12/07/07 Smart Energy

Smart Energy. I'm Greg Martin as Line On Agriculture presents the Harvest Clean Energy Report. What is it going to take to get away from fossil fuels and into clean, renewable energy? How about fixing greenhouse gas emissions? The answer is in getting people to cooperate and work together towards that common goal. Erica Keeley is with Climate Trust a company who is working on a program called Smart Energy. KEELEY: The Smart Energy program is a program that was developed and is run by Northwest Natural which is a local gas provider in the Portland regional area. They're offering to both residential and commercial clients the option to offset the emissions associated with their natural gas usage. Climate Trust is responsible for administering and purchasing the offsets that are aggregated through Northwest Natural's program. The program is voluntary and Keeley explains how it works. KEELEY: For the residential clients, they can either do it on a per therm basis or they can do it at $6 a month and that's just something taken from the average family, how much it would take to offset the average families house. But then there's also commercial clients and they can choose how much they want to offset so there is no limitation. The monies collected are used then to help build and produce renewable energy plants. KEELEY: The funds that are aggregated from Northwest Natural are in the majority going to be transferred on to the Climate Trust and our entire business is in purchasing high quality greenhouse offset gas projects. We've identified with Northwest Natural the type of project we'd like to put these funds into and so what we are going to be doing is we're going to be seeking out agricultural bio-digester projects preferably in Oregon, if not in the northwest region. So essentially by purchasing offsets, you are investing in clean, renewable energy projects. Right now the project is only for Portland area customers of Northwest Natural but it will be interesting to see how the program progresses. KEELEY: We're real excited about it and it's really nice to get out and be in the agricultural sector to try and put some good funding into the agricultural community. 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. www.harvestcleanenergy.org