Harry Reid leads tour of Nevada’s clean energy potential

By Stephanie Tavares

Wednesday, Aug. 12, 2009 | 2 a.m.

One of Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid’s mantras is that the emerging clean energy industry will create valuable and desperately needed jobs. On Tuesday, in the wake of his National Clean Energy Summit, he staged a short road show to illustrate his point.

He could have taken his five guests on a tour of the Ausra solar manufacturing plant near McCarran International Airport, or the green building and design exhibits at the Springs Preserve or the hundreds of acres of solar thermal and photovoltaic fields in the Eldorado Valley.

But he had something else in mind for his group, which included UNLV President Neal Smatresk; Jon Wellinghoff, chairman of the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission; Van Jones, President Barack Obama’s green jobs czar; Cathy Zoi, the Energy Department’s assistant secretary for energy efficiency and renewable energy; and John D. Podesta, former chief of staff for President Bill Clinton and CEO of Monday’s energy symposium sponsor, the liberal Center for American Progress Action Fund.

With media in tow — but out of eavesdropping distance — Reid began the tour in a dirt parking lot off Charleston Boulevard near the Red Rock Canyon National Recreation Area.

This is the staging site for installing remote solar-powered radio equipment for Metro Police along a nearby ridge.

The equipment, and the air conditioning to cool the housings, are powered by 17-kilowatt photovoltaic arrays. Each panel and Bombard Electric’s solar installers must be flown to the sites by helicopter.

The project is providing short-term work for a handful of solar panel installers at a time when demand for their services is decreasing. NV Energy’s incentive program for solar photovoltaic installation is underperforming amid the recession. So when this job is done, it might be awhile before there’s another.

Reid’s next stop brought the razzle dazzle: a tour of CityCenter, one of the largest green building projects ever attempted. The massive Strip project is hoping for silver- or gold-level certification (platinum is the highest) under the Green Building Council’s Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design (LEED) when it is completed in November.

The number of permanent jobs being created at CityCenter that are directly related to clean energy production was not addressed Tuesday.

The tour’s last stop was the new research labs at UNLV’s recently completed engineering building, home to an NV Energy-sponsored renewable energy minor at UNLV that will launch with the new school year.

The UNLV program will focus on providing a white-collar workforce of engineers and scientists who could attract more renewable energy projects to Nevada.

Reid said the three tour stops were representative of a larger wave of jobs coming in the near future for those willing to train for them.

The Bombard workers, for example, will be among the first in line for future photovoltaic contracts, the CityCenter workers will have hands-on green construction experience needed to secure green building contracts, and the UNLV renewable energy minor graduates could help attract more clean energy manufacturing to Southern Nevada.

“We’ve already created thousands and thousands of jobs,” Reid said. “It’s already here. You’re just beginning to see the best and the best is yet to come.”