Nevada opts for more solar energy

Amid all the good news coming out of the midterms for Democrats and left-leaning progressives more generally, the election just past was not particularly good for people trying to slow climate change by curbing our dependence on fossil fuels. David Roberts reports a rundown of failed ballot measures.

... the lesson of this year’s energy initiatives is pretty clear: When big oil wants to, it can spend unlimited amounts of money and crush efforts at direct democracy.

And it wants to. ... ballot initiatives, like US politics generally, are becoming a battle of billionaires. Big money flows in virtually unrestricted. And it is effective.

Decamping from the federal level to the states is not going to allow clean energy proponents to escape that dynamic.

Interestingly (to me), an exception to the catalogue of clean energy defeats happened in Nevada where I was working -- and I didn't know that until I read the various election post mortems.

The on-the-ground view in the streets of Reno was that there was some kind of peculiar initiative -- Question 3 -- it was about electricity regulation -- and everyone from the building trades unions to the Culinary Workers to the Sierra Club was against it. All we knew was that it was right wing casino magnate Sheldon Adelson's baby. That was plenty enough to ensure our instinctive opposition. And Question 3 did fail overwhelmingly.

But I was unaware of Question 6 which the environmental publication Grist describes in hopeful terms:

... Nevada had previously shown an appetite for increased renewable energy standards. A bill to increase energy portfolios to 40 percent renewable by 2030 failed last year thanks to a last-minute veto by Governor Brian Sandoval. Having already come so close helped galvanize pro-environmental groups, [Andy] Maggi [of the Nevada Conservation League] says. So this time supporters drew up a constitutional amendment with a slightly more ambitious standard and took it directly to the voters.

Blanca Ortiz, a native of Nevada, joined the NextGen campaign after leaving her job as a personal trainer. She says enhanced renewable energy goals are a natural fit for the state. Solar power, in particular, makes perfect sense — and a reputation for clean energy could give a fresh identity to a state most often characterized by the late-night neon of Las Vegas casinos. “People here support it because we’ve lived under the sun for so long,” she says.

But Question 6 is just one step on Nevada’s path toward ratcheting up its renewable energy standards. Thanks to state law, voters will have to approve the measure again in 2020 before it is fully enacted. But Maggi hopes it will never come to that. He’s confident the recent win will serve as a mandate for the upcoming legislative session, which could put the standards into practice earlier through policy.

The blue wave we helped catalyze should keep on giving.