initiatives for the energy industry.
Photo Caption: The annual Martin Luther King Day Parade is led by Colorado Speaker of the House, Terrance Carroll, left in hat, Governor Bill Ritter, center left, US Senator Michael Bennet, former Denver Mayor, Wellington Webb and current Mayor, John Hickenlooper on January 18, 2010 in Denver, Colorado. The event is the largest Martin Luther King Day Parade in the country.
