The Western Governors' Association and the Utah Department of Energy Team Up To Find Renewable Energy Zones
The Western Governors' Association and the Department of Energy are launching an initiative to identify and develop renewable energy resources.  The first meeting of the Western Renewable Energy Zones Project (WREZ) was held yesterday (Wednesday) in Salt Lake City.  Rich Halevy, program manager for the Western Governors' Association's air quality group, says one of the biggest roadblocks is the remote locations of renewable energy projects and the cost of transmission.

"This is our opportunity to try to get transmission lines to those areas ahead of the renewable development, distribute cost to make those projects a lot more financially viable, but having available transmission is going to make their projects competitive with other sources of energy."

Halvey says the project is not simply about combating high oil prices. It is aimed at reducing reliance on oil and provide clean alternatives. Besides cost, the other obstacle for renewable energy, he says, is environmental concerns.

"We've got wildlife issues that we are going to look at, we've got land issues that we are going to look at, water issues that we will look at, endangered species, you know you have to exclude national parks and wilderness areas so one of the things that I think is really critical and one of the ways that we have designed this project is to say, to ultimately come up with areas that we say have great resource have good characteristics from an environmental stand point and have really good cost characteristics." 

Moving forward, the WREZ project's goals are to first develop specific criteria for renewable energy zones then analyze the zones.  In September WREZ will seek public comment on the plans and by December the Western Governors Association project will be submitted for review and hopefully move forward with implementation.