Energy issues take center stage

City Councilman Dan Chiles began floating the idea for the conference – set for Feb. 22–23 at the Gillioz Theatre and surrounding center city venues – shortly after taking office last year. Chiles, who is vice president of marketing for Watts Radiant, said a constant barrage of media reports about the country’s voracious appetite for fossil fuels propelled the event.

“The world’s changing, and we are now hostages to an uncertain energy future,” he said.

Chiles cited U.S. Department of Energy estimates that residents of the Springfield metropolitan statistical area spend more than $1.1 billion annually on coal, natural gas and liquid fuel. The councilman wants to find ways to keep those dollars at home by facilitating alternative energy efforts in the Ozarks.

“We are blessed with several important advantages in this region,” Chiles said. “We have farmland nearby. We have suitable growing conditions. … I think the best thing that can come out of this conference is that we come to a realization that we can do this.”

Solar energy to switchgrass

More than two dozen academic researchers, politicians and businesspeople are slated to address conference-goers.

Biodiesel guru Bill Ayres of Texas-based Ag Bioenergy LLC and Tom Carnahan of Wind Energy Capital of St. Louis are among those representing the private sector. Local businessmen include Power Source Solar owner Nathan Jones and Dynamic Earth owner Matt O’Reilly, a green-building advocate.

U.S. Rep. Roy Blunt, a Republican, and U.S. Sen. Claire McCaskill, a Democrat, also are scheduled to make brief appearances Feb. 22.

Those from the academic arena include switchgrass researcher David Bransby, an agronomy and soils professor at Auburn University who has advised the Bush Administration, and Paul Risser, chair and chief operating officer of the University Research Cabinet at the University of Oklahoma. Bransby will talk about switchgrass and other biomass that can be used to make alternative fuels. Risser will close out the two-day conference with an address recapping the myriad issues covered.

“There’s a very interesting array of speakers from a wide variety of topics,” he said. “My unenviable job is to listen to those and make sure that I can provide a good synthesis of what we’ve heard.”

Conference power

Aside from participating in a panel discussion about solar and wind power, Jones at Power Source Solar has agreed to engineer and build a bicycle-powered generator for the conference. Volunteer cyclists riding three bikes in rotating shifts will generate electricity for the conference, Jones said.

“We’re going to take that bicycle power and change it to 120-volt electricity and run the event off of that,” he said. “We’re also going to have it … interface with the utility grid, so if they’re generating a surplus of power, we can dump it back into the utility grid.”

Conference coordinator Jennifer Ailor said close to 200 people – some from neighboring states – already had registered as of Feb. 7 for the event, which has a maximum capacity of 600. Tickets are $75 per person, which covers two breakfasts, a lunch and a Feb. 22 reception at the Discovery Center.

To register for the conference, call (417) 581-0745 or visit www.ozarksnewenergy.org. The official registration deadline is Feb. 14, Ailor said.

Chiles said the conference isn’t geared toward hard-core environmentalists, but rather anyone who’s interested in learning more about cutting-edge alternative energy technologies.

“This is for everybody who complains about high energy costs or filling up your car,” he said. “We will make this worth your while. I promise it will be fascinating.”[[In-content Ad]]