Will stimulus lack 'green' infrastructure?

By Jim Tankersley

Barack Obama has pitched his stimulus package as a quick jolt for the ailing economy and a "down payment" on his priorities as president. But those goals appear to be colliding in at least one key area: energy independence.

The stimulus plan increasingly appears unlikely to include major investments in so-called "green infrastructure" - the wires and rails that could deliver renewable energy to Americans' homes and help them kick their gasoline addictions - according to alternative-energy advocates who are discussing the plans with the Obama transition team.

It's a timing issue. The blueprints and, in many cases, the authority simply don't exist to lay miles of high-speed rail lines, or to build a sprawling web of new power lines to create a truly national electric grid.

"Before you spend billions of dollars on new lines, you have to spend millions of dollars on design work," said Michael Moynihan, the green project director of the liberal think tank NDN, who has worked extensively on green infrastructure and the stimulus. "Nobody had been thinking about this much money (becoming available). So the planning just has not been done."

Obama spokesman Amy Brundage stressed his commitment to green infrastructure on Tuesday but did not disclose stimulus details.

"President-elect Obama is committed to making sure we are moving forward with Smart Grid projects and mass transit initiatives that will spur long term grown in our economy," she said. "Clean energy and infrastructure are top priorities in an American Recovery and Reinvestment Plan, and President-elect Obama's team is working to make these essential investments to create jobs and help put our economy back on track."

The U.S. currently uses a series of regional power grids that make it impossible for a wind farm in Texas to send electricity to a skyscraper in New York. Advocates say that could change under a vastly expanded national grid, opening markets for wind, solar and other alternatives.

Obama has pledged to invest in green infrastructure as part of his push to reduce American dependence on oil imports. At a Senate hearing on Tuesday, his energy secretary nominee, Nobel Prize-winning physicist Steven Chu, called a nationwide grid "in the national interest" and said the country needs a "new way of doing business" to get it built quickly.

Chu also acknowledged the biggest obstacle: the question of where all those new power lines would go. States, municipalities and landowners have cried foul over plans to string transmission networks through their backyards; at Chu's hearing, Sen. Robert Menendez (D-N.J.) pushed the nominee to consider narrowing the amount of land in New Jersey currently tagged as a possible transmission corridor.

Those questions likely mean any major grid expansion would take longer, and need to clear more hurdles, than the Obama team would like for a stimulus plan focused on immediacy.

"Getting approval to build renewable energy transmission to bring wind and solar to market from remote areas is something where states have an interest and landowners have an interest," said Reid Detchon, executive director of the Energy Future Coalition in Washington, who has pushed for grid upgrades in the stimulus. "You're not going to see big transmission towers going up overnight."

Advocates haven't given up on major green infrastructure investments from Congress even if they don't make the stimulus. Grid expansion - and regulations easing its way - could wind up in a comprehensive energy bill later this year. Transit spending could be a large piece of a new transportation bill this fall.

In the stimulus, Moynihan is pushing for a $50 billion to $100 billion fund to allow "time released" spending on unspecified green projects over the next couple of year. Other environmental groups are working to focus transportation spending on repairing existing roads, as opposed to building new ones that encourage more gas guzzling.

Several environmentalists say they expect the stimulus to at least include a billion dollars or two for so-called "smart grid" technology, including metering systems that help consumers use less energy.

That's a small drop in the grand pond of a $700 billion-plus stimulus. But just a few months ago, environmentalists note, $2 billion sounded like a lot of money.