"Governor Douglas, may we tell you about biomass?"

After a small run around finding me a sub at the high school, I joined the team of students in a meeting with Rob Ide, who works with the Clean Energy Development Fund, so that we could talk about funding a demo project for a pellet burner-pelletizer micro supply-demand system. He asked us great questions, and though he doesn't have a lot of staff or time, he said he'd be willing to meet with us further about this idea, which was very exciting.

From there we went to the State House expecting to testify before the Senate Natural Resources and Energy committee, but they were not ready for us. But I should say we made an excellent use of our time while we waited (and eventually discovered that our slot to testify had been postponed). We found out that Addison County has received a $30,000 grant to do a feasibility study on putting in a pelletizer (thank you Will Stevens for that info!).

Meanwhile Greg Clarke from the House Education committee got us a meeting with Governor Jim Douglas and the Leuitenant Governor Brian Dube. So we talked with them for a short while. Governor Douglas mainly just took in what we were saying (we didn't bring up the tax part of it at all) and he seemed vaguely positive, though I'm sure that's him just being political. Afterwards he gave one of the students his card saying that he would like to meet with us further about this. Brian Dubie was very positive and wants to co-author some publications for his weekly newsletter about this - what legislator wouldn't want to claim this idea and working with kids?

Shortly after we went to the House Education committee to says hi mainly, and explain that what we're doing is good education.

The other piece that seems to be snapping into focus is a march/rally on Feb. 20th. That evening there is a public hearing on the effect of the rising price of fossil fuels on the Vermont economy. There will be a panel of experts, and then anyone can sign up for 2 minutes of speaking time, and you want to get there early to get a good time slot. So we're planning to meet at the high school and walk to the State House with signs, and we're hoping to call Bread and Puppet, and we're planning to alert the media. This is going to be fun :) hehehehe

If the students really do care, we've got to mobilize them around this issue.