Green Building Elements

Northwest cities do such an impressive job of leading urban America toward more planet-friendly living that it can be easy to overlook the region’s many rural landholders who are also paving the way to a greener future.

Beginning January 27, Portland, Oregon will be hosting farmers, ranchers and other agricultural professionals at Harvesting Clean Energy’s 8th annual conference. With an attendance of over 600 people at its 2007 gathering in Boise, Idaho, Harvesting Clean Energy’s event is growing every year.

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The conference covers a multitude of topics, and will include discussions on both farm-scale and utility-scale power technologies. Small-scale clean energy installations can help farmers manage energy usage for both their equipment and their buildings, and on the conference agenda are two break-out sessions which focus on “Powering the Farm”. The first, “Cutting Costs”, is a panel discussion which will include farm operators offering case studies on energy reduction and farm-related implementation of new technologies. Participants in the second session, “Renewable Energy” will share first-hand accounts of successful on-farm energy generation, including geothermal heating, solar application, and small scale hydroelectric generation. Several conference presentations will also discuss tax credits and exemptions that apply to clean energy installations.

But the scope of the Harvesting Clean Energy Program goes well beyond simply cutting costs on farm operations themselves. Coordinated by Peter Moulton of Climate Solutions, a nonprofit organization based in Olympia, Washington, the program educates rural landholders on the benefits of renewable energy and seeks to help them ‘harvest’ the potential of energy generation from their own land. Topics such as leasing land for wind power and producing crops for bio-energy applications are aimed at helping farmers expand the scope of their products, then reach viable markets for those products.

In the words of an HCE document titled, A New Economic Opportunity for the Rural Northwest, “Our nation’s landscape can be our primary energy source, with farm belts developing into energy belts growing clean and renewable fuels and electricity.” HCE hopes for nothing less than redefining the basis for America’s rural economy.

Image credit: Harvesting Clean Energy

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