Salazar is drilling home renewables' new power

...Interior Secretary Ken Salazar's first appearance before the same Senate committee last week. He laid out maps that showed wind-energy potential across the West; talked about tapping geothermal energy underlying states including Idaho and Colorado; and evoked the vision of a high-tech "super- electron highway" that will connect "renewable-energy zones" on public lands to homes in California or New Jersey. After less than two months in office, Salazar's big-vision effort to refocus the country's massive energy development bureaucracy is taking shape. Having inherited a Bush-era Interior Department that focused laserlike on the extraction of carbon-based fuels, Salazar is forging one that will help turn millions of acres of public lands in the West into the foundation for a green-energy economy. Republican lawmakers and traditional extraction industry officials say they fear that in the rush to embrace a difficult technological feat — "an energy moonshot," as Salazar calls it — tried-and-true sources of energy will get lost in the backwash. "I can't fault (Salazar) for creating excitement around renewable energy, but I don't want him to do it at the expense of the energy resources that have always powered this country," said Sen. Lisa Murkowski, R-Alaska. "You can't power the country exclusively on renewables."...Denver Post