Senator Bingaman Serves New Mexico’s “Apollo Project for Renewable Energy” Better as Energy Committee Chairman

November 7, 2008

[MM - Santa Fe] News reports continue to pour in mentioning Senator Jeff Bingaman as a candidate for Secretary of Energy. According to Miro Kovacevich, a New Mexico-based renewable energy economic policy advisor, New Mexicans should ask our Senator to resist the temptation because his position as Chairman of the Senate Energy Committee is too critical to abandon.

Governor Richardson, having already served as Secretary of Energy, would be a better candidate, says Kovacevich. Bingaman, Richardson, incoming Senator Tom Udall, and Congressmen Martin Heinrich and Ben Ray Lujan all support the budding renewable energy field. The Richardson campaign’s “Apollo Project” for renewable energy has now become the centerpiece of President-Elect Obama’s economic and energy policies according to Time Magazine’s Joe Klein <http://www.time.com/time/printout/0,8816,1853025,00.html> .

“There is no better potential driver that pervades all aspects of our economy than a new energy economy,” Obama told Klein. “That’s going to be my No. 1 priority when I get into office.”

Governor Richardson should take credit as well as responsibility for developing this policy from within the Obama cabinet. “In the coming times, the position of Energy Secretary will be the most important cabinet position of all,” said Kovacevich brushing aside questions about a possible Richardson role in the Obama State Department.

Adding someone from New Mexico to the Executive Branch will strengthen New Mexico’s hand in the coming struggle between several national energy policies: Al Gore’s, Google’s, T. Boone Pickens’, and the New Mexico-based policy promoted by Kovacevich’s public policy group, Vivilux Consulting. New Mexico’s solar and scientific resources are second to none worldwide and securing a portion of Obama’s proposed $150 Billion budget for renewable energy and storage is essential for the state’s economic development. Political support for adding renewable energy to the national labs’ energy security mission is high so the time is right to task New Mexico’s scientific community with the mission-critical development of renewable energy generation and storage.

Reached in Washington, DC, Espanola resident Kovacevich was unequivocal, stating that “if Senator Bingaman moves to the Executive Branch, it will weaken New Mexico’s ability to locate the national renewable energy initiative in our state.” He again insisted that New Mexico needs senior politicians in both the Legislative and Executive Branch, rather than just one or the other. He believes that with Richardson, Bingaman, Udall, Lujan and Heinrich together in DC, New Mexico will get a fair shot at fulfilling its potential to become the Saudi Arabia of solar energy and ground zero for a new, peaceful Manhattan project for clean, renewable energy.

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