11/23/07 Harvesting Clean Energy Conference

Harvesting Clean Energy Conference. I'm Greg Martin as Line On Agriculture presents the Harvest Clean Energy Report. The hottest topic around these days is alternate and renewable fuels and coming up in January is the Harvesting Clean Energy Conference in Portland. People interested in learning more or sharing their thoughts will gather for 3 big days according to Brent Searle with the Oregon Department of Agriculture. SEARLE: We've been on the steering committee when it was held here 4 years ago and again this year so we've been an active supporter, we feel like this is a good event that looks at rural ag, anywhere ag exists, issues and those connections to energy, energy conservation, efficiency and production. More and more people are talking about and seeking information on renewables. SEARLE: The attendees have been growing over the years. I think last year in Idaho, this being a northwest event going around northwest states in Idaho last year was somewhere around 800 attendees and seems to be growing every year so that's a lot of people to host. It does take resources but it also evidences the growing interest in this event in particular but generally the whole topic area. Searle says that as the conference has moved from state to state that topics have changed on a somewhat regional basis. SEARLE: Generally we're looking at on farm energy efficiency, energy audit kinds of things to help growers save money and energy generation through renewable projects and collaborative efforts and I think one of the things we're starting to see and will see  growers are starting to look at all kinds of collaborations they've never thought of in the past. Oregon has been on the leading edge of the renewable and alternate energy wave SEARLE: It's a culmination of a lot of things but in terms of what the stat is doing with incentives I think there's some pretty exciting things that's creating a lot of interest from around the country of companies looking at here and our growers looking at feedstock production. So we're in the formative stages of looking at a lot of this stuff in fact 4 years ago a lot of this was just barely on the radar screen. The conference is open to anyone so if you are interested in learning more about the upcoming Harvesting Clean Energy Conference in Portland, you can register online. 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.