02/22/08 Renewable Policy

Renewable Policy. I'm Greg Martin as Line On Agriculture presents the Harvest Clean Energy Report. Building new renewable energy sources requires a lot of thought, planning and of course there's the paperwork. A lot of work has to be done in the government arena and the old oxymoron of "I work for the government and I'm here to help" may really apply. Maui Meyers is a Hood River County Commissioner MEYERS: Everyone loves to talk about renewable energies and this and that and then it gets a little bit more granular when you get down to the state level and then it really gets granular when it gets down to the county commission level or the ward level and that issue primarily deals with sighting and that is how close can you put your wind tower to you neighbor. And the answer is, not very. That's just one of the issues Meyers deals with as a county commissioner. And since the whole renewable energy field is relatively new there is a lot of uncharted water. MEYERS: From a community scale government ownership of our own generation  yea more or less maybe in this iteration of it but you know 50-60-70 years ago rural electric coops were just another version of this really if you think about it. I think the big issues now with regards to rural aspects are things called tie-ins. How we connect to the transmission grid and how we sell our power. Those are other issues that local government can be very, very helpful on. Local governments are in the best place to deal with the individual projects that farmers and ranchers are involved with. MEYERS: The big issue facing farmers is getting general awareness about it; speaking to your governing body as if it were part of your business not just a hobby or personal virtue. This is a legitimate method of making a revenue stream on your farm and as we all know it's never one giant revenue stream it's many small revenue streams that keep a lot of these places viable. Meyers isn't sure about what federal guidelines may yet come down but he firmly believes that it's important to keep it local. MEYERS: My suspicion is that they would favor larger producers not smaller producers and that's going to be an issue. I think energy generation is very funny because it's generated locally and it could be consumed locally which would give you an order of magnitude benefit because you're not paying for it and you are generating it yourself  it's also an expression of self-reliance. I think to the extent that we can keep the entire conversation local and regional, the better. For additional information on clean energy, visit harvestcleanenergy.org. That's today's Line On Agriculture. I'm Greg Martin on the Northwest Ag Information Network. www.harvestcleanenergy.org