New Mexico Green Economy Report Released

The New Mexico Green Jobs Cabinet Report entitled New Mexico's Green Economy: Capitalizing on Assets and Opportunities, has been released to the public. You can find the full report here. I am pleased to have assisted with the writing of this report.

New Mexico is rapidly becoming a global leader in pure energy innovation. Abundant renewable energy resources, world-class clean technology research and manufacturing, attractive incentives, low business costs, and visionary state, federal and local government leadership are drawing international attention to the Land of Enchantment.

To formulate a cohesive plan to develop and capitalize on these varied resources, Governor Bill Richardson created the Green Jobs Cabinet. This Cabinet was tasked with providing an overview of New Mexico’s green economy and a statewide strategic plan for clean technology economic development. The Green Economy is a broad term that covers everything from renewable energy to recycling to green building. New Mexico is focused on identifying and developing assets (both natural and economic) of the Green Economy, as well as creating and sustaining green jobs.

The New Mexico Economic Development Department released the final report in September 2009, outlining five strategies to grow New Mexico’s green economy and offered recommendations to achieve these goals.

GOAL #1: Be the Leader in Renewable Energy Export: Establish New Mexico as the leading exporter of renewable energy and renewable energy products, in the areas of both electricity and biofuels. SOLUTION: Incentivize/stimulate renewable energy growth in electricity and biofuels; Get our renewable energy to market; Align incentives for utilities with the state economic development goals; Provide a supportive regulatory environment; Market and promote the state’s assets, accomplishments and vision. GOAL #2: Be the Center of the North American Solar Industry: Make New Mexico the “Solar Valley” of the United States: New Mexico must harness its potential to develop a vertically integrated solar economy from R&D and demonstration to commercialization, startup businesses, manufacturing, and installation. The entire value chain resides in New Mexico. SOLUTION: Stimulate the rapid growth of solar energy; incentivize solar manufacturing. GOAL #3: Lead the Nation in Green Grid Innovation: Leverage technology from our national laboratories and universities to create an entrepreneurial engine of new high tech, clean tech businesses. Make the “green grid” a top priority. SOLUTION: Promote commercialization of new clean technologies; put focus on the Green Grid to leverage limited resources. GOAL #4: Be a Center of Excellence for Green Building and Energy Efficiency: Remain a leader in green building and develop a sustainable energy efficiency renovation industry with a supporting cluster of green building product manufacturers. SOLUTION: Develop a building energy efficiency renovation sector; Maintain leadership in new construction of green buildings; Grow our cluster of green building product manufacturers. GOAL #5: Have a Highly Skilled and Ready-to-Work Workforce: Matching industry growth projections with a highly skilled workforce is paramount to the success of New Mexico’s green economy. SOLUTION: Create an industry-driven green workforce development sector strategy aligned with these economic development goals; Develop green economy data and career framework; Expand green job training programs across the state; Provide customized just-in-time training solutions for growing green businesses. CONCLUSIONS Although the green economy is projected to grow nationwide, there is intense competition between states for investment dollars, especially given recent job losses created by the global recession. Despite our natural advantages, New Mexico must continue to aggressively compete for investment if it wants to create clean industry clusters and capture its share of economic development from clean energy and clean technology.

New Mexico Green Economy Initiative Presentation

This link allows you to download a copy of a presentation on the New Mexico Green Economy Initiative dated April 8, 2009.

New Mexico Green Economy Initiative Presentation

New Mexico's Leading Role in the New Energy Economy

Despite New Mexico's leadership in the New Energy Economy, it is regrettably often in the national blindspot. Most of the rest of the country has little idea what resources and advantages we have or what we are working on in the state. In this blog I will shed some light on these subjects. This first post simply lays out some of New Mexico's key advantages.

• World-class developable solar, wind and geothermal resources: New Mexico has the 2nd best solar resource in the United States, the 5th best non-coastal wind resource, and untapped geothermal potential. Our extensive public lands and large-tract ranch lands in the state make developing this resource much easier than in many states with a more fragmented land ownership. Furthermore, New Mexico's relatively small population means that the state has excess power capacity that can be used in other states that have large load centers and more challenges in bringing productive renewable power plants online.
• Strong state and federal level clean energy champions: New Mexico Senator Bingaman is Chair of the Senate Energy and Natural Resources Committee, incoming Senator Udall is a passionate renewable energy advocate, and incoming Representative Lujan is a veteran of the Public Regulation Commission which oversees our electric utilities and helped to put in place the state Renewable Energy Portfolio Standard. Furthermore, Governor Richardson was Secretary of Energy under President Clinton, and one of the five FERC Commissioners is from New Mexico. This makes New Mexico one of the strongest federal energy delegations in the nation.
  
• World-class renewable energy research institutions and a strong venture capital community: New Mexico is home to Sandia National Laboratory, Los Alamos National Laboratory, the Air Force Research Laboratory, the University of New Mexico and several other colleges actively involved in research on renewable energy technologies. 9.8% of the state's population has a masters degree or better, compared with only 8.9% nationally. New Mexico is well known in the scientific community for its research capacity in the area of solar power, materials science and energy conversion and harvesting. These research centers have been placing a much greater emphasis on the commercialization of their new technologies in recent years. Add to this an established venture capital community with ready money to invest and connections to VCs around the country, and you have a great place to start or grow a clean technology company. 
• A strong and growing clean tech business cluster: New Mexico generally, and Albuquerque in particular, is home to a significant and growing base of leading clean tech businesses. These businesses are attracted by both our natural solar resources and research capability and fueled by New Mexico's low cost of doing business. In the area of solar manufacturing, Schott Solar, Advent Solar, Emcore, Skyfuel and Sundrop all call New Mexico home. We must not forget that New Mexico also has a growing biofuels industry and other clean tech businesses, like Miox.
• World-class solar and wind training centers: Most people outside of the state are not aware that New Mexico is home to leading solar AND wind training centers. For example, San Juan College's Renewable Energy Program has an excellent reputation in the industry, as does Mesalands College's Wind Research and Training Center. There are few renewable energy training centers that can compete with these two, and other centers are emerging around the state. The centers are also known for their offering of national recognized certifications (like NABCEP and MSSC Certified Production Technicians), their customer service orientation,  and ability to develop customized training for companies looking to locate in New Mexico or looking to grow their workforce. Combined with New Mexico's attractive quality of life, companies that locate in New Mexico can easily ensure a qualified  workforce.
• A small and responsive state government: This customer service orientation extends to state government more broadly. Unlike larger states, New Mexico remains small, well-coordinated and focused on developing its New Energy Economy. The New Mexico Economic Development Partnership helps companies work through the logistics of locating the state. The Clean Energy Working Group brings together point people from all of the essential departments to resolve company requests quickly and effectively. We hear regularly from companies how accessible the key officials are and how quickly they can get their doors open.

 

There are primarily four interconnected pathways of economic development in this area of Clean Energy and Clean Technology for New Mexico. The state is actively working on all of these pathways to promote the economic development and prosperity of the state.

1. Green Technology Push: Leveraging the R&D resources of the state to develop a vibrant and robust community of active entrepreneurs and start-up companies.
2. Growing the Green Manufacturing/Production Cluster: Growing the emerging cluster of existing clean tech manufacturers and biofuels producers to attract similar companies.
3. Renewable Utility-Scale Generation: Pushing forward the development of solar, geothermal and wind projects in NM.
4. Energy Efficiency and Distributed Generation: Promoting the expansion of existing small-scale solar and wind installations and energy efficiency retrofits of our building stock.

Any companies, entrepreneurs, researchers and individuals who are interested in contributing to New Mexico's growing leadership in the New Energy Economy should contact Brendan Miller, Green Economy Manager, at brendan.miller [at] state.nm.us.

Opening the doors for renewable energy development

I am hoping that the incoming president understands the importance of developing our renewable energy potential in the US. It is critical to protect our economy from oil shocks and from foreign entanglements. And of course it is essential to halt global warming.

There is also a huge opportunity: demand is growing and prices are coming down significantly as we realize economies of scale and move down the learning curve. There are manufacturers, developers, and investors waiting to jump as the climate is right.

Here is a list of a few things that would make a huge difference:

• Mapping out and clearing the way for the development of transmission corridors. There is not the transmission capacity in place where the new renewable power is located (e.g. rural New Mexico).
• Providing new rebates and incentives at the federal level for the installation of systems like those implemented by Germany and California
• Putting money in the research and development of the "smart green grid." This is a grid that can handle the unique power profiles of renewable sources. This means adding storage, sensors and controls to better manage the power.
• Putting money into a low interest energy efficiency loan fund so that individuals, companies and institutions can make the investments in improving their buildings that might otherwise be out of reach. Pushing on building codes to include performance standards for energy efficiency (e.g. HERS rating).
• Raise fuel economy standards and require the deployment of electric vehicles and other zero emission vehicles
• Rewrite the laws governing electrical utilities so that they are required to use renewable energy and to allow it to be transmitted over their lines.

Some people I talk to think that private investors can take care of installing all of the transmission lines that we will need. Others think we need a federal program (could be modeled after either the interstate highway system or the expansion of the railroads) to stimulate and guide it. This needs to be investigated and the correct solution applied so that transmission lines get installed quickly and widely. This will create a boom in renewable energy development, which will in turn attract manufacturing and service jobs related to the solar and wind components that are required. As transportation costs go up, it becomes a better idea to locate manufacturing near installations, especially for large, heavy equipment like that required for solar and wind installations.