From: Wired News, available online at: http://www.wired.com/news/print/0,1294,37691,00.html Heat Is On for Free Energy Environment News Service 9:50 a.m. Jul. 26, 2000 PDT LAS VEGAS -- The highest ranking U.S. federal government official responsible for renewable energy believes that renewable technologies have a brilliant future. Dan Reicher, the U.S. assistant secretary of energy, spoke at the Globex 2000 conference in Las Vegas on Tuesday. Reicher heads up the Department of Energy's Office of Energy Efficiency and Renewable Energy. Part of his positive outlook for renewables, Reicher said, was due to the attention the G8 leaders gave the issue at last week's summit in Japan. "We don't know what it means in specific terms," Reicher said, "but obviously the G8 support for renewable energy and a concerted action by the G8 is a very exciting development and we're going to do all we can to support that and I suspect we'll have a fairly prominent role." Reicher's vision for the renewable energy future is many technologies working together in "power parks." "Ultimately, we think we're headed toward what we call power parks, where all of these technologies -- gas, industrial sized turbines, micro-turbines, fuel cells, photovoltaics -- come together in an industrial park. The best advantages of each are emphasized and ultimately this is a self-powered, very clean, very efficient industrial operation," he told the conference. He acknowledges the policy challenges -- connecting these technologies to the grid safely and dealing with some of the financial and institutional issues. But Reicher says the costs are going down and efficiencies are going up for all these renewable technologies. These cost efficiencies are proving themselves in his own home in Chevy Chase, Maryland. "A little over a year ago, I took the plunge, put solar panels on the roof, and also made some investments in energy efficiency. I was able to hook up to the electricity grid. Maryland is one of 29 states with net metering laws, which means when I'm making more power than I'm using, I'm selling it back to the local utility; in Maryland I'm selling it at retail rates," he said. The energy savings for Reicher were clear in the first year -- a total electric bill of $384 for the entire year April 1999 to April 2000 -- a little over a dollar a day. Reicher invested $3,700 for the solar photovoltaic system and an efficient air conditioner, lighting, and refrigerator. "We think it can work all across the U.S. and our Million Solar Roofs program is designed to do that," he said. Announced by President Bill Clinton in 1997 at the United Nations, the Million Solar Roofs program is supposed to put solar systems on a million U.S. roofs by 2010. "We have more than 40 partnerships now, and we have initial pledges on more than a million roofs," Reicher said. "More than 70,000 systems have now gone in since June 1997, 2,000 in the federal government itself on federal facilities. In the next few months we expect to get to the 100,000 level," he said. Reicher is counting on the buying power of the federal government, the largest energy user in the United States, to drive many of these changes. There are 500,000 buildings in the federal government, which spends $8 billion a year to power buildings, vehicles, and the like. The shift to more efficient use of energy in federal facilities is already happening, Reicher says. "On a BTU per square foot basis, we're down 20.5 percent in building energy use," from 1985 to today. "That's big savings, that's good for taxpayers, that's good for the environment," he said. Reicher's long term vision is that people would pay no energy bill at all. "We have a vision that we could be looking at cost effective, zero net energy buildings in this country, that link renewable technologies -- whether they're solar, ground source heat pumps, biomass based, or geothermal -- to high efficiency building technologies. We could essentially net out at the end of the year for people having no energy bill." "We're some distance away from that, but we think this is an important vision to strive for," he said. Copyright Environment News Service (ENS) 2000. All rights reserved. For full text and graphics visit ENS Related Wired Links: Vegas Gets Green Jul. 19, 2000 Harnessing Money for Eco-Power Jun. 12, 2000 EU Doubles Renewable Energy May. 11, 2000 Texas Winds Up for Green Energy Apr. 22, 2000 Copyright 1994-2000 Wired Digital Inc. 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