A Solar CEO's Beef with Washington Lawmakers

July 4th 2007 was Nancy Pelosi's energy independence day, a day when new legislation delivered by the Democratic majority was supposed to start delivering America out of the hands of fossil fuel interests and toward a responsible posture on global warming.

Not much happened in Congress then -- or quite frankly, since -- but something else did happen last July that's worth remembering instead: the first step on the road to generating 10% to 20% of the nation's energy from the sun by 2030, according to solar energy CEO Peter Duprey.

A project called Nevada Solar One got switched on in a place called Boulder City, Nevada. Congress didn't notice even though it was the first plant of its kind to be built in 17 years, and was, in Duprey's words, "the beginning of the resurgence of large-scale concentrated solar power in the US and the world."

If the beef he has with Washington gets resolved, that is. Here's the crux of it.

You'd think Solar One would be something Congress and the technology-minded White House would want to get behind with supportive renewable energy legislation, and in fact there's a bill that got through Pelosi's House. But the smart money says it will die in the Senate or get vetoed by the President. Meanwhile, in Washington, the State Department is hosting an international renewable energy jamboree in Washington this week called WIREC. Duprey is one of the speakers, but without the renewable law, it's all only smoke and mirrors.

Nevada Solar One is chock full of mirrors, too, but there's not a wisp of smoke. It looks like a 400-acre lake glistening in the desert under a crystal clear sky. It generates 64MW of electricity and powers more than 14,000 homes. Its 40-foot-high shiny parabolic troughs focus the sun's rays onto a pipe filled with heat transfer fluid that heats up to 750 degrees. The hot fluid then turns water to steam, which turns a turbine, which generates electricity.

It does what a coal-fired power plant does, only it doesn't need the coal. That's as clean as coal can get.

Nevada Meets Renewable Standard

Truth be told, solar CEO Peter Duprey actually does a lot more than solar. He's the North American CEO of Acciona Energy, a $16 billion Spanish company that makes its money by developing water resources, green buildings, desalinization plants, and wind, biomass and of course, solar energy.

He was taking calls in the aftermath of a celebration to officially launch Nevada Solar One, eight months after it actually opened. July is not a good time to throw a party in the Nevada desert near an enormous installation of parabolic mirrors, so Acciona waited for February. They got Sally Ride to show up, and Steve Wozniak of Apple fame, who with the help of emcee Ed Begley talked about the pioneering spirit that will lead to the solar future. If Louis XIV the Sun King of France had not died almost 300 years ago, he might have shown up, too.

The first thing Duprey has to say about Solar One is that it produces peak power. Its output is maximum when demand is highest, when power is most expensive. It can compete with a natural gas-powered peaking plant that is built to run only 30% of the time.

Solar One cost Acciona $266 million to build. They've struck a 20 year deal to sell the clean energy to Nevada on terms Duprey wouldn't disclose. In this one deal, the state was able to meet its renewable portfolio standard -- 5% by 2015.

Duprey is proud Nevada Solar One because it's a big risk his company took to do the right thing. "Somebody had to take the first step," he said. "We built this on our balance sheet and we've proven we can do it, but we still need to scale this up in the United States."

Stimulates the Economy

Acciona has 4 concentrated solar power projects in the works in Spain. In the US, it's still examining possibilities for the next project. Part of the problem is that more suppliers of components are needed, and better economies of scale to bring down costs.

"The key enabler is the supply chain build out," Duprey said. He said right now global capacity for building CSP is 600 MW a year. There are only 2 manufacturers who make the tubes that hold the heat transfer fluid. It still takes 22 months to get a turbine delivered, once you've ordered it to site specifications.

But while the the supply chain is a bottleneck, its build out is an enormous business opportunity that could be seized by the US. Favorable legislation in the form of tax credits and other incentives would make it possible, but all Duprey has right now is his beef to chew on.

A Solar Vision

"We created 200 jobs in the US through Acciona projects like Nevada Solar One," Duprey said. "And that's just in our company. There's a ripple effect when you count suppliers and construction. It's a great way to stimulate the economy."

And then he goes on a roll, providing a vision of the future of energy through the eyes of a Solar CEO.

If we don't get engaged in renewable energy, the Chinese will be way ahead of us. We've got the greatest resources in the world in wind, solar thermal, geothermal, advanced biofuels, offshore wind. Tell me we can get these resources to provide 30% of our fuel mix?

It's exactly what Germany has already done with wind and solar, and we have much better resources.

In this country, the production tax credit for renewable energy has been on-again, off-again. It hasn't been conducive to building business.

We need a long-term energy policy that thinks through renewable energy. We need a national RPS (Renewable Portfolio Standard) with teeth and penalties; and a carbon tax or cap and trade that prices externalities into the whole mix. It's all got to be long-term and financable.

We need to spur new investment in new technology and scale up existing capability. We can export this around the world. China will have insatiable demand.

At some point this becomes a national security issue, too.

He pauses, brings it down to earth in Texas.

Look at what Austin Energy did. They incentivized customers to lock in to buying wind energy. And those customers now are paying less for their power because fossil fuels prices have gone up.

You know, the future global leaders are going to be those companies that create shareholder value and also sustainable development. That's what we do. We make money through social responsibility.

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