Mineral Area College to host Ag Energy Conference

PARK HILLS, MO (KRCU) - Mineral Area College will host a free Agriculture Energy Day on Thursday, August 4.

The field day will focus on energy production, opportunity and savings.

Topics will include energy efficiency on livestock farms, grant and loan opportunities, and sustainable wood energy using cottonwood and willow.

Conference organizer Van Ayers from the University of Missouri Extention in Bloomfield says the conference should appeal to a wide variety of interests.

“Farmers, entrepreneurs, people that are interested in policy I think should attend, especially those that are interested in energy policy would have an interest in attending this field day. Definitely people such as myself, you know, that are involved in education. I think it would be a good place to pick up some additional information,” Ayers said.

Mineral Area College’s facilities for its new Renewable Energy Technology program will also be on display. These include biomass production plots, a wind turbine, a solar power array and an ethanol production system.

Registration is available at the Mineral Area College website.

Jacob McCleland, KRCU

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Advancing Renewables in the Midwest conference held in Columbia

COLUMBIA, MO (KBIA) - Around 160 policy makers, business leaders and scholars came to Columbia for the sixth annual Advancing Renewables in the Midwest conference.

This annual one-day conference usually focuses on the use of wind, solar and biomass energy. But this year, conference leaders also sought out speakers who could describe the business side of renewable energy.

Frank Cunningham of Columbia’s Water and Light Department helped organize this year’s conference. He says they decided to focus on the economy after the topic resonated with participants last year.

“How can renewables help our economy? Because as everybody knows our economy has its problems, but in energy efficiency and renewables, there are jobs being developed, and there are new jobs out there in these markets, so we wanted to highlight some of those activities,” Cunningham said.

Speakers represented companies like Nordic WindPower, a wind turbine producer that is relocating to Kansas City, and Hubble Power Systems in Centralia, whose business making foundations for solar panels has created 60 jobs in the past year.

Doug Kirk, an engineer at Hubble, was part of a panel that discussed how companies are creating jobs in Missouri.

“Basically what we did was expand into a new market, expanded our customer base and just used the factory, the marketing and salespeople we already had and just chased a different customer base. And when we landed that business it was more than we could handle so we had to hire people,” Kirk said.

Other conference topics were how to attract renewable energy companies to Missouri, and measuring Missouri’s energy efficiency.

Lydia Mulvany, KBIA news

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