Has the Economic Development Corp. of Shasta County (EDC) gone green?

While vowing not to abandon efforts to recruit such target industries as medical-device manufacturers, the EDC is ramping up efforts to go after companies that cater to renewable energy.

Last week, the EDC and the city of Shasta Lake announced that a $70,000 federal grant was secured to study the feasibility of a 22-acre green business park near Ashby Road and Pine Grove Avenue.

The EDC is in early talks with an electric-car manufacturer about locating in Stillwater Business Park, a 673-acre industrial complex north of Redding Municipal Airport that the city has said could one day house some 3,500 employees.

For the first time, the EDC will have a presence at a solar energy manufacturers' trade show in Southern California.

EDC President Greg O'Sullivan will travel to Anaheim for three days later this month to participate in Solar Power International 2009, dubbed "America's largest solar event." The show attracted roughly 22,000 attendees in 2008.

"This is a viable target industry in this economy and I think it will be viable for a long time," O'Sullivan said of renewable energy. "And it's just not renewable energy. It's everything that goes along with it — brownfield remediation, cleaning up sites, reusing sites.

"I watch my daughter, who works at Starbucks, and she's preaching to me all the time. Kids are into it; the next generation is into it."

Audrey Taylor of Chabin Concepts, a Chico-based economic development consulting firm, said California has mandated renewable energy with legislation, such as AB 32, the historic global warming initiative Gov. Schwarzenegger signed in 2006.

Now it's up to areas, such as Shasta County, to manipulate those mandates to their economic advantage.

"It's an industry we have to pay attention to," Taylor said of renewable energy. "Really, California is driving the market. ... When we mandate things, that creates demand. Now we have to look at the supply side of things."

This summer, the Upstate California Economic Development Council, which includes Shasta County, released a study that looked at renewable energy as an economic driver.

Authored by Chico State University economist David Gallo, the report showed that electricity generated from renewable energy — small hydropower, biomass, geothermal, solar and wind — in 2006 was the equivalent to 43 percent of consumption for the region, which is every county north of Sacramento.

Projecting out 20 years, Gallo estimated that construction of renewable electricity generation facilities would produce more than $2.7 billion in local business sales. The additional sales would be responsible for $1.6 billion in area income and roughly 23,000 full- and part-time construction jobs.

"Green has really reached its tipping point; it has been accepted by industry," Taylor of Chabin Concepts said. "So really, that tells us that maybe we need to re-look at target industries we are pursuing and broaden that target to encompass this whole green technology and renewable energy."

Reporter David Benda can be reached at 225-8219 or at dbenda@redding.com.