In 2008, Americans across the country voted for change. That change included transforming our century-old dependence on fossil fuels. Central to this makeover was the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act of 2009 (ARRA).
ARRA was more than just a jobs program. It was also about reinventing the economy and advancing a green industrial revolution.
To this end, ARRA was the most ambitious energy legislation in history – investing more than $90 billion through a variety of programs to lay the foundation for a clean energy economy. It funded unprecedented investments in wind and solar, biofuels and electric vehicles -- and provided the capital to retool our factories and to train a green workforce.
Politically though, the Recovery Act became unpopular very quickly resulting from a partisan effort to ignore and discredit its successes. The viability of specific projects were questioned using selective information that failed to tell the whole story. One such example was the “wasteful spending” criticism heaped upon the “Napa Valley Wine Train” project. The criticism concealed the fact that the stimulus funds went for a flood control project along the train’s route, instead of the train itself.
Of course there were failures -- none more publicized than Solyndra. Solyndra was a public relations disaster, but policy-wise it was well within the guidelines of the DOE loan guarantee program under which it was funded.
The loan program was written into the Energy Policy Act of 2005, a bi-partisan energy bill signed into law by President Bush. The idea of the program is to provide loan guarantees to help commercialize innovative technologies that have trouble finding financing. Under ARRA, the program was expanded to support more companies whose operations were frozen as a result of the credit crunch that impacted green energy projects especially hard.
Although Solyndra’s 360-degree solartube PV cell was just one of nearly 40 technologies and projects funded under the loan guarantee – it is the most well-known because of its failure. What isn’t known, however, is that Solyndra represented less than two percent of the overall loan program’s portfolio. In other words, the program worked as designed, and as a result billions of dollars worth of private-sector leveraged capital is invested in a diverse array of new and innovative technologies.
The ARRA loan guarantee enabled the construction of one of world’s largest parabolic trough solar power plants, with innovative on-site thermal energy storage. The Solana plant was built west of Gila Bend and employed 1,700 workers during construction while creating 60 permanent jobs.
Solana eliminates nearly 650,000 metric tons of carbon dioxide from our air annually, uses minimal amounts of Arizona's water supply, and has an economic impact that includes an estimated $300 to $400 million in 30-year tax revenues and more than $1 billion in gross state revenue.
The world’s largest photovoltaic power plant was also constructed as the result of an ARRA loan guarantee. The 250 MW Agua Caliente power plant near Yuma is the first commercial-scale PV plant to use new US manufactured inverter technologies that make the plant more reliable and allow operation during voltage fluctuations caused by cloud cover or dust. This innovative technology is improving the delivery of solar generated electricity to the utility grid and will enable greater deployment of large-scale PV generation projects.
Dry Lake Wind Power, Arizona’s first wind farm, received $31.3 million under another ARRA program that provided payments to clean energy generators in lieu of tax credits. Twenty-one other Arizona companies were also reimbursed for clean energy infrastructure projects under this program.
SRP was awarded a $56.9 million grant to install over 540,000 smart meters that help consumers reduce their energy use, while APS benefitted from $70.5 million in ARRA funds to cultivate algae for fuel production with coal gasification.
These investments are transforming the way we produce, and use, energy. Owing in large part to these clean energy incentives and investments, wind generation nationwide grew by 145 percent from 2008 to 2012, and solar thermal and photovoltaic generation increased more than fourfold during the same time period.
But, despite these Arizona examples that are representative of the nation as a whole, Solyandra emerged as the poster-child for all things ARRA. Proponents and supporters of the Recovery Act have avoided telling the ARRA story seeing how any discussion of the stimulus disintegrates into verbal warfare.
During the upcoming 2014 mid-term election voters across the country will once again have the opportunity to cast their ballot for change. Election results will have major ramifications on our environment; how we generate our energy; and how our energy system will evolve in the future.
What choices will we make?
Jim Arwood
Communications Director
Arizona Solar Center
Questions:
Are renewable energy and climate change issues relevant to voters in 2014?
If so, what stances would you be hoping to hear supported? If not, why not?
