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Some ideas about getting away from oil dependence

Written by Neal St. Anthony, Star Tribune

September 12, 2008

""Drill, baby, drill" makes a good chant at a political convention -- or if you're the governor of an oil-wealthy, sparsely populated state such as Alaska.

But conservative oil man T. Boone ("We can't drill our way out") Pickens notes that U.S. oil production peaked in 1970 and we now consume a quarter of the world's oil while sitting on just 5 percent of global reserves.

Chanting won't change that equation. The less oil and gas we import and the more of our own energy we can generate through efficiency and alternatives, the faster our economy will grow. To that end, a few promising developments surfaced this week:

• A Twin Cities company backed partly by one of the world's leading solar-energy firms is searching for 50 homeowners in the metro area to demonstrate solar-panel systems that will supply their electrical needs for about $200 per month.

"We're talking about leasing about $50,000 of equipment for about $200 per month and providing all of the electricity from solar," said Gerardo Ruiz, founder and CEO of freEner-g of Minneapolis.

"We are looking for early adapters who live in large houses, small houses, and we're doing this to determine the viability of solar for a variety of homes in a market where solar doesn't exist in a big way."

Ruiz said the company will do site assessments with architects and engineers at no cost to the consumer. Anyone interested should fill out an application at www.mysolarlease.com.

Xcel Energy Inc. selected freEner-g for a $1.5 million grant from the big utility's renewable-energy development fund to defray the cost of equipment and some installation expense.

Large-scale commercial solar systems are becoming more common and economical. But residential solar is still in its early stages in the north country.

.Abengoa Solar, the big Spanish company, is an investor in freEer-g. Abengoa, which is planning what it calls the world's largest solar generating plant near Phoenix, has options to invest more in the small Minneapolis company as it grows.

• The best way to revive our sagging Minnesota and national economy is through stepped-up public and private investment in energy conservation of buildings, expanded mass transit and freight rail, updated electrical grids and expansion of wind, solar and biofuels. That's according to a report about how to best add jobs and cut fuel consumption and pollution, by the Center for American Progress and the Political Economy Research Institute at the University of Massachusetts.

Minnesota -- where thousands of construction workers, machinists and others have been laid off in recent months by airlines, factories and building contractors -- could add 37,000 skilled jobs and cut unemployment from 5.3 percent to 4 percent by 2010 through a $1.8 billion investment in wind, solar, building conservation, biofuels and related industries, according to the study titled "Green Recovery -- A Program to Create Good Jobs and Start Building a Low-Carbon Economy."

The study can be downloaded at www.peri.umass.edu.

• 3M Co., one of Minnesota's global commercial flagship firms, said this week that it is forming a new business unit to expand its solar business and extend its core adhesive, tapes, films and coatings technologies into products that conserve, capture and magnify heat and light. Joe Harlan, vice president of Electro & Communications, said the solar energy sector is growing by about 30 percent a year.

In short, the time has come to invest less each year in our $500 billion imported oil tab and put more toward squeezing energy out of every drop of oil and focusing on home-grown renewable energy.

The American people and businesses, big and small, are way ahead of Big Oil on this one.

SOURCE: Star Tribune