US Pacific Northwest and British Columbia Scrambling toTake
Global Lead in Driving Clean Energy Revolution
In the past few months the US Pacific Northwest and Canada's
British Columbia appear to be emerging as the world's leading
region for clean energy development with renewable energy development
perhaps eventually rivaling aerospace and computer software in
the regional economy. In April 2000 the Climate Institute and
Climate Solutions
of Seattle, Washington organized a Seattle
Summit to pull together pioneers in the information revolution
with some of the best thinkers in energy and finance to find ways
of operationalizing this vision. The
Seattle Summit Plan of Action called for the US Pacific Northwest
and British Columbia to become a world leader in the clean energy
revolution.
British Columbia has continued to grow as the center of fuel
cell development for the transport sector with companies such
as Ballard leading the way. In
addition Washington, Oregon and British Columbia have become leaders
in wind energy and technologies such as inverters. The Bonneville
Power Administration is signing pre-development agreements for
seven wind power projects, which would provide an additional 830
megawatts of generating capacity in the US Pacific Northwest.
This initiative would produce enough electricity to meet the needs
of about 270,000 homes and result in about a 20% increase in US
wind power capacity.
The huge increase in demand for wind power in the Pacific Northwest was a factor
in the decision of a Danish wind turbine form, Vestas, the world's
largest wind turbine manufacturer, to build its largest plant
in Portland, Oregon. It is expected that this facility will employ
over a thousand by the early part of 2004.
