12/12/08 Getting Ready for the Conference

Getting Ready for the Conference. I'm Greg Martin as Line On Agriculture presents the Harvest Clean Energy Report. The Harvesting Clean Energy Conference is a little over a month away in Billings, Montana and a lot of effort has gone into the program. Kathi Montgomery with Montana's Dept. of Environmental Quality has been a part of the conference for quite a few years now and she says there have been some changes. MONTGOMERY: What's changed in that time is that we have some big renewable projects on the books here in Montana, or on the ground. When I first started coming to these conferences, we didn't have any commercial wind turbines in the state yet. We had some fairly small ones; 50kw and up but now we have actual wind farms. So there are two up and running. Montgomery says a third wind farm has just started producing energy. In addition she says there is a mature geothermal program in place. Even these 4 projects have really made a difference. MONTGOMERY: The State of Montana passed a renewable portfolio standard a few years back that would require we have 8% of  and this is for investor owned utilities so it really only applies to Northwestern Energy and to Montana/Dakota Utilities  but it requires them to buy at least 8% of their electricity that is in their portfolio for their customers, 8% of that had to be from renewable energy sources by the year 2010 and we met that already. The Harvesting Clean Energy Conference will feature some interesting programs that will discuss projects like these. MONTGOMERY: There's the renewable energy part and the renewable fuels side of things. We've got a full agenda for two whole days of information on both renewable fuels from people who want to grow the seed crops to people who want to build the crushers or processors to people who would just like to use it themselves. And Montgomery says that this is a great place for the average person to get information. MONTGOMERY: The focus of this conference is on the person who wants to use the renewable technologies so it's really aimed at farmers, ranchers, small businesses and individuals who would like to make a difference in the way they are living. For additional information on clean energy and the upcoming Harvesting Clean Energy conference, visit harvestcleanenergy.org. That's today's Line On Agriculture. I'm Greg Martin on the Northwest Ag Information Network. For more information about the upcoming 9th annual Harvesting Clean Energy conference visit www.harvestcleanenergy.org/conference. The Conference is January 25-27, 2009 in Billings, MT.