Solar power company owner urges western state governors to lead way
By Tom Lawrence, Black Hills Pioneer
Deadwood, SD, June 11, 2007
Source: Black Hills Pioneer
http://www.zwire.com/site/news.cfm?newsid=18458095
In the 1950s, President Dwight Eisenhower launched the interstate highway system and it still benefits America a half-century later. “Some president sometime is going to build the national grid” to transport energy from one end of the nation to the other, predicted John O’Donnell, president of Ausra, Inc., a solar electric power park company. O’Donnell gave the initial keynote address during the opening day of the Western Governors’ Association annual meeting in Deadwood Sunday.
He said he began his career working in nuclear fusion and continues that work today, only his fusion source is 93 million miles away: The sun.
O’Donnell said “solar parks” can be clean sources of power for the nation and the West is best suited for these facilities. Within a few years the growing climate crisis will force companies and governments to find ways to produce cleaner power, he said.
If there is not an 80 percent reduction in greenhouse gases by 2050, O’Donnell said, 90 percent of the earth’s species will be dead and our grandchildren’s futures will be in peril. A sudden, dramatic event will focus minds and bring about change, he said.
“Something is going to happen sometime relatively soon.” O’Donnell said. He said a solar field in a 92-mile by 92-mile area in Arizona could produce two-and-half times the power the nation needs; a field in Nevada could produce all the power the nation needs.
Solar power research is already going great guns in Europe, he said, and wind power can now be produced at competitive prices. Where wind power was once promoted by “true believers,” he said, it’s now being championed by investors who see profit in wind turbines. O’Donnell said the biggest question -and opportunity – was to create a regional transmission system to move this power from the West to other parts of America. It’s up to the politicians to team with investors and industry to make it happen, he said.
Governors from 10 states, along with several Canadian officials were joined by lobbyists, public officials and local people who wanted to see the politicians gathered and hear ideas on new forms of energy. Gov. Mike Rounds, the outgoing chairman of the association, spoke in favor of ethanol at an early afternoon press conference and told the other governors that the alternative fuel isn’t just about corn anymore.
Rounds said grass, sugar cane and other products will soon be used to produce ethanol. It’s just a matter of developing the ways to convert matter into the fuel, he said. “That’s a technology that’s not here – yet,” Rounds said.
The governors also spent some time hearing reports about carbon capture and sequestration (CCS), a process for storing carbon dioxide in wetlands and other natural areas to prevent it from fouling the air. Three speakers – Gregory McRae from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Jonathan Schrag of Columbia University and John Harju from the Plains CO2 Reduction Partnership discussed the “opportunities for and obstacles to large-scale testing and the expedited safe deployment of CCS.”
McRae said he is encouraged by the passion he sees in young scientists at MIT who want to help find ways to clean the sky and help produce cleaner forms of energy. “I’m enormously encouraged by the enthusiasm of young students,” he said. The governors said it’s time to act and that the debate over global climate change had ended.
“The policy train has left the station,” said Wyoming Gov. Dave Freudenthal. “The bell has run and you can’t unring it.” He said the governors needed to act, since the federal government was often slow to move on big issues such as this. “They don’t get anything done,” Freudenthal said. “I wouldn’t want them watching my back if I was tiger hunting.”
The governors’ meeting was to continue Monday and wrap up with sessions Tuesday morning.