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On June 8th and 9th the Southern Growth Policies Board held its 37th Annual Conference in Biloxi, Mississippi. Over 400 attendees, including 27 speakers and five Southern Governors, met to discuss Abundant, Affordable, American Energy.
Speaker
Presentations are
available for download, as are the 2009
Innovator Award Winners, and the Southern
Bioenergy Roadmap.
Highlights of the Listening
to the South process are also available, with the full
details to be included in the Report on the Future
of the South to be
released later this summer. Video and audio links of the Governors’ panel
will be available in the near future.
Please check back soon for more updates following this important conference.
Gov. Joe Manchin III—WV, Gov. Mike Beebe—AR, Gov. Haley Barbour—MS, Gov. Phil Bredesen—TN, and Gov. Sonny Perdue—GA, highlighted the conference speaking about energy issues and concerns particular to their individual states. Gov. Haley Barbour, the conference chair and host, moderated the discussion.
Southern Growth Policies Board created
the Southern Research Fellow Program to involve undergraduate
and graduate scholars in research related to the economy
and quality of life in the South. The Southern
Research Fellow Program promotes scholarship relating to economic
development and quality of life in 13 Southern states: Alabama,
Arkansas, Georgia, Kentucky, Louisiana, Mississippi, Missouri,
North Carolina, Oklahoma, South Carolina, Tennessee, Virginia
and West Virginia.
The 2009 Southern Research Fellow Program is focused
on regional economic opportunities relating to bio-products,
alternative energy, and/or energy efficiency. Eligible applicants
for the program included undergraduate and graduate students
aged 18—25
at colleges and universities in the 13 Southern Growth member
states. 2009 Southern Research
Fellow, Adam
Saunders, was selected from a
large, competitive pool of applicants from across the South.
For his research, Saunders conducted an online survey of
169 stakeholders in the wood-for-energy sector, including:
federal and state foresters, heads of university forestry
departments, and other representatives from the public
and private sectors. Survey respondents were asked to evaluate
four general policy tools and four specific state-level
policies related to the development and management of wood-for-energy
industries. Saunders presents findings of the survey respondents’ perceptions
of how various policies can meet certain criteria, highlights
differences in the perceptions of Southern and non-Southern
respondents, and offers specific policy recommendations based
on the results of the survey.
Download the report
here.
The SAFER Alliance has completed Bioenergy
State Fact Sheets for fourteen Southern states. The fact sheets are a
compilation of state-specific data that was presented in the Southern
Bioenergy Roadmap. The fact sheets provide data on: current energy
use, biomass resources, bioenergy commercial plants, research activity,
fueling stations, and more. All fact sheets can be downloaded
here.
For more information, contact Charity Pennock
at cpennock@southern.org.
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Pew Counts Clean
Energy Jobs and Finds Significant Growth
Pew Charitable Trusts - June 10,
2009
The number of jobs in America’s
emerging clean energy economy grew nearly two and a half
times faster than overall jobs between 1998 and 2007, according
to a report released by The
Pew Charitable Trusts. Pew
developed a clear, data-driven definition of the clean
energy economy and conducted the first-ever hard count
across all 50 states of the actual jobs, companies and
venture capital investments that supply the growing market
demand for environmentally friendly products and services.
Pew found that jobs in the clean energy economy grew at
a national rate of 9.1 percent, while traditional jobs
grew by only 3.7 percent between 1998 and 2007. There was
a similar pattern at the state level, where job growth
in the clean energy economy outperformed overall job growth
in 38 states and the District of Columbia during the same
period. The report also found that this promising sector
is poised to expand significantly, driven by increasing
consumer demand, venture capital infusions, and federal
and state policy reforms. Download the report.
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