"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.

Tony Klein says "Start a Demo Project"

Wow, what a fascinating meeting with Tony Klein (D) from East Montpelier.

The big things that came out of that meeting were:
We need to get in touch with the Clean Energy Fund to create a demo pelletizer system to prove that our idea works, which would be amazingly sweet because then there would actually be a local source of heating fuel! And then when people see that it's making a MAD profit other people will jump in! Which leads to the next thing we have to do:
Talk to the "chief number cruncher" for the state, I forget his name now, but get him to look over our plan and see if all our projections are roughly correct.
Lastly, we need to coordinate with a more extreme bill that's upcoming for a "March on Montpelier" which the high students are demanding. "They keep asking me, do you have a date yet, do you have a date yet, do you have a date yet?" So we'll just go... and make the point that
It's the young people's future, not theirs.
An incrementally increasing tax on fossil fuels would be good for the Vermont economy if that tax went into shifting our market to more locally-grown sustainable alternatives.

On a slightly separate note, today we found out that we have a date with Gaye Symington who's Vermont Speaker of the House, and when Tony Klein heard about it he said he'd try to be there as well.

He kept saying how impressed he was with this idea and at the end of the meeting he said, "you guys give me hope for the future". Sooooo yay :) It's not likely to be a bill which will pass this year, but we can get started with the demo project. In fact, that's probably going to be my new priority 1.

* rock! *

Tomorrow: meeting with Jock Gill to discuss the future of our high school's potential switch to biomass pellets!

Gosh, life is pretty exciting right now!