SCOTTSDALE - An international cheerleader for solar power, alternative fuels and green building design says America is becoming more enviro-friendly.

Randall Stout, a California architect of international renown who started his career developing solar power for the Tennessee Valley Authority, is bringing his message to Scottsdale at noon Friday as keynote speaker for the opening of Green Building Expo, an annual festival and trade show on environmentally sensitive building construction.

The free festival Friday and Saturday at the Scottsdale Center for the Arts is sponsored by Phoenix, Scottsdale and Tempe.

Stout's work is acclaimed for its dynamic forms, use of energy efficient technology and environmental sustainability. He has won the "Top Ten Green Award" from the American Institute of Architects and dozens of other honors.

A former Tennessee farm boy, Stout, 48, has designed museums, fire stations and industrial, residential and recreational facilities, uniformly marked by their reduced energy use and physical harmony with their surroundings.

But what's unusual about this quintessentially American designer who used to work for master architect Frank Gehry, is that some of his most celebrated buildings have been done in Germany.

Why Germany is 'green'

In a talk expected to be part jeremiad and part pep rally, Stout plans to explain why Germany has been a haven for green designers and why he thinks green building in the United States is picking up steam.

Stout credits Germany's Green Party with creating a culture that embraces the energy-conscious design and durable materials that green architects employ.

Notably, in 1999 the Social-Democratic/Green German government passed the Renewable Energy Act to encourage the use of renewable energy sources.

Private consumers and businesses were crazy about its considerable economic incentives to switch to solar, wind and other alternative energy sources.

Within a year of the law's passage, the number of new solar panels on order rose by 50 percent. About a million solar energy plants have been installed in Germany since then, and 45,000 workers are employed in Germany's booming solar energy business.

The irony, Stout said, is that Germany is dominated by cloudy skies.

"We're getting payback within 8 to 13 years for solar units in northern Germany where it's cloudy most of the time," he said.

Even more effective here

In sunny Arizona, the time required for energy savings to offset a switch to solar power is much less.

U.S. enthusiasm for renewable resources is rising, Stout said, pointing to the runaway popularity of former Vice President Al Gore's movie and book about global warming, An Inconvenient Truth.

"There is a growing ecological awareness in the United States. It's where Germany was 15 years ago," said Stout, who started designing buildings in Germany in 1992 while working for Gehry.

We used to be ahead of Germany. President Carter's 1979 solar power initiative would have used the sun, wind, and other renewable resources to generate 20 percent of U.S. electricity by 2000. But the plan was scrapped, along with the solar panels Carter placed on the White House roof.

The problem has not been capturing the hearts and minds of clients, Stout said.

Getting leaders on board

He speaks of the need for "eco-streamlining," or getting city fathers and mothers, permitting agencies, banks and other factors in the building process to value sustainable materials and reducing emissions and energy costs.

"If you walk into a lending bank in the U.S., they often place no value on the benefits down the line. Buildings here are built to be running for 20 years. In Europe, every building is built to last 50 to 100 years," Stout said.

"Because architecture is meant to last, lending agents are more inclined to think that maintenance and utility costs ought to be evaluated, too," Stout said, detailing a common roadblock to getting green projects green lighted.

He predicts a boon to the economy if the American mind finally wraps itself around sustainability.

Ancient cultures example

Some changes are cost free and were already evident to the early Southwestern Native American civilizations, Stout said.

"Mesa Verde, the cliff dwellings, all of them are so smart. They recognized that the only way to modify the climate was by where they placed the overlaps and walls in relationship to the paths of the sun and the wind. And they are relatively effective. If they'd built facing west, they would have been miserable, but they didn't," Stout said.

But air-conditioning has led us to ignore the lessons of our forebears, fostering a view of buildings as hermetically sealed structures where we can do whatever we want, but at a cost, Stout said.