They will need to do a lot more than encourage alternative vehicles. They also need a plan to reduce and eliminate driving.

Isn't Arizona very sunny..?!

Solar power should be just what the doctor ordered, for driving the air conditioning during daytime and charge batteries in PHEVs and BEVs (maybe not by 2010, but certainly later.

Eliminating some of the need for driving by urban planning is also a great idea.

Solar power should be just what the doctor ordered, for driving the air conditioning during daytime

I've been wondering if thermal storage would be a good replacement for the A/C in cars, or (in Arizona) a system using evaporative cooling.

Arizona is home to the largest nuclear power generating station in all of North America. It's called Palo Verde. Look it up. If AZ was serious about stopping CO2, they would let Palo Verde finish their build out, which was supposed to be 5 reactors (currently only 3 are built and running) and shut down the coal. There's also a ton of hydro power thanks to the Colorado river and many dams. Solar is also obviously a huge potential source, although the problem with solar is you would need to ruin billions of dollars worth of pristine desert preserve in order to put in enough solar collectors (be they PV or solar heat tower mirrors) to replace the tiny acreage needed for coal, natural gas, or nuclear.

The fact that the governor isn't addressing power shows this is nothing more than an election year ploy. Her election comes up in just two months from now.

Well, hopefully its as lot better than nothing!

The governor is going through all the right motions to impress those who voted for her in the first place. Image is everything, style reigns supreme in politics. Who cares about what's really going on? As long as you can make it sound good, you're golden. 2020? 2040? That's pretty damned safe for a politician to sign in 2006! Nothing courageous about this lady.

Sid said:

the problem with solar is you would need to ruin billions of dollars worth of pristine desert preserve in order to put in enough solar collectors (be they PV or solar heat tower mirrors) to replace the tiny acreage needed for coal, natural gas, or nuclear

Desert - pristine - really?!?

Is it really worth "preserving" some desert in the middle of nowhere at the expense of a potential climate crisis? Yes, I realize there's still debate about the Greenhouse Effect, and yes, a crisis probably won't be severe before our children's time. But how pristine is the desert really, and isn't there a lot of it?

In my book desert is the least pristine kind of land of all.

But if you worry so much about keeping the desert as it is (apart from sprawling cities, highways, McDonald's, etc.) just place PVs on rooftops. Preferably on flat top roofs like malls. You are certainly not ruining any view there...

Harry Reid, the senator from Nevada stated that a 100 mile x 100 mile area could provide all the power the nation needed from the sun. I calculated that this might cost our whole GDP for one year, or more than $10T, but it is an interesting thought.

Desert - pristine - really?!?

After the Columbia space shuttle loss, they tried to find parts that had fallen off as it went over the southwest.

It turns out the deserts are just loaded with abandoned stuff. Cars, washing machines, miscellaneous trash. They gave up.

As someone mentioned before, how about some urban planning as well. Phoenix claims it is the best planned city but in reality it is terrible and you have to drive everywhere. Put some city limits up and stop paving the whole desert...and then lets talk about transportation.

Janet Napolitano, Harry Reid and Ralph Nader are all lawyers quilty of practicisng Engineering without a License.

They are collective idiots responsible for creating more
problems than any solutions.

Nader has killed tens of thousands with his dangerously overpowered airbags; that he himself forced onto US consumers,over the objections of the Engineering professionals. Every where else in the world, the engineers implaced lower, properly, powered non dangerous inflating charges for their airbags, but not ithe the USA thank you Mr. Nader-Killer.

Napolitano doesn't know that Arizona electric generation is extremely clean and mostly modern generating comparatively little GHG or pollution. A massive portion comes from cleran hydro or the worlds larhgest Nucler plat at Palo Verde. In fact the easiest way to meet her stupid standards is to merely shut down the export electricity market that feeds the numbnuts Envirokooks in California and Nevada that have frozen new development. There ther objections therough Jackass Lawyers liek Reid's firm, have the opposite effect and forced keeping generation going of literal dirty antique examples of electric generation powerplants. You couldn't find older antiques except in some third world cesspool, like Cuba.

In addition to the Envirokooks thank the cynical Jackass Lawyers masquerading as "Consumer Advocates" preventing the utilities from making the money necessary to build modern replacement plants. By their lights, it is ILLEGAL to save up to build a new plant or even invest in it until it operates. Harry Reid made his reputation that way in Nevada and started his political career on that basis.

Arizona Utilities should just shutoff the juice and let his constituents roast or freeze as the case maybe. They chose and voted for that Jackass, after all.

The there are the cynical lswyers representing the envirokooks, fighting every proposed siting of a possible new plants for whatevcer cockamaie reason they can dreamup, from sacred mountains, unspoiled desserts, sacred pits or endanged mosquitoes, louseworts, endangered packrats or mudeaters.

Here Harry Reid and his cohorts really excel. His wealth comes from just such representation.

Isn't it truly appropriate that the chosen symbol of their political party, fits these three lawyerly examples so well. It just goes to show that you can even teach a JACKASS to be a Democrat lawyer.