Posted by Heidi Schwartz

The impact of a 30 percent improvement in U.S. building efficiency by 2030 is the subject of the new report, Unlocking American Efficiency: The Economic and Commercial Power of Investing in Energy Efficient Buildings. The 32-page report was prepared on behalf of United Technologies Corporation by the Rhodium Group (RHG), which combines policy experience, quantitative economic tools and on-the-ground research to analyze global trends.

According to the findings, improving energy efficiency in buildings by 30 percent would create a $275 billion market for advanced technology, engineering and design services, and construction activity in the U.S. alone—that’s larger than the total U.S. advertising market. The energy savings would generate $34 billion per year for American businesses, net of investment expenses, that could either be used to hire more employees or invest in R&D or expanded production. And federal, state and local governments in budget-constrained times would save more than $8 billion annually, equivalent to funding the National Science Foundation or nearly all of the annual budget for the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency.

“Energy efficiency has played an important role in American productivity and environmental protection. Now building efficiency is a pivotal investment strategy to free an estimated $65 billion in annual cash flow for households, businesses and governments across the country,” said John Mandyck, chief sustainability officer, UTC Climate, Controls & Security. ”Improving the energy efficiency of buildings increases the productivity of existing assets, guards against future energy price hikes and offers some of the most attractive rates of return available today. The first step in improving energy efficiency in buildings is letting building owners, tenants and investors know the scale of the opportunity at hand.”

Smart policy can serve as a catalyst for the investment in building efficiency solutions and includes such things as building labels and codes, effective standards, efficiency finance, portfolio standards and regulatory reform.

To download the report, click this link.

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The IPL building at Monument Circle. (Photo: Jonathan Goforth.)

Posted by Heidi Schwartz

AES Corporation, the parent company of Indianapolis Power & Light Company (IPL), plans to locate its U.S. business unit headquarters in Indianapolis, IN, creating up to 100 high wage jobs by the end of 2014. The company, one of the world’s largest independent power producers, will invest approximately $1.2 million to align its U.S. operations support in Indianapolis. The 21 AES businesses across the country will transition to operate as one strategic business unit, housed at IPL’s existing headquarters at the Electric Building on Monument Circle.

“We are proud that a global company like AES has chosen Indiana as its hub for all U.S. operations,” said Pence. “Indiana’s unmatched business climate, central location and strong workforce continue to set us apart and make our state the best place for companies to expand and more effectively run their business.”

“This decision demonstrates AES’ commitment to Indiana,” said Ken Zagzebski, the new president of AES’ U.S. strategic business unit and chief executive officer of IPL. “AES decided to expand here primarily due to the excellent business and regulatory climate we have in the state.”

Founded in 1981, AES provides sustainable energy to 23 countries through a diverse portfolio of distribution and generation businesses. The Fortune 200 global power company has 2,400 MW of power plants under development in eight countries.

The Indiana Economic Development Corporation offered AES Corporation up to $2,750,000 in conditional tax credits and up to $87,500 in training grants based on the company’s job creation plans. The city of Indianapolis supports the project at the request of Develop Indy, a business unit of the Indy Chamber.

“IPL has always been a valued partner in our community and we welcome its parent company’s expanded presence in Indianapolis,” said Indianapolis Mayor Greg Ballard. “Our community will benefit from AES’ commitment to bring high-wage job opportunities to our skilled workforce.”

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Facebook’s Prineville, OR data center

By Bill Trüb
From the March/April 2013 issue

Data centers are crucial to operations across countless sectors, from retail to information technology, government to biotech, logistics to engineering. Many consumers, however, have little awareness or understanding of just how massive and expensive these facilities are. Large-scale data centers are known to use the amount of electricity equivalent to small towns and, despite many greening initiatives, some centers release a significant amount of air pollution in the form of diesel exhaust. Furthermore, the amount of security necessary to run a successful data center is enormous due to the highly sensitive information and pricey equipment housed in such storage units. So high are these stakes that the Telecommunications Industry Association has even published a document detailing the minimum requirements for the infrastructure of data centers and computer rooms.

But the business of IT is one that changes quickly. The International Data Corporation claims the average data center is nine years old, which is troubling when coupled with research company Gartner’s assertion that data centers more than seven years old are obsolete. In May 2011, Uptime Institute reported that 36 percent of large companies will exhaust their IT capacities within the next 18 months. Yet according to a “Green Data Centers” report by Pike Research,the global market for green data centers segment of the industry is expected to more than double in size in the next four years. It can be overwhelming to try and keep abreast of these fast-moving, ever-changing, air-conditioned rooms of priceless information.

Greene And The Greening Of Data Centers

In an effort to reduce the shocking levels of diesel exhaust that many data centers emit into the atmosphere, the industry is being proactive in finding environmentally sound operating solutions. Aptly-named Nicholas Greene, writer for www.greendatacenterconference.com, penned “Ten of the Biggest Data Center Trends” at the tail end of 2012. Let’s recap a few of his most notable prognostications.

“Cloud Computing’s still got a long way to go before it’s the world-changing behemoth that everyone predicts it will be, but this year saw more and more organizations finding their way to cloud computing, and loving every moment of it,” writes Greene. “Hybrid clouds took off, and Infrastructure-as-a-Service, Software-as-a-Service and Platform-as-a-Service vendors really came into their own. Unfortunately, the great strides cloud computing made this year are going to have some unfortunate side-effects in the near future. Moving forward; scalability is going to be a huge concern: our current data center infrastructure, powerful as it is, might not be able to handle the increased demands of the cloud.”

Greene continues, “2012 also witnessed the birth of the software defined data center. As a direct result of this, we’ve been seeing an increased focus on virtualization with the configuration of the data center’s hardware dealt with by upper-level software. Software Defined Networking, though still in its nascent stages, has the very real potential to revolutionize the way data centers are operated, with new options for resource optimization, availability, storage, and mobility.”

According to Greene, the push for eco-sensitive options has been a success. “The environment has been getting a lot of love from data center operators this year,” he says. “We’ve been seeing a massive shift towards green computing throughout 2012, with big names such as Apple and Microsoft hopping on the environmental friendliness train. The looming threat of global warming, coupled with the obvious energy savings one accrues as a result of green initiatives (not to mention the good press an organization can receive) have combined to make green IT a near-integral part of data center design.”

Greene gives us the word of the year: “Server racks are becoming denser and denser as many organizations consolidate their data centers in order to save on energy and real-estate costs. Consolidation is the word of the year, as data centers grow smaller and more powerful and energy management turns from a good idea to an integral discipline for data center operation.”

And finally, openness and transparency is where the industry is headed, led by kingpins Facebook and Google. “In April 2011, Facebook founded the Open Compute Project—an initiative which I’m sure that many initially took as a very bad April Fool’s Joke. It wasn’t—and it’s been gaining steam ever since,” asserts Greene. “The notion that data centers should be defined by their software infrastructure rather than their physical hardware seemed novel at the time, but Facebook has demonstrated that it’s got real value. Even organizations that are typically secretive to the point of paranoia, such as Google, have loosened up a bit, giving us some insight into the inner workings of some of their facilities. Maybe one day in the future, Facebook’s ideals will pay off, and we’ll be rewarded with true transparency in data center operations.”

Google Searches, Hits On South Carolina

Speaking of such Internet giants, Google held a groundbreaking ceremony in January in Berkeley County, SC to announce it will expand its operations at the Mt. Holly Commerce Park. The additional $600 million in investment at the site brings Google’s total investment to more than $1.2 billion. The data center in Berkeley County currently houses thousands of servers to support services such as Google search, Gmail, Google+ and YouTube. As Google’s services grows, the company must ramp up its data centers to meet demand.

Google’s data center in Berkeley County, SC. Google is using the rainwater retention pond as another means for cooling its data center.

“Today’s announcement is another big win for South Carolina,” says Governor Nikki Haley. “We celebrate Google’s decision to grow its footprint in Berkeley County with a $600-million investment. When a world-class company like Google decides to expand in the Palmetto State, it shows we are providing the sort of business environment that helps foster success.” Many states aggressively pursue data center business through various tax incentives because data centers are often a boon for local economies.

“South Carolina and the Berkeley County community are great places in which to work and grow,” says Data Center Operations Manager Eric Wages. “When Google first announced plans to come to Berkeley County in 2007, we were attracted to not only the energy infrastructure, developable land and available workforce, but also the extraordinary team from the local community that made us feel welcome. Today’s announcement is just a continuation of our investment in the state. Google is proud to call Berkeley County home.”

Google first announced plans for a South Carolina data center in 2007, making an initial investment of $600 million to get the center up and running. In November 2010, Google announced plans to construct a second building at the site, which is now serving traffic.

Google is also involved in supporting science and mathematics programs in South Carolina’s schools. Since 2008, it has awarded more than $885,000 in grants to local schools and nonprofits. It also has helped implement a free, downtown Wi-Fi network in Goose Creek.

“Google has been a great partner, exceeding expectations when the data center was first proposed,” says Berkeley County Supervisor Dan Davis. “They have invested capital, created good jobs and more importantly partnered with local businesses to help them do business better.”

“When our community came together to develop this business park, we wanted to attract leading companies that would establish deep roots and grow,” says South Carolina Sen. Paul Campbell. “Google’s expansion is an example of how Berkeley County can serve the needs of the world’s most innovative and dynamic companies. I hope Google’s growth here prompts other growing businesses to put down roots.”

Facebook ‘Likes’ Oregon

Facebook stores more than 240 billion photos, with users uploading an additional 350 million new photos every single day. To house those photos, Facebook’s data center team deploys 7 petabytes of storage gear every month. But what do you do with an exabyte of digital photos that are rarely accessed? That was the challenge facing Jay Parikh, Vice President of Infrastructure Engineering at Facebook.

The team decided a dedicated data center at its Prineville, OR campus could house older photos in a separate “cold storage” system and would dramatically slash the cost of storing and serving these files. The facility has no generators or UPS systems, but can house up to an exabyte of data.

Last year, Facebook built a 62,000-square-foot data center on its Prineville campus to house its cold storage, which can house 500 racks that each hold 2 petabytes of data, for a total of 1 exabyte of cold storage. Similar facilities will be built at Facebook’s data center campuses in North Carolina and Sweden, Parikh said.

The cold storage data center has no generators or uninterruptible power supply (UPS), with all redundancy handled at the software level. It also uses computer room air conditioners (CRACs) instead of the penthouse-style free cooling system employed in the adjacent production data centers in Prineville.

Most importantly, each rack uses just 2 kilowatts of power instead of the 8 kilowatts in a standard Facebook storage rack. But Parikh said it will be able to store 8 times the volume of data of standard racks. Not many companies face storage challenges at the kind of scale seen at Facebook. But Parikh believes more companies will be confronting these massive storage issues.

“Our big data challenges that we face today will be your big data challenges tomorrow,” he says. “We need to keep coming up with advanced solutions to our storage problems. The most important innovations are the problems people solve before the scale of the problem emerges. I believe big data is one of those problems. And we won’t keep up unless we work together.”

Facebook completed a second huge data center on its campus in Prineville, Oregon in 2012. The facility is similar to its existing 300,000-square-foot data center, Facebook Data Center Manager Ken Patchett announced at a Prineville City Council meeting.

“We believe the construction of the phased expansion of Building 2, and the operation of Building 1, staffing and supplying of the Prineville Data Center will continue to have a positive impact on the Crook County-Prineville economy,” Patchett told the city officials.

The second building in Prineville created up to 450 construction jobs, with the project lasting approximately one year. At the time, Facebook said it would add 10 full-time jobs in Prineville, where it currently employs 54 full-time employees providing building maintenance, security and server maintenance. The Prineville project is Facebook’s first company-built facility, and is optimized from the two-story structure right down to the servers to reflect the company’s vision for energy efficient data center operations.

CoreSite Realty Picks NJ

CoreSite Realty has purchased a 280,000-square-foot building in Secaucus, NJ for a new data center, and expects to invest $65 million to buy the facility and redevelop the initial phase of 65,000 square feet of data center space.

The facility, which will be dubbed NY2, is the company’s first data center in New Jersey and a sign of continuing activity in the northern NJ market. CoreSite already has a site in New York City and the Secaucus facility will mark an important expansion for the provider.

CoreSite is under contract to acquire the building, with the acquisition expected to close in early February. The 280,000-square-foot facility sits on 10 acres of land, which allows additional data center development as the market demands. At full build out, CoreSite expects it will offer 19 critical megawatts of capacity. Construction will start in Q1 2013, with turn-key capacity expected to be available in Q4 2013.

CoreSite intends to ensure the availability of high-capacity and high-speed lit services as well as a robust dark-fiber tether between NY2 and CoreSite’s NY1 location at 32 Avenue of the Americas in Manhattan, enabling CoreSite to provide seamless interconnection across its New York campus.

The company has been aggressively building out data center campuses across America. Focusing on network centric and cloud oriented applications, these data center campuses are network-dense.

“CoreSite’s entry into Secaucus is an important step in the execution of our strategy to extend our U.S. platform supporting latency-sensitive customer applications in network-dense, cloud-enabled data center campuses,” says Tom Ray, President and Chief Executive Officer, CoreSite. “Our New York campus is designed to meet performance-sensitive customer requirements supported by our location at the nexus of robust, protected, low-latency network rings serving Manhattan as well as global cable routes to Chicago, Frankfurt, London, and Brazil. Additionally, customers are able to connect directly to service nodes for Amazon Web Services Direct Connect.”

The Secaucus facility follows the launch of CoreSite’s previously announced 15 data center, located in Reston, VA. CoreSite’s national platform spans nine US markets and includes more than 275 carriers and service providers and more than 15,000 interconnections.

The availability of direct connections to high speed networks in NY2 will be of particular interest to financial firms looking to reduce latency and improve performance. Three network service providers have pre-committed to serve NY2, consisting of CoreSite partners Sidera Networks, Zayo, and Seaborn Networks, each of which provides high-performance network support to the financial services, cloud and network communities.

“The new CoreSite data center in New Jersey fits perfectly with Sidera’s growth strategy,” says Clint Heiden, President, Sidera Networks. “This expansion gives CoreSite customers immediate access to over 40 financial exchanges and the Sidera Xtreme Ultra-Low Latency Network.”

In addition to the new facility, the company also announced an Open Cloud Exchange, an initiative looking to offer a range of cloud services to customers. The Exchange will offer best-of-breed partnerships and services from a broad range of providers. It capitalizes on demand for hybrid infrastructures, letting Enterprises, Managed Service Providers (MSPs) and Systems Integrators (SIs) in CoreSite facilities connect directly, via a single resource, to the cloud service providers of their choice. This provides customers with flexible options to securely and easily connect to all types of cloud offerings.

“We’re building the industry’s premier home for cloud services,” says Jarrett Appleby, COO, CoreSite. “With networks—the oxygen for cloud services—as the foundation, adding the industry’s leading cloud providers will create best-in-class scalability, management, automation, software, and many-to-many exchange capability. The Open Cloud Exchange offers our customers enormous provider flexibility, guaranteed performance, real-time monitoring, and easy management of cloud infrastructure services.”

The initial four best-of-breed partners in Open Cloud Exchange are CENX, Rightscale, RiverMeadow Software and Brocade.

• CENX will provide its CENX Automated Ethernet Lifecycle Management software specially designed for CoreSite’s Open Cloud Exchange, enabling easy, single sign-on management of Layer 2 cloud infrastructure services and full MEF CE 2.0 compatibility.
• RightScale, will provide its platform for deploying and manage business-critical applications across public, private, and hybrid clouds. RightScale offers efficient configuration, monitoring, automation, and governance of cloud computing infrastructure and applications.
• RiverMeadow Software will deliver its automated cloud onboarding SaaS developed specifically for migrating servers and workloads into and between Carrier Service Provider Clouds.
• Brocade will provide the hardware infrastructure and switching logic at the heart of the Open Cloud Exchange.

Planned future enhancements include the ability to connect to providers across multiple CoreSite locations within the same metro area; connections between customers and providers in various on-net buildings throughout the country; and the Choice between numerous software and services providers to support performance sensitive customer applications through a marketplace portal. The service is available immediately in seven campuses: Los Angeles, San Francisco Bay Area, Chicago, New York, Northern Virginia, Boston, and Washington, DC.

In addition to this monster of a facility from CoreSite, Northern New Jersey has been no stranger to activity these last few months. Internap announced a 100,000-square-foot project in Secaucus last October, its third in the NY Metro region, to address growing demand. With its supply of data center space in northern New Jersey running low, Digital Realty recently announced construction in Clifton.

Apple Blossoms In NC

Apple currently is building huge new data centers in three states, including the North Carolina iDataCenter. Meanwhile, it is leasing large quantities of data center space in California’s Silicon Valley.

Many of the largest cloud computing providers opted to lease new Internet infrastructure in 2012, according to new data from a veteran market watcher. The report highlights the shifting tides in the “buy or build” decision, in which geography and market economics are contributing to a two-tier infrastructure for many of the largest Internet players, with footprints split between company-built data centers and wholesale space.

Apple, Facebook and Microsoft were among the largest consumers of turn-key “wholesale” data center space in 2012, according to Jim Kerrigan, Director of the Data Center Group at Avison Young. Microsoft leased 12 megawatts of new wholesale space in 2012, with Facebook (10 megawatts) and Apple (8 megawatts) not far behind.

The trend is notable because all three companies have recently been building their own massive data center facilities. Facebook has 1.5 million square feet of data center space that is either built or nearing completion, while Apple has finished its huge iDataCenter in North Carolina and is building new facilities in Oregon and Nevada. Microsoft has built its own server farms in seven sites around the U.S. and Europe over the past 5 years.

After years of building huge data centers in remote areas, in 2012 the geographic focus shifted back to historic Internet hubs in northern Virginia, Silicon Valley and Chicago. Apple and Facebook have moved armadas of servers to rural locations in North Carolina and Oregon that offer cheap power and cheap land. Cloud builders will continue to do this going forward, but a portion of their infrastructure must always be housed near the Internet’s key intersections, where they can connect with dozens of other networks. Both land and power are more expensive in these Internet hubs, resulting in different economics for large-scale new construction. That’s why the largest wholesale data center providers have a large presence in these markets.

General Motors Gets Specific In Georgia

General Motors announced plans to hire approximately 1,000 high-tech workers to staff its new Information Technology Innovation Center near Atlanta. The automaker needs software developers, project managers, database experts, business analysts and other IT professionals for the third of four centers in the United States.

“Locating this center in Atlanta makes good business sense,” says GM Chief Information Officer Randy Mott. “We can draw from a deep pool of high tech expertise through the surrounding colleges, universities and talent residing in the area.”

“This Innovation Center is exactly the kind of employer we want in the state,” says Georgia Gov. Nathan Deal. “The information age will be with us for a long time, and attracting companies such as GM that are on the cutting edge of manufacturing and technology is a huge win for Georgia.”

Mott is leading a rebalancing of information technology at GM under which the majority of IT work will be done by GM employees instead of being outsourced, which has been the GM model for most of the last three decades.

“We look to the Innovation Centers to design and deliver IT that drives down the cost of ongoing operations while continuously increasing the level and speed at which innovative products and services are available to GM customers,” Mott says. “The IT Innovation Centers are critical to our overall GM business strategy and IT transformation.” The location of the fourth site will be announced at a later date.

Gartner’s View On Cloud Computing

Drue Reeves, Gartner’s Vice President and distinguished analyst, recently outlined five trends that will transform the data center industry for Computer Weekly. Reeves’ expert predictions focus heavily on cloud computing, which requires the use of computing resources (both hardware and software) that are delivered over a network, usually the Internet. The name comes from the use of a cloud-shaped symbol as an abstraction for the complex infrastructure it contains in system diagrams. Cloud computing entrusts remote services with a user’s data, software and computation. Here are Reeves’ five trends, in his own words, for the future of data centers.

• Hybrid IT: Perhaps the greatest effect of public cloud computing on IT concerns operations. IT organizations realize that not only do they need to compete with public cloud service providers (CSPs), but also act as intermediaries between internal customers and all IT services (internal or external). IT organizations are becoming brokers of a set of IT services hosted partly internally and partly externally — that is, of hybrid IT. As intermediaries, IT organizations can offer internal customers the price, capacity and provisioning speed of the external cloud, and the protection and security of the internal cloud.
• Internal clouds: When businesses grow accustomed to consuming IT as a service, IT organizations will be compelled to build internal clouds. Unfortunately, building an internal cloud is hard work and few blueprints exist. Although vendors are building products that will help customers build internal clouds, there is no turnkey solution. IT organizations will struggle to cobble together the necessary pieces to build internal clouds. Nevertheless, building them will be a key data center trend in 2012 because of the need to compete with external cloud computing.
• Hybrid clouds: Hybrid clouds are connections between two clouds, usually an internal private cloud and an external public cloud. They are constructed using software that enables applications and data to migrate more easily between clouds. For example, many applications depend on identity management systems to authenticate users, have gigabytes of data, and have input/output latency dependencies for storage. These attributes often prevent applications from migrating to the external cloud, but hybrid cloud solutions them in unique ways. For example, hybrid cloud software can enable WAN acceleration and VPN connections between clouds that allow IT organizations to keep application services and critical data in the internal cloud, and to move the workload itself to the public cloud. As IT budgets continue to shrink and capital resources remain scarce, hybrid clouds will become a more popular option for augmenting IT capacity and enabling disaster recovery than building another data center or signing a long-term outsourcing agreement.
• User-centric computing: To compete in a global market and retain key employees, organizations often have to accommodate staff who live in remote locations and use personal devices for work. Some organizations are attempting to radically reduce the operational expense of supporting numerous desktop devices for large groups of users with various application requirements. These needs create new challenges for IT organizations to secure data; back up data; support smaller, less functional devices; and support a broader range of devices. Therefore, many IT organizations are rethinking their desktop and mobility strategies and adopting a user-centric, rather than a device-centric, point of view.
• Data center efficiency: Competing with the external cloud requires IT organizations to strive for hyper-efficiency in their data centers. If critical data and applications are to be housed in an internal private cloud, IT organizations must deliver internal IT services in an efficient, cost-effective manner. This requires them to squeeze further costs out of their data centers by virtualizing as many applications as possible, using storage efficiency technologies such as data deduplication, and buying servers that enable them to maximize space and power and to consolidate applications.

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Posted by Heidi Schwartz

In late April 2013, GE and Florida Power & Light Company (FPL) celebrated the fourth anniversary and completion of Energy Smart Florida (ESF), an initiative implemented to modernize the grid and build out a more reliable and efficient electrical infrastructure. GE helped FPL achieve two important milestones in the final phase of ESF: the installation of 4.5 million smart meters across its 35-county service territory and the successful completion of grid modernization projects funded by a grant FPL received from the U.S. Department of Energy. With GE’s help, FPL created a highly integrated, advanced, modern grid that helps prevent outages, restore power more quickly and empower FPL’s customers to take control of their energy use.

“Florida Power & Light is an excellent example of a utility that took a thoughtful, holistic approach to modernizing its grid,” said John Lavelle, CEO, GE’s Digital Energy business. “Through its grid projects—from substation upgrades to the installation of 4.5 million GE smart meters—FPL has been able to improve reliability, prevent outages and detect problems. These are goals we strive for with all of our utility customers.”

In 2009, FPL received a $200 million grant from the U.S. Department of Energy to help fund Energy Smart Florida and $600 million in grid improvements throughout FPL’s 35-county service territory. At the start of Energy Smart Florida, FPL enlisted GE to perform 145 substation upgrades, which are helping to improve the grid’s reliability and anticipate system disturbances. Additionally, FPL has installed more than 4.5 million GE smart meters.

“FPL is committed to always finding new ways to improve the service and value we provide to our customers,” said Bryan Olnick, FPL’s vice president of customer service smart grid solutions. “By installing world-class equipment and working with technology partners like GE, we are creating a modern and resilient infrastructure, while providing valuable energy information to our customers and increasing the efficiency and reliability of our network.”

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That’s why we created our high-profile Governor’s Report series, which has given us the opportunity to get up close and personal with governors from across the nation. Most of the governors we’ve chatted with have talked the talk when it comes to their overall development strategy–but the devil is in the details, which sometimes are left to state ED officials to explain after the governor has said his piece. A few have candidly admitted that jobs creation as a priority has to find its place on a to-do list dominated by fiscal restraint.

Not so in Texas, where Gov. Rick Perry has fiercely embraced his role as champion of the state’s economic development program, ready to saddle up and steer herds full of jobs into the big Texas corral from near and far.

When we headed over to the Texas State Capitol in Austin last week to personally deliver our 2012 State of the Year Award to Gov. Perry, we didn’t expect to get much face time with the governor. Awards ceremonies usually are what we call in our profession “grip-and-grin” photo ops. A quick handshake, a few pleasantries, snap, snap, nice to see ‘ya, goodbye. So our expectations for an in-depth conversation weren’t high when Gov. Perry ambled into the august Governor’s Reception Room under the Capitol rotunda without fanfare and gave us a friendly Howdy. Since the governor had already greeted and posed with two other groups, including a Scout troop, on the way up the stairs, we figured we’d better talk fast.

We told Gov. Perry that Texas (a 2007 Business Facilities State of the Year standard-bearer) had made our 2012 State of the Year selection an easy one. The Lone Star State was the consensus choice of just about every major national business publication as the most dynamic, business-friendly state economy in the U.S. While the rest of the nation was still mired in the depths of the worst Recession in our lifetimes, Texas blew past its pre-Recession employment level with a diversified growth strategy that combined high-tech success in everything from semiconductors to solar panels with traditional strength in the resurgent oil and gas sectors. Aggressive incentives, great infrastructure, a first-class system of higher education, low labor costs and a growing population position the state to fend off challengers to its hegemony for years to come.

But when we casually mentioned that we’d like to bottle up what Texas is doing and ship it to the other states to replicate, Gov. Perry’s face lit up and he launched into a passionate discourse about what is clearly one of his favorite subjects, economic development. He was still talking nearly an hour later.

“That’s exactly what we’ve been trying to tell people,” Perry said. “We’re happy to have other states follow our example, do it right and succeed the way we have.”

Gov. Perry–who raised some eyebrows last month when he arrived at the BIO show in Chicago and promptly told Illinois businesses they’d be better off in Texas–made it clear he won’t hesitate to take his message extolling the Lone Star State’s business-friendly policies wherever the jobs are.

“We’re not gonna be shy about telling everyone what works here and why Texas is a great place to do business,” he declared.

Warming to his subject, the governor gave us a detailed tutorial on growth-spurring reforms that have been enacted in Texas during the past 15 years (pausing briefly to give some credit to his predecessor as governor, George W. Bush).

“I started working on this when I was an itty-bitty state legislator,” he recalled. “Then, when I became governor [in 2001, Lt. Gov. Perry moved into the top state office when then-Gov. Bush became president], I got my staff together and told them that we’ve been promising all these (reforms), so why don’t we just keep our promises and get it done.”

At the center of Perry’s effort to continually improve Texas’ business climate is deregulation, the elimination of bureaucratic red tape and “unreasonable” restrictions on business. During our chat, Gov. Perry put these measures in the larger context of the role of government in a 21st-century economy.

“What it’s really about is freedom,” he said. “Everyone should have the freedom to succeed, to grow their business, to be the best they can be.”

Perry is particularly proud of his success in getting meaningful tort reform enacted in Texas. ”I just got off the phone with the head of one of our largest medical centers,” he said. “He told me they’re starting a $5-million expansion with the money they’re saving on lawyers.”

Perry also has been ahead of the curve on the sensitive subject of immigration, combining a compassionate approach to reform with a firm stance on border security. We thought we might bring a smile to the governor’s face when we pointed out that, after taking some heat on his immigration stance in the presidential campaign, it looks like his position now has been widely adopted as the sensible mainstream approach to resolving this thorny issue.

The Texas chief executive set his jaw, locked eyes with his interlocutor and wheeled into what we imagined is his “shooting” posture.

“I learned some lessons in that campaign. You can’t parachute into the middle of those things, especially a few weeks after you’ve had major back surgery,” he said firmly. “You’ve got to start early and get your message across that this country needs strong leadership, it needs somebody with real experience in getting the job done.”

We won’t call it an airtight declaration, but we got the strong impression that the governor of Texas is more than ready to climb back up on that horse and take his pro-growth message to a jobs-starved nation eager to hear solutions from somebody who can walk the walk as good as he talks the talk.

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Posted by Heidi Schwartz

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The 150 megawatt Mesquite Solar 1 installation in Maricopa County, Arizona. | Photo courtesy of Sempra Energy.

Posted by Heidi Schwartz

Sempra U.S. Gas & Power and Consolidated Edison Development (ConEdison Development) have announced an agreement to partner in two of Sempra U.S. Gas & Power’s solar power facilities, the 150-megawatt (MW) Copper Mountain Solar 2 plant near Las Vegas and the 150-MW Mesquite Solar 1 power plant near Phoenix.

Under the sales agreement, each company will own a 50-percent interest in the two solar facilities, which are among the largest photovoltaic plants in the U.S. Sempra U.S. Gas & Power will continue to provide operations and maintenance services to both plants.

“This strategic partnership bolsters Sempra U.S. Gas & Power’s ongoing plan to improve its financial returns, deconsolidate debt and redeploy the proceeds from the transaction into new renewable growth projects,” said Kevin C. Sagara, vice president of renewables and corporate development for Sempra U.S. Gas & Power. “We look forward to partnering with Consolidated Edison Development to continue operating world-class solar facilities that supply clean, emission-free electricity to our customers, and to capitalize on our shared view of near-term growth opportunities.”

“This transaction provides ConEdison Development with the opportunity to work with an outstanding partner while we expand our presence throughout the United States,” said Mark Noyes, vice president of ConEdison Development.  “We are partnering in two strategic renewable assets, both with strong project fundamentals, and advancing our commitment to growth in the renewable energy marketplace.”

Phase 1 of Copper Mountain Solar 2 is complete and is currently generating 92 MW of clean solar power.  When the second phase is fully constructed, expected in 2015, the project’s total operating capacity will be 150 MW. Power from the facility has been sold to Pacific Gas & Electric under a 25-year contract.

In September 2011, the U.S. Department of Energy’s Loan Program Office awarded Mesquite Solar 1 a $337 million loan guarantee that enabled it to build this innovative photovoltaic plant, one of the largest in the U.S.  The agreement is subject to approvals from the U.S. Department of Energy and regulatory agencies.  Those approvals are anticipated in the second half of 2013. The terms of the sale were not disclosed.

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A new report from the Columbia University Water Center, in conjunction with Veolia Water and Growing Blue, reveals that businesses and cities in America’s most iconic regions are now under greater risk of water scarcity. Utilizing a new research metric called the Normalized Deficit Cumulated (NDC) index in the America’s Water Risk: Water Stress and Climate Variability study, Columbia identifies top ten U.S. areas facing the highest climate-related risk of water shortages, including Washington, D.C and New York City. (PRNewsFoto/Growing Blue)

Posted by Heidi Schwartz

A new report from the Columbia University Water Center, in conjunction with Veolia Water and Growing Blue, reveals that businesses and cities in some of America’s most iconic regions are now under even greater risk of water scarcity.

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PMF’s existing 120,000 square foot facility in North Central Pennsylvania.

Posted by Heidi Schwartz

Gov. Corbett has announced that Pennsylvania is expanding its commitment to advance clean, alternative and renewable energy sources with the investment of more than $9.6 million in 13 projects in 11 counties.

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Posted by Heidi Schwartz

Construction is expected to begin early next year on the new La Paloma Power Plant, to be located in the Harlingen Industrial Park in Harlingen, TX. At its peak, the enormous $650 million project will have more than six hundred workers on site, with most of the work force to be recruited locally. The plant is being developed by Coronado Power Ventures, LLC and Bechtel.

Robert Deatherage, Vice President and Industrial Relations Manager for Becon Construction Company, is general contractor for the La Paloma Power Plant project. Deatherage met with Harlingen EDC, Cameron County Workforce Solutions and Texas State Technical College executives to discuss employment and training of the customized work force needed for success of the project.

“It’s the start of a long and exciting project which will provide enough energy to interest additional manufacturers and other heavy power users,” says Raudel Garza, CEO, Harlingen EDC. “The first step involves survey and environmental crews, with human resource personnel to begin the hiring process by the end of 2013.”

Jobs to be filled will include site preparation workers, carpenters, iron workers, concrete finishers, pipe fitters, welders, and electricians as well as administrative, mechanical, electrical and industrial personnel.  Project construction is expected to take nearly two and a half years.

“With a young, abundant and trainable workforce, and a low cost of living, in addition to our pro-business environment and quality of place, it makes sense for this project and other businesses to locate facilities in Harlingen,” stated Rick Ledesma, HEDC Board Chariman.

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