Rural areas could be next power hotbed

 

Apr 6 - McClatchy-Tribune Business News Formerly Knight Ridder/Tribune Business News - John Norton The Pueblo Chieftain, Colo.

Mike Bowman was part of a farming family in Wray, watching his and his neighbors' farms and ranches struggle against the elements of Colorado's Eastern Plains, relying on a diminishing water supply and looking for ways to maintain a way of life.

That was one of the factors that drove him to become a leader in a nationwide effort to shift the nation's energy dependence away from foreign oil and to the fields, including the marginal ones, of rural America.

Bowman was the luncheon speaker Wednesday at the Pueblo Technology Alliance's Smart Energy Systems Summit.

More than 50 people attended the daylong session at Colorado State University-Pueblo to hear Bowman and a number of experts talk about renewable energy and conservation.

Past alliance events have focused on the Internet and commercial applications of electronic commerce but this year's session was tied to a growing statewide interest in energy issues.

Bowman summed it up, saying, that as a "headwaters" state -- with its water flow east, south and west -- "Colorado should be the leader in renewable energy."

Bowman is on the national steering committee of 25 by '25, an effort promoted by farmers, environmental groups and others to shift 25 percent of the nation's energy supply to agricultural sources by 2025. That means not only biofuels like biodiesel and ethanol but wind farms, solar arrays and biomass.

Bowman pointed to a University of Tennessee study that showed major savings from shifting to agricultural-based energy supplies. He also pointed out that the real costs of using traditional fuels often are hidden.

"We don't talk about the $3 to $4 a gallon we spend to protect oil lines and the Strait of Hormuz," he said. "We have socialized costs of a number of these industries."

Bowman said that the effort has gotten bipartisan support in Congress, especially from lawmakers representing farm states, even as oil companies are beginning to resist the movement by making it difficult to sell high-percentage ethanol fuels at their stations.

"For a long time, they saw us as a 'boutique' industry," he said. "We're just now starting to see that pushback." Bowman added, however, that there are other retail channels for biofuels. "The big stores like Wal-Mart could be the answer."

That national retailer also was represented at the summit by Shannon Koonce, assistant manager of the Aurora Wal-Mart, which is one of two experimental stores in the nation utilizing renewable energy and materials.

Along with a new store in Texas, the Aurora store was built with large percentages of recycled materials. It uses solar and wind power to generate power and incorporates a number of design features to reduce energy use.

Thanks to skylights and windows, he said just after lunch, "We probably don't have a single light burning on our floor right now." Koonce said that peak power use at the store is actually at 4:30 a.m., just the opposite of most businesses.

Craig Elliott, of the local firm Sustainable Building Concepts, also discussed energy-efficient buildings, saying that they can not only save on power and heating costs but also reduce absenteeism by offering a healthier environment.

He said that including energy-efficient improvements can cost less than 2 percent more during construction but save 10 times as much over the lifetime of a building.