Kern's green energy boom: Firms grabbing land for wind, solar
| Friday, Aug 08 2008 08:19 PM
Last Updated Friday, Mar 27 2009 01:20 PM
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Fiberset Incorporated composite technician Richie Hernandez sands off the old paint of a wind turbine blade, Thursday morning in Mojave. Fiberset specializes in composite repair and refurbishment of old wind turbine blades.
Travis Para, left, and Cory Mulvey carefully place the air brake onto a wind turbine blade to check their composite work, Thursday morning in Mojave.
Wind turbines can be seen along Oak Creek Road just west of Mojave.
Fiberset composite technician Travis Para works on repairing an air brake, which goes on the end of a wind turbine blade, Thursday morning in Mojave. The air brake helps to slow the blades down when they are spinning too fast.
While the high price of crude has sent local oil companies into a pumping frenzy, Kern County has quietly experienced another energy boom — one that would make T. Boone Pickens proud.
Applications for utility-scale renewable energy projects have flooded into local permitting agencies the past two years, driven by state mandates and a scramble by companies for a piece of land in Kern’s sunny and windy open terrain.
The trend has positioned Kern to become one of the state’s major producers of clean energy.
“We're not moving away from oil, we're just diversifying our portfolio,” said Kern Economic Development Corporation President Richard Chapman.
The Bureau of Land Management is currently processing two dozen applications for wind and solar projects in the eastern Kern desert. Meanwhile, the Kern County Planning Department has received applications for wind and solar as well as a biogas pipeline and sludge-to-energy plant.
What’s more, some wind and solar developers are looking for workers. Local community colleges are jumping on board with programs to train them, a sign to industry observers that Kern is well poised to be a player in the new energy sector.
“If you have community colleges training folks, that’s the barometer in a sense,” said Ron Pernick, co-founder and managing director of Clean Edge Inc., a research and publishing firm that tracks the clean technology industry. “I’m seeing that throughout the country in places that have these burgeoning clean energy sectors. It's a critical component.”
A MIGHTY WIND
Interest in wind energy has so far outpaced any other renewable energy projects.
At least 27 wind farms have been proposed in eastern Kern County.
The growth is due to several factors.
Kern’s wind farms now generate 710 megawatts of wind energy, but that’s expected to grow by an additional 4,500 megawatts in the next decade due to the ongoing construction of Southern California Edison’s Tehachapi Transmission line project.
“We’re very bullish on Kern County,” said Mike Marelli, who oversees Southern California Edison’s renewable energy procurement group. “We said this is a renewable rich area and we should build (a transmission line) out there.”
Also, Kern got into the wind game early. Zoning and environmental concerns have been streamlined. Now, companies can build projects more quickly here than elsewhere in the state.
In addition, there is little community resistance to wind projects here, unlike areas such as the Antelope Valley, which has vast wind resources but has opposed wind energy development.
“We’ve had these since the ’80s. We’re used to them, our residents are used to them and we have the zoning in place so they don’t impact residences or other property,” said Lorelei Oviatt, a county planner who oversees renewable energy projects. “The center of wind in California is going to be Kern County.”
SOLAR WILDCATTERS
While wind is now a mature industry in Kern, the business of converting sunlight to energy is in the early stages.
There are no utility-scale solar plants in Kern County yet, though dozens have been proposed in the Mojave Desert as part of a massive land grab that’s taken place in recent years. In Kern, four projects are proposed for BLM land and two others are slated for private land in the desert.
The most promising so far is a solar thermal plant near California City proposed by Beacon Solar LLC that would supply electricity to the Los Angeles Department of Water and Power.
eSolar, a solar startup backed by Google, is also planning to build a solar thermal plant in southeast Kern to supply Southern California Edison, according to the utility company. When contacted, eSolar officials declined to comment on the project.
Several reasons have been given for solar’s slow development until now. The industry says inconsistent government polices and tax credit programs have hindered companies’ ability to secure financing.
Oviatt, however, points to the fact that solar companies are a different breed than wind. Many are startups that have no previous experience building solar plants. They’re still developing their technology and new to the regulatory process.
She calls them the “wildcatters,” the oil industry term for a speculative drilling operation.
“Many of these companies are people who have never done a project and it’s a very new and exciting area,” she said. “That was where wind was at in the 1980s.”
IT'S A GAS
The surge in renewable power proposals is largely in response to new demand created by the state’s Renewables Portfolio Standard, enacted in 2002. Under the mandate, renewables sources must comprise 20 percent of a utility’s power mix by 2010. While the new market has created a boon for wind and prompted a speculative rush in the solar industry, local companies are also finding ways to capitalize.
BioEnergy Solutions, a Bakersfield-based company started by local attorney and dairyman David Albers, is selling natural gas from manure lagoons at dairies to Pacific Gas and Electric. The company’s first system went online at Alber’s Fresno County dairy in March. Plans are also under way for a project in Kern. The company has applied for permits to build a 10-mile pipeline to collect gas from several large dairies west of Shafter.
A local sludge composter also plans to sell PG&E electricity produced at a sludge-fueled power plant.
Liberty Compositing in Lost Hills, one of the state’s largest sludge composter, has applies for permits to build the power plant where electricity would be made through the combustion of biogases given off when the sludge is heated.
New air pollution regulations are a primary reason for the Liberty’s plans to move away from composting, but the new demand for renewable energy provided a boost for the project, said company president Patrick McCarthy.
“It’s a more environmentally friendly method of handling the waste stream that has a prolonged life to it,”McCarthy said. “It's not a flash in the pan. It generates a commodity in the form of renewable energy.”
LOOKING FOR JOBS
Kern stands to benefit from the renewables push through jobs and new business growth, but that will largely depend on the extent to which the industry branches out locally.
Fiberset, a Mojave fiberglass shop, is about to get into the game.
Until now, Fiberset had primarily contracted with aerospace industry and has worked on several large projects with NASA to develop new flight technologies. But it recently landed a major contract, with a company it wouldn’t name, to develop a next-generation wind turbine technology.
The company’s foray into wind puts it in a good position for growth, said CEO and founder Marie Walker.
“It’s a really exciting time,” Walker said. “We feel like we did 24 years ago with NASA. Here we go again, we're on the ground floor of this emerging industry and we’re going to hit the ground running.”
With the average solar farm employing about 60 people, according to the Kern Economic Development Corporation’s Chapman, solar and wind farms alone won’t generate enough jobs and grow the local renewable economy.
“We need to do the research and development locally, and do the assembly locally,” Chapman said. “If we just have it installed here, it doesn't help us.”
Even so, the wind industry is already clamoring for employees. In response, Cerro Coso Community College will start offering courses this fall in wind turbine technology. The course is part of a larger program the college is developing to train technicians to work in the wind, solar, hydroelectric and geothermal industries.
Bakersfield College is also developing some new courses specific to wind and other renewable industries.
