Well, I'm not sure this worth a whole diary, but based on the tremendous volunteer response to this diary we now have three people with doctorates willing to help guide the creation of coursework designed to spread our stranded renewable development methods to the rest of the country.
We're going to do just that and I thought I'd share the initial message regarding this project and the link to what has been done so far.
The words of advice given to me by Bob Ebersole (RIP) last fall regarding my complaints about the lack of progress in this area ring true today:
"Quit griping about it and build your own damn wind farm!"
We're doing just that and you can, too!
Below is the letter that went out this morning to the twenty five people who signed up in response to that diary along with the project team for the plant we're going to build in Graettinger, Iowa, and a few select others. I had a nice call with a woman who has authored an environmental studies text she is in the process of updating and she'll be adding to the efforts Dr. Eric Zencey and Dr. John Holbrook of the Ammonia Fuel Network are already making.
Our class material is right here and we'll be fleshing this out over the next few weeks. I hope to see some of you joining up, hearing what we have to say, and then going off to build your own projects.
Ladies & Gentlemen,
I'm delighted by the response to the DailyKos diary about creating greencollar jobs, but I'm a little scared, too. The 25 new people who signed up mean we've now got 75 members and coupled with the local interest this project has generated I'm feeling just a little bit overwhelmed.
We're asking the State of Iowa for a grant to produce a training aimed at local activists who want to build their own version of what we're tentatively calling a "Graettinger Pattern Greenhouse". We're going to begin developing that material immediately, we need some guinea pigs for this, and here you guys are :-)
We think the class will cover the following aspects:
Assessment phase:
1. renewable resource assessment
2. power transmission assessment
3. water resource assessment
4. land resource assessment
5. road resource assessment
6. railroad resource assessment
7. labor force assessment
Plant module review:
1. variable electricity source design concerns
2. ammonia production
3. ammonia power generation
4. ammonia transportation
5. greenhouse & aquaculture sizing
6. air separation plant & associated businesses
7, incineration & other combustion related activities
8. ethanol plant integration
9 inputs, outputs, and identifying new modules
Stakeholder identification phase:
1. electricity generation, transmission, and distribution entities
2. water service providers, streams & lakes, and waste water handlers
3. local businesses
4. your economic development group
5. community colleges
Project design phase:
This is harder to bullet point, so we're going to do a review of the process we used here in Graettinger and hope we can abstract from that.
Funding your project:
1. local business support first - sell concept to community leaders
2. finding a grant writer
3. state & federal grants
4. who owns each module?
5. business plan writing
There will obviously be some web resources for this but email is a clumsy method of instructing. We're going to do conference calls, perhaps one hour a week, taking questions via email in advance and publishing them so we have an agenda.
This is probably the only time you'll get an email like this from me - the details of this are going to get fleshed out, anchored on the web site, and then if people want to participate there will be a defined process for them to enter the developer's program. If you have any questions or suggestions on the process please speak up - we're making this up as we go along and fully expect the ranks of contributors to increase pretty rapidly given the amount of attention these efforts are receiving.