Virtual March thoughts and RI Forum recap

Thank you to those who attended the RI Forum. We received a front page article in the Providence Journal (RI's equivalent of the Boston Globe or NY Times) covering the event and Pickens Plan! This gave us better readership and exposure than any LTE I could write.

I would recommend this format for every DL. The Forum had 5 panelists, each gave a brief 10-12 minute presentation and opened the floor to questions. Dr. Earle Scharff, who did all of the planning for this event, moderated. I was one of the paneliests, allowing for an opportunity to share Pickens Plan with the audience. The paper states there were 20 folks there. I counted 43. I think he was excluding panelists and folks he interviewed. Regardless of the numbers who attended, we got great leverage from it. We have received requests from local groups to speak, invitations from alternative energy investors to participate in the process, and most importantly, visibility with with our DC Representatives and RI citizens.



VIRTUAL MARCH!
I hope everyone has a list of friends and family at the ready, who they will ask to reach out in letters, calls and emails next week for the Virtual March. We can create several million actions on our elected leaders to impress upon them how urgent the smart grid, transmission and renewable energy is to our future! Boone and his team will make it very easy, we just need to pass it on to all we know. Imagine if every one of the 3.2 million made 2 calls and asked one friend to do the same. That would be over 12 million messages to congress. Talk about an avalanche!

Have a lovely weekend all,
Kim



Here is a re-print of the article:

Alternative energy plan wins R.I. fans
Tycoon T. Boone Pickens' plan for reducing U.S. dependance on foreign oil has gained 3,000 followers in R.I..

07:24 AM EDT on Thursday, March 19, 2009
By Peter B. Lord
Journal Environment Writer

The tipping point for Kim Anderson came last summer. Gasoline was selling for $4 a gallon. The airwaves were filled with presidential campaign rhetoric. And then she saw one of the many advertisements from T. Boone Pickens, promoting his plan to get the country to stop using expensive foreign oil.


Anderson, meanwhile, was concerned about energy use in her home and home store in Barrington, as well as several nonprofit groups she worked with. Then she began studying the Pickens Web site and she found herself saying, “Wow, this is so simple.”

Pickens wants Americans to save the hundreds of billions of dollars we spend each year on foreign oil by conserving more, generating vastly more electricity with wind power and fueling our cars and trucks with U.S.-produced natural gas.

Anderson signed up on the Pickens Web site — he asks people to register to show their support. Soon, she volunteered to welcome new registrants by sending them brief notes. She has sent several hundred notes a day since last summer.

Now, Anderson is the volunteer coordinator for Pickens’ campaign in Rhode Island, where she estimates more than 3,000 people are registered supporters. Across the country, the total is more than 1.4 million.

Through National Grid, the state’s supplier of electricity, Anderson also signed up to purchase all of her power from renewable energy sources through People’s Power & Light. It costs $8 to $12 a month more, she said, but the extra costs are tax deductible. A total of 3,505 other Rhode Islanders have taken the same step.

Last week, Anderson and Earle Scharff, an optometrist, organized a renewable energy forum at Providence City Hall and attracted some of the state’s top officials who are working on energy strategies.

John Rupp, chairman of the Rhode Island Public Transit Authority, said that while the agency is phasing out the 25 trolleys it operates on natural gas, it has already gone out to bid for 10 hybrid trolleys, and the federal stimulus package should help it purchase as many as 75 hybrid buses.

Andrew Dzykewicz, commissioner of the state Office of Energy Resources, said the state is on track for generating 15 percent of its energy with an offshore wind farm by 2012, but a study has shown it could produce 75 percent with wind, if it chose to.

“We’ve got pretty good coastal potential” for wind generation, Dzykewicz said. “We have terrific offshore potential.”

Dzykewicz said he expected to see about $64.5 million in federal stimulus money coming to Rhode Island for energy conservation in low-income housing, energy-efficiency block grants and state energy programs.

Julian Dash, director of the state Renewable Energies Fund, described alternative energy projects funded by his office. And John Jacobson, a developer of energy efficient buildings, described innovations he learned about at a Boston energy conference last week. He also said Rhode Island is poised to become a national leader in minimizing its use of fossil fuels.

Two men from Maine who described themselves as “foot soldiers for Pickens” attended the meeting to show their support. Mike Anthony runs a drywall firm in Saco and Tom Peterson promotes what he calls “Super Energy Efficient” construction technologies in Windham. (Go to seeglobalorg.ning.com.)

Two other businessmen showed up to talk about how they were brought together accidentally at a recent energy expo at the University of Rhode Island. David Eldredge said he and his wife run a drilling and blasting firm in West Warwick that was never involved in anything “green.” At the expo they met Brian Lawrence, of Barrington, whose Lawrence Air System Co. needed someone to drill 100-foot holes for geothermal heating and cooling systems.

“We just want to get off this dependence on foreign oil,” Eldredge said.

About 20 others attended the event. Several took notes about every Web site and energy company someone brought up.

In an interview late last week, Anderson said she was pleased with the turnout. Governor Carcieri has signed on to the Pickens Plan, she said, but members of the state’s congressional delegation have not.

She continues to seek new supporters, and to urge people to sign up for Pickens’ Virtual March on Washington on April 1, an Internet activity that has already attracted nearly 2 million supporters.

Anderson and others said they were delighted that AT&T announced recently that it planned to replace 15,000 gasoline-powered vehicles in its fleet with vehicles powered by natural gas or hybrid engines. Pickens had lobbied AT&T executives to make the change.

Anderson said many people embrace the Pickens message once they learn about it.

“One at a time we educate people and change their paradigm of thought,” she said.

Pickens’ Web site is www.pickensplan.com.

plord@projo.com

The author even gave related links on his online article to the PP website!
Extra: Pickens explains his plan on his Web site
Pickens, a billionaire oil and gas executive, launched his own $58-million campaign last summer, to change the country’s dependence on oil.


PS I recently read a fantastic, all encompassing, article in WIRED magazine on renewables, the grid, transmission and more. Check it out.