New energy conference looks at homegrown efforts

Springfield City Councilman Dan Chiles began floating the idea for the conference – Feb. 22-23 at the Gillioz Theatre and surrounding center-city venues – shortly after taking office last year. Chiles, who is vice president of marketing for Watts Radiant, said a constant barrage of media reports about the country’s voracious appetite for fossil fuels propelled the event.

“The world’s changing, and we are now hostages to an uncertain energy future,” he said.

Chiles estimated that residents of the Springfield metropolitan statistical area spend between $500 million and $600 million on coal, natural gas and liquid fuel annually. The councilman wants to find ways to keep those dollars at home by facilitating alternative energy efforts in the Ozarks.

Chiles hopes conference speakers – a mix of academic researchers, politicians and businesspeople – will help the region realize its potential for homegrown energy.

Biodiesel guru Bill Ayres with Texas-based Ag Bioenergy LLC and Tom Carnahan with Wind Energy Capital of St. Louis are among those representing the private sector. Local businessmen include Power Source Solar owner Nathan Jones and Dynamic Earth owner Matt O’Reilly, a green-building advocate.

U.S. Rep. Roy Blunt and U.S. Sen. Claire McCaskill are scheduled to make brief appearances Feb. 22.

Those from the academic arena include switchgrass researcher David Bransby, an agronomy and soils professor at Auburn University who has advised the Bush Administration, and Paul Risser, who is chair and chief operating officer of the University Research Cabinet at the University of Oklahoma. Risser will close out the two-day conference with an address recapping the myriad issues covered.

“I think there’s a very interesting array of speakers from a wide variety of topics,” he said. “My unenviable job is to listen to those and make sure that I can provide a good synthesis of what we’ve heard.”

Conference coordinator Jennifer Ailor said about 150 people have already registered for the event, which has a maximum capacity of 600. Tickets are $75 per person, which covers two breakfasts, a lunch and a Feb. 22 reception at the Discovery Center.

To register for the conference, call (417) 581-0745 or visit www.ozarksnewenergy.org. Ailor said the official registration deadline is Feb. 14.

See SBJ’s Feb. 11 issue for more about the Ozarks New Energy Conference.