San Antonio Express-News
by David Hendricks
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10/10/01 Wednesday |
Business 01C |
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Column |
Metro |
Hidden among obscure pages of state legislation
passed in May are business opportunities for the next five years.
The opportunities will be for firms involved
in the newest forms of alternative energy and the latest in energy conservation
technology.
The law presenting the opportunities is
Senate Bill 5, ostensibly an air-quality emissions measure.
But few people or businesses are aware that the
law requires local governments in 20 Texas counties - the most populous
counties, mainly those along and east of Interstate 35 - to reduce electricity
consumption.
The mandate is to reduce electricity use in
public buildings - school buildings are exempted - by 5 percent a year for five
years, beginning Jan. 1, 2002.
That is a fairly tall order. The Texas
Legislature, naturally, did not appropriate any money for this to help local
governments achieve this goal. There are some federal grants out there, though.
Nor is it clear how local governments will be
punished or penalized if they do not achieve this goal. But this much is
evident: No one is against it, not during this new world situation where energy
supplies are the flash point of global tension.
Obviously, state lawmakers did not foresee the
events of Sept. 11. The electricity shortfalls in California plus the alarming
rise in foreign oil imports provided plenty of motivation even before Sept. 11.
Bexar County is listed in the law. The
San Antonio area soon will be home to a regional agency to help area local
governments strive toward this goal.
The agency will be called the Metropolitan
Partnership for Energy, which will have funding and a staff of three or
four people by January.
The partnership was in formation even before
Senate Bill 5, thanks to the efforts of solar energy advocate, civic
leader and former banker William Sinkin, who had studied similar organizations
popping up in U.S. metropolitan areas.
But with Senate Bill 5 becoming law, the
city, county and City Public Service quickly lined up to support the
partnership and other supporters are being sought.
At an organizational and information luncheon
this week, CPS General Manager and Chief Executive Jamie Rochelle said cities
will compete for scarce federal grant monies and expertise to reach the
state-mandated goals.
Therefore, the regional approach, defined by
the dozen counties in the Alamo Area Council of Governments, will be San Antonio's
strategy toward getting the most out of available federal grants and agency
technical help, Rochelle said.
As local governments go about retrofitting
existing buildings or designing new buildings, businesses that will have
opportunities are the designers and developers with the best energy technology.
By extension, so will lenders knowledgeable about financing these projects.
Sinkin is thinking bigger. He wants San Antonio
to be a construction center for solar energy equipment, much as fuel
cell advocates here are discussing for fuel cells.
CPS itself already is a leader in renewable energy
use, widening its purchasing of West Texas wind power and incorporating
solar equipment at a customer service center under construction on the North
Side at a former Solo Serve store on San Pedro Avenue. The CPS center will be
called the Solar Serve.
But wind power has a crippling drawback. The
long transmission lines from West Texas double the cost of the power. However,
on-site, or distributed generation, represented by solar and fuel cell
electricity generation, is much more efficient. The longer the transmission
over wires, the more power is lost.
That makes providing incentives for on-site
generation an important role for Senate Bill 5, whose rules are being written.
The big question is how electricity use reductions will be measured, at the
site or at the generation point, said Michael Myers, a representative of the
U.S. Energy Department's Rebuild America program.
The answer should be clear, at the generation
point. The point is to conserve fuel and reduce air emissions. Twenty-five
percent to 40 percent of electricity generated at a central plant for
transmission over wires to industrial and residential customers is lost in
transmission.
If on-site generation, either solar or fuel
cells, is installed and the savings at the central plants are factored
into the electrical reductions, the use of on-site generation can make it
relatively easy for Texas local governments to meet Senate Bill 5's goals,
Myers said.
And that could be a springboard for wider use and quicker acceptance of these badly needed emerging energy technologies.