01/02/09 Tribal Power

Tribal Power. I'm Greg Martin as Line On Agriculture presents the Harvest Clean Energy Report. David Lester, Executive Director, Council of Energy Resource Tribes will be one of the presenters at this years' Harvesting Clean Energy Conference. LESTER: There's going to be two themes actually but they kind of converge into one vision and the vision is that as rural American communities, Indian tribes can achieve a high degree of energy self-reliance using the sustainable, renewable energy resources that will produce, with good planning and good execution, should lead to a more prosperous and more stable diversified local rural communities That vision according to Lester should lead to economic prosperity through renewable energy development. He says the nations tribes are in a good position to do just that. LESTER: Most Indian tribes, the vast majority of those within the contiguous 48 states have either access to or own resources that they can use to help power their economies and also be using and aggressively pursuing energy conservation and efficiency, those are the two strategies. And of course managing that demand side and creating their own local generation requires them to develop management and technical capabilities to carry forward. There are a number of challenges that face the tribes in bringing renewable technologies to tribal lands according to Lester. LESTER: One is acquiring the capability, the capacity to recognize the opportunity and then also assemble the capacity to plan and execute projects that will lead them there to that goal. That includes resource assessment, environmental evaluations for environmental impacts for different developmental scenarios. Economic analysis as well as technical evaluation of technology. He says they are looking to universities and laboratories for some of the assistance. He also says they have had a good deal of success with one project by the Rosebud Sioux tribe in S. Dakota. LESTER: They have constructed a wind project that serves their own internal tribal electric power needs and they've coupled that with a very innovative, indigenous kind of effort in terms of energy efficiency and conservation that is culturally based so that it isn't a sense of somebody imposing foreign technology and foreign thinking on the tribe but rather they're returning to their old traditions and values. 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. www.harvestcleanenergy.org