Governor and Secretary Salazar Sign MOU to Expedite Renewable Energy Development in California

Governor and Secretary Salazar Sign MOU to Expedite Renewable Energy Development in California

GOVERNOR SCHWARZENEGGER:

Thank you very much, Secretary Chrisman. It is wonderful to be here today with Secretary Ken Salazar. Thank you very much for coming out all the way from Washington and to pay so much attention to California, not only to the water issue but also to our renewable portfolio issue.

And we want to thank also Mayor Villaraigosa, who has always been a partner in all of these very important issues, if it is water or renewable energy, so we want to thank you very much for being here today because you are the leader of one of the cities that is really going green. And you just came from a very important conference in Seattle, where you have joined with 1,000 different cities from all over the United States, to show to the world that just because Washington is not there yet but the rest of the country is there in being part of the Kyoto Treaty.

But anyway, before I go on and talk about renewable energy, I want to talk first about an update on our water negotiations, because I know that's very important to all the people in California. I worked and we all worked very hard throughout the weekend and worked yesterday almost to midnight and negotiated and enough progress was made for me to call for a special session of the legislature on water. I asked the legislative leaders yesterday to bring back the legislators who are traveling all around the world, to bring them back into special session and then to start having their debates and their discussions and to have eventually a vote. I'm optimistic that this is going to turn out really well and so we want to say thank you to the legislative leaders who really have shown great leadership and have really shown great interest in getting this issue resolved.

Now let's talk about another great news, which is why we're here today and that is the signing of this agreement here which will make the history books, because I think it's the first time that a state has signed an agreement, a renewable energy agreement with the federal government, with the Department of Interior. And this will really help us with our partnership, because we have very ambitious goals here in California, very ambitious goals when it comes to renewable energy. As you know, I just signed a few weeks ago an executive order to create and to make a commitment of 33 percent of renewable energy by the year 2020.

Now, the only way we can reach that is by making this agreement and to do it jointly with the federal government. I pushed and pushed and pushed because I believe that our future is the wind and it is solar and it is geothermal and our future is clean power, clean energy and clean technology. That means that we have to create a lot of action in order to get those. We have to build now renewable plants in the desert and we have to, at the same time, also make sure that we protect our environment. And all of this is going to happen in the Mojave and in the Colorado Deserts. We have the right weather there and the right topography to produce renewables and the renewable energy.

And we had, of course, up until now big problems and that is that our process to get those plants built is very slow. The California process, our state process is slow, the federal process is slow and this is why it's important that we go and create this kind of partnership so we can move through that and get rid of the red tape, that is mountains of red tape. Companies call me all the time that they are ready to invest billions of dollars in our state but they can't get the permits because of these mountains of red tape. And the environmentalists are calling me and they're concerned about us building out there because they're worried that this will destroy the environment.

Well, I heard all the business communities, I heard all the environmentalists and now we are taking action with a solution that protects both the economy and also the environment. We are partnering with Secretary Salazar and again I want to say thank you very much for coming out here and showing this great interest, because if we work together and we can go and get those permits done as quickly as possible, I think we can go and build all of those power plants. I think we want to protect the beauty and the habitat of our deserts, of course, at the same time.

And there is more good news, of course, which is by slicing through the red tape we will be able to move forward on energy projects here in California that are right now in the pipeline. Like I said, there are at least 40 companies that are in the pipeline that are ready to go. They will be also eligible for federal money, billions and billions of dollars of federal money and Secretary Salazar is going to talk a little bit about that.

But the trick here is that they make the deadline, which is by - we have to have shovel in the ground by the year 2010 and this is where it gets tricky. Only with the help of Secretary Salazar we will be able to go and get those permits done by that time so we can benefit from those billions and billions of dollars. These projects, like I said, there will be 7,000 megawatts of power. Companies are waiting in line to create 7,000 megawatts of power, of renewable power. These projects are so exciting and innovative. Here are just some of the examples:

• Chevron and Solar Millennium want to install a series of mirrors in Riverside County. That's 500 megawatts which, by the way, is an equivalent of creating energy for 180,000 homes.

• There is another one, which is cities are going green, as we just talked about Los Angeles. There is Palmdale, for instance, where they want to create 570 megawatts, a special project by the year 2012-13.

• Or Imperial Valley have the "sun catchers" where they are oversized kind of satellite dishes, where they want to create 750 megawatts.

So as you can see, there a lot of projects that are waiting in line and this is why we appreciate the kind of working relationship here and for the Secretary to come out here. California is leading already the way, as you know, with green companies and green technology companies, by 10,000 companies here in California. Clean-tech investments in California are up to $3.5 billion this last year, which is double from the previous year. And then solar installations, we have doubled the amount of solar that we have installed this last year compared to the year before. So we are really growing in all of this and of course also the job market is growing.

So again we want to say thank you to Secretary Salazar for being out here and we want to have him now say a few words about this very important issue. Thank you very much for coming out here. Thank you.

BREAK IN TRANSCRIPT

Source