Water technology, renewable energy drive economic development in San Joaquin Valley

Publication Date
Author
By F. Noel Perry and Doug Henton
Source
The Business Journal

Drought is becoming the new normal in California. The latest news reports show California’s biggest reservoirs continue their decline and recent rains have barely made a dent in the state’s overall drought picture. The old saying about necessity being the mother of invention holds true in the San Joaquin Valley, which has positioned itself as a leader in developing and implementing water-saving technologies, according to a new report from the nonpartisan nonprofit group Next 10 (www.Next10.org). 

The new regional clean tech analysis, Clean Valley: Leveraging Natural Resources to Increase Economic Development finds that the region is making strides in advancing its clean economy, increasing local jobs while improving resource efficiency and reducing air pollution. As a national leader in agriculture and food production, and with increasing water concerns due to the statewide drought, the region is leading the state's innovative technologies at the convergence of water and agriculture, and renewable energy development.

The convergence of these two sectors has made the San Joaquin Valley an ideal location for companies to develop and test cutting-edge products and services with local and global applications, such as high-tech irrigation and field monitoring products, farming analytics, and water recycling and reuse systems. The region’s water cluster includes more than 200 companies that leverage innovative partnerships between academia, technology companies, farmers, government stakeholders, and community organizations. Successful partnerships to date include the Blue Tech Valley Initiative and the Water Energy Technology (WET) Center, which allow companies to seamlessly develop, test and implement technology improvements that conserve water resources and benefit the agriculture sector.

The San Joaquin Valley is also identified as the statewide leader in installed renewable energy capacity, leveraging its natural assets of high solar radiation and wind. Sections of the region, Kern County in particular, are tapping into this renewable energy potential, and have created incentives and streamlined processes to increase installations and overall capacity. Kern County has over 8,750 MW of renewable energy permitted as of September 2014, more than any other county in the state. Renewable energy projects in the county have attracted $25 billion in investment and can generate electricity for more than seven million people in the state.

The region also boasts nearly 65 MW in rooftop solar installations— driven in part by innovative community programs to help lower-income residents install solar panels on their homes. These installations and other local renewable energy projects are generating jobs. In fact, Kern County established a “local” hire condition on installation contracts to ensure local residents are benefiting from growth in the industry.

An early snapshot of core clean economy jobs in the region finds that as of January 2014, there were over 10,500 such jobs in the San Joaquin Valley. These jobs are in a range of businesses that provide the products and services that allow the entire economy to reduce carbon emissions and improve efficiencies in the use of natural resources.

The San Joaquin Valley has made significant progress in developing new water technologies to support local and global agriculture, as well as facilitating new renewable energy installations in the region. These sector developments are creating jobs in the region, while protecting agriculture land, improving water use, and decreasing dependency on fossil fuels.

F. Noel Perry is a businessman and founder of Next 10, a nonpartisan nonprofit organization that seeks to foster a deeper understanding of critical issues facing California. Doug Henton is chairman and CEO at Collaborative Economics, which analyzes the clean economy for businesses, foundations, government agencies and others.