4. INTERIOR: Salazar promotes renewables, creates climate task force (E&ENews PM, 03/11/2009)

Noelle Straub, E&E reporter

Interior Secretary Ken Salazar today signed a secretarial order making the production and delivery of renewable energy a top priority for the department.

He also announced the creation of an energy and climate change Interior task force with leadership from each of the bureaus.

"This is another step toward changing how we do business with the department," Salazar said. "We need to steer the country into a new energy path, one that creates new jobs and puts Americans out front in new and growing industries."

His first-ever secretarial order gives priority treatment to processing permits for renewable energy. Its purpose is to "send a loud and clear message that we are in the renewable energy business," he said.

The order also formally established the task force, although Salazar said it has been working since President Obama's inauguration. It will help the department identify specific renewable energy zones on public lands. Interior will also work with other federal agencies, tribes and states to determine where transmission corridors are needed, Salazar added.

"To help us accomplish these goals we may well need to revise existing policies or create new rules," Salazar said. "We need to get our act together first in this department."

For instance, oil and gas companies pay rental fees and royalties, and those concepts also could be applied to renewable energies, Salazar said. "We're going to be looking at all those issues," he said.

The department has already identified about 5,000 miles of transmission corridors in the West. "What we need to do is move that ... forward to conclusion," he said.

Asked which federal department or agency would be in charge or permitting renewable projects, Salazar promised to work across the government. "We ought not to let jurisdictional bureaucracies get in the way."

The Bush administration had proposed regulations to guide the development of offshore energy resources, such as wind, wave and tidal power, but they were not finalized. Salazar said that after holding four regional hearings next month about offshore drilling and renewable energies, some changes likely will be made to the proposed rule, which he hopes can be finished this year.

Salazar said many renewable projects are being inhibited because the federal government doesn't have a "clear way forward."

The Bush administration "focused their time instead almost exclusively on permitting for oil and gas," resulting in a backlog of more than 200 solar energy applications, Salazar said. There are 20 proposed wind projects on BLM land in the West, he added. "With no permits, there can be no jobs for any of the projects," he said.

He said Interior agencies have already identified 20.6 million public acres with wind energy potential, 29.5 million acres with solar potential and 140 million acres with geothermal potential. There is also significant wind and wave potential offshore, he added. Within the past two weeks the Minerals Management Service has been contacted by groups in Massachusetts, New York and Texas interested in developing offshore renewable projects, he said.

Salazar also promised to "responsibly develop" oil and gas resources.

William Meadows, president of the Wilderness Society, praised the move.

"Today's secretarial order marks a new era for the Department of the Interior," he said in a statement. "Interior Secretary Ken Salazar has taken a bold step toward a clean energy economy that will lessen American dependence on foreign oil and decrease fuel prices over the long-term."

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