10/31/08 Building Renewable Energy Jobs

Building Renewable Energy Jobs. I'm Greg Martin as Line On Agriculture presents the Harvest Clean Energy Report. With any new venture there are growing pains and of course the promise for new opportunities. The renewable energy field is no different. It can take a bit to get things moving. Idaho businesses, farms and residents spent about $3.7 billion for energy in 2007, 80% from fossil fuels imported from out of state. State Senator Curt McKenzie says it's a risk to the state's economy. MCKENZIE: It's just a factor of the economy that we have no control over in state. About half of our electrical generation comes from in-state hydro but then most of the other portion is from out of state fossil fuels and then almost all of our transportation fuel comes from out of state. And as we've seen, we've got no control over how those prices fluctuate and it has a direct impact on Idaho families and farmers and businesses. Renewable energy can be a big factor in changing the situation for Idaho. MCKENZIE: Especially if we are talking about in-state renewables because it does two big benefits for us; one is it diversifies our portfolio of energy resources so that changes to the factors we can't control have less impact on the economy and then it also will help develop the economy in the state and most often in rural areas of the state where we want to drive economic activity. McKenzie says that agriculture can be a good fit in the picture. MCKENZIE: There's a few ways, over the long term as we look at developing different types of biomass fuels either for electrical generation or production of biofuels, its Idaho farmers and ranchers who are going to provide a lot of those resources especially if we can continue research at the Idaho National Laboratory regarding cellulosic ethanol. So how does Senator McKenzie see new jobs and opportunities come from this? MCKENZIE: One of the exciting things we've been working on with the Governor's energy office is trying to promote and energy region kind of like some cities have targeted where they're going to develop the economy and they put in some tax policies and incentives to drive that. We're thinking about something similar in the State of Idaho related to our dairy industry and the production of biofuels. 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