Last month at the Western Governors’ Association annual meeting, Gov. Jon M. Huntsman, Jr. was elected by his colleagues to be the new Chairman of the Western Governors' Association. Gov. Brian Schweitzer of Montana was elected vice chairman.
Governor Huntsman, elected Governor of the state of Utah in 2004, has made energy and water issues in the West his top priorities for the Association. And he is calling on Western state leaders to expand their focus beyond the region.
Energy
At the meeting, Gov. Huntsman said, "As we consider the issues of the environment and energy that are so critical, we must do so with three main concerns at the forefront: affordability, energy security and emissions. However, there is only so much we can do as a region. We must engage people outside of our nation’s borders to bring an international dimension to the work we do at WGA. The challenges we face in the West cannot be solved without a global approach.”
Huntsman and his colleagues set as their first priority delivering recommendations on federal energy policies to the next administration.
Wyoming Gov. Dave Freudenthal, WGA's former chairman, indicated the governors should ensure their energy policy recommendations be technology-neutral. He said, "There is an immense amount of money sitting on the sidelines waiting to be invested. We need to figure out how to use government action to activate the private sector in a way that modifies the behavior of the economy but doesn’t choose one technology over another."
In addition to developing recommendations on federal energy policy, Huntsman will continue the Western Governors’ Association’s focus on ensuring that the energy industry in the West builds more diverse and cleaner power plants to generate electricity.
In 2006, the Governors set a goal of having industry build 30,000 megawatts of new clean energy by 2015. One of the primary obstacles to achieving that goal is getting new transmission lines built to carry new clean and renewable energy from remote areas where the best resources are located.
For that reason, Western Governors and the U.S. Department of Energy are leading a new effort called the Western Renewable Energy Zones (WREZ) project. Participating in the project are 11 states, two Canadian provinces, and areas in Mexico that are part of the Western Interconnection.
The goal of the WREZ is to develop:
conceptual transmission plans for delivering that energy to load centers within the Western Interconnection. A number of factors will be considered, including the potential for development, timeframes, common transmission needs and costs.
Water
In addition to energy, members of the WGA agreed to continue working together this year on improving water policy in the West. At the Governors’ annual meeting last month, they adopted a new report Water Needs and Strategies for a Sustainable Future: Next Steps.
Managing water resources in the arid West will become ever more challenging as development pressures increase, populations continue to rise and climate change warms the region. In the coming years the West will need to seek out new sources of water, increase efficiency in the use of water and implement water recycling programs.
It takes decades to build new water storage reservoirs. For example, the last project built in Wyoming took 13 years to obtain federal approval. In addition, Western water law currently lacks incentives for conservation and efficiency. New solutions will be necessary including broader implementation of gray-water recycling systems, increased efficiency in municipal water use and a better focus on water needs when planning power plants and other energy generating facilities that consume large amounts of water.
The Governors have asked staff to conduct a survey of the status of western state water planning and processes.
The survey results will help states assure the adequacy of their planning efforts and will help federal agencies focus their efforts in particular states.
The Governors have also directed staff to complete a report on successful and unsuccessful agricultural-to-urban water transfers to determine how water transfers can be accomplished in a manner that avoids, or at least mitigates, damage to agricultural economies and environmental values, while at the same time avoiding infringement on private property rights.
Pam Inmann is the executive director of the Western Governors' Association.
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