At the Harvesting Clean Energy Conference and then a week later at the Sustainable Biodiesel Summit I ran into a few people involved in the 25x'25 Coalition. The first question out of my mouth was "what do you have going on in Oregon?" to which they answered "what do you want to do?" That's my kind of organization as well.
I've been reading up on them and I'm liking what I see. It's exciting to see policy goals phrased in the terms 25x'25 uses. Terms I fully understand and can get movitated by. Definitely allot more fun than doing CO2 math on the back of an envelope or talking about the need to change behaviors due to conflicting computer models. Their goals also side step quite a few of the divisive debates around biofuels or climate change as well.
According to the 25x'25 if the United States trasfered 25% of its energy usage over to American ag, forestry, and technology sources this capture of our energy usage at home would do several things. In a nutshell their goals:
$700 Billion in New Economic Activity
$180 Billion in new farm income with $37 Billion in 2025 alone.
4 to 5 Million new Jobs Created (many of these jobs in the poorest communities in the US)
-2.5 Million Barrels of Petroleum Consumed per Day
(by the way that's 105,000,000 gallons a day reduction in US petroleum needs)
1 Billion Ton reduction in CO2 emmissions
65 to 85 Billion Gallons of Biofuel a year
800 Billion Kwt's a year of Electricity (400 Billion of which would be biomass)
All the above from policy efforts refocusing on domestic energy production. With little efforts and slight tweeks to how we look at our energy portfolio in this country we could have a profound economic effect. Especially on those communities most in need and least interested in direct government programs.
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