New Date for Conference

New Date For Conference. I'm Greg Martin as Line On Agriculture presents the Harvest Clean Energy Report. People here in the northwest that have been a part of the last 10 Harvesting Clean Energy conferences are in for a small change...a different time of year. You will definitely want to mark this on your calendar...October 23 through 25 on 2011. That's right, next year in Boise. Bob Neilson with Idaho National Labs is one of the conference's steering committee members and says if you are thinking about clean energy use, you should plan to attend. NEILSON: Where their importance is, is trying to look at the integration and the overlap between energy needs for the country and the needs for a rural economic development in the farmers and ranchers, etc. So this is really a venue for people to get together to talk about how both of those issues are related to one another and how we can use them to both help the country's energy problems as well as to help rural economic development. The steering committee has their job cut out for them when it comes to putting together a well rounded group of speakers and information. NEILSON: We'll be looking at getting information from farmers and ranchers, from processors, from energy developers, from rural economic development leaders, from politicians and talking about all sorts of things from renewable energy technologies, policy, funding, financing and case studies. Neilson is an energy technology manager at the Idaho National Labs who as a whole is very involved in this conference. NEILSON: Idaho National Laboratory is one of the 12 U.S. Department of Energy energy laboratories and we're a sponsor of the Harvesting Clean Energy Event and we'll be providing speakers in various areas such as biofuels, geothermal, hydro power, wind – probably depending on what the agenda comes out – that relate to the energy R&D that we do at the laboratory. So you might be asking the question...should I consider attending the conference next year? NEILSON: Any who's interested from either the energy side of the equation or the rural side of the equation and what that's going to do is include things like the farmers and ranchers and rural landowners from the rural part of the equation as well as rural economic development leaders. From the energy side of things you are looking at clean energy firms; you're looking at energy project developers and you're looking at people who would be interested in either help to promote clean energy development from the technology side or from the rural environment side. Again the new dates for the Harvesting Clean Energy Conference are October 23 through 25 – 2011 in Boise. And of course for additional information on clean energy, visit harvestcleanenergy.org. That's today's Line On Agriculture. I'm Greg Martin on the Ag Information Network. www.harvestcleanenergy.org