Getting Ready for the Conference

Getting Ready for the Conference. I’m Greg Martin as Line On Agriculture presents the Harvest Clean Energy Report.

This years’ Harvesting Clean Energy conference is scheduled for February 7, 8 & 9 at the Three Rivers Convention Center in Kennewick, Washington and promises to provide a wealth of information for a better energy future. Andrew Munro with Grant County PUD says these conferences are quite important.

MUNRO: One of reasons we’re so involved in this Harvesting Clean Energy Conference is as you know the last year or two there has been a large emphasis on expanding renewable energy in our country and this conference really focuses in the rural areas as an economic development opportunity. How can we advance these new technologies in rural areas?

The scope of both clean energy approaches and those who are interested in using them is very broad.

MUNRO: We get a lot of participation from farmers, ranchers and other rural landowners and we explore everything from new approaches for water power and irrigation canal hydro to solar and wind power, geothermal resources and efficiency technologies.

Speaking of hydro, there are some exciting things coming in the near future.

MUNRO: The U.S. hydropower industry is charting a new course that could help double our renewable energy in the U.S. and I would call this responsible hydro development and its things such as irrigation hydropower. We operate two irrigation hydro projects here in Grant County and we’re going to be talking about those and other new projects that have been recently developed at the conference.

The conference is a good place to learn about all kinds of new and exciting renewable projects and Munro says that there are other questions besides projects that can be addressed.

MUNRO: A key question that U.S. Energy Secretary Chu; Steven Chu has really highlighted is that we need energy storage so when the winds not blowing where does the energy come from to firm that up and in particular what other clean sources of energy? And so we have for example, of the existing 80-thousand dams in the United States just 3% of those are used to generate hydro electricity.

For additional information on clean energy or 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