NMCC helps ‘Focus the Nation’ on clean energy
Staff photo/Scott Mitchell Johnson
THE MAINE EVENT, a clean energy forum held last Wednesday at Northern Maine Community College, was attended by nearly 100 people.
NMCC was one of only 23 sites nationwide, and the only one in the Northeast, selected to host such an event by Focus the Nation, a national non-profit organization dedicated to climate change awareness, youth empowerment and the acceleration of a transition to a clean energy economy. Among those who participated in the forum were, from left: Benjamin Dutil, student organizer; featured speaker Dr. Habib Dagher, former Maine Gov. Angus S. King Jr., who delivered the keynote address; Gene Martin, student organizer; and Natalie St. Pierre, who works in the NMCC development and college relations office and helped coordinate the event.
PRESQUE ISLE — Maine needs to be electrified.
That was the message delivered last Wednesday by former Maine Gov. Angus S. King Jr., who delivered the keynote address at “The Maine Event,” a clean energy forum held at Northern Maine Community College.
“We need to provide both home heat and transportation from electricity rather than oil because if we use electricity,” King said, “then we can have a variety of sources to make the electricity whether it’s natural gas, nuclear, coal, wind, hydro or biomass, and that will give us an opportunity to essentially substitute, or switch, off of oil.
“Other things like pellets have got to be part of the solution,” he said. “There’s no single answer, but one of the answers is oil is not the long-term future. If we don’t start changing that, we’re going to be in real trouble here in Maine.”
– Former Maine Gov. Angus S. King Jr.
Recognizing that 85 percent of Maine’s energy is based on oil, King said he hoped the nearly 100 people who attended the forum will start thinking “more broadly about energy.”
Photo courtesy of Northern Maine Community College
AS PART OF LAST WEEK’S clean energy forum held at NMCC, a panel discussion with six leaders in Maine’s alternative energy sector was held. The discussion was moderated by Shawn Cunningham of WAGM, left. Participating in the panel discussion were, from left: John Flannery, owner of John’s Electric and Solar, a business based in Patten that provides electrical, wind and solar services for residential and light commercial applications; Todd J. Griset, an attorney with the Preti Flaherty law firm’s energy and telecommunications group based in Portland; Virginia Joles, director of communications and economic development for Maine Public Service Co.; Wayne Kilcollins, wind power technology instructor and coordinator for New England’s first associate degree wind power program at NMCC; Andrew Plant with the University of Maine Cooperative Extension, who has been researching liquid and solid biofuel for farmers; and Paul Williamson, director and principal coordinator for the Maine Wind Industry Initiative.
“It’s not just electricity; it can also be heating and transportation. Plug-in cars are coming, electric heat for houses is coming, and we’ve really got to start thinking about this and we’ve got to move fast. Every time oil and gasoline go up $1,” he said, “$1 billion disappears from the Maine economy and that’s $1 billion that Maine people don’t have in their pockets to spend at the mall, buy a car, or do anything else. It has tremendous impact on our economy. Right now we’re tied to the railroad tracks and the freight train is headed our way.”
NMCC was one of only 23 sites nationwide, and the only one in the Northeast, selected to host such an event by Focus the Nation, a national non-profit organization dedicated to climate change awareness, youth empowerment and the acceleration of a transition to a clean energy economy. Garett Brennan, executive director of Focus the Nation, flew from Portland, Ore. to attend the local event.
“All across the country we build teams in September and October that work all year long to put on a clean energy forum at the end of February or early March,” said Brennan. “The purpose of the forum itself is threefold: 1) give a handful of students an opportunity to step up and become a leader in their community, 2) put on an event that’s actually very helpful and educational for the surrounding community of the college to learn about clean energy, and 3) to come up with a list of roadblocks and solutions … what’s that one thing that we can do? How do we break the inertia on the issue? What we can put our energy, brains and technical skills into to take that next big step as a college, a town and a state toward renewable energy and away from this dependence on foreign oil that is so volatile at any given moment of the day.”
Following the forum, the Focus Maine student team will compile the information and forward an action plan to the Focus the Nation headquarters. The national organization will then review all feedback and customize a support system to help teams keep event participants engaged and updated.
“We also look at all of the themes that are emerging from across the country and if the team in Houston has a similar kind of solution that they want to activate that is similar to the team from Presque Isle, we play matchmaker,” said Brennan. “We help the team in Houston talk to the team in Presque Isle and we let them go off and run.
“All of the student teams across the county are able to use our platform to broadcast and create exposure for all of the awesome things that are happening and that they’re working on in their town,” he said. “We’ll probably have a draft action plan by the end of March. Early April is when all the teams will go into implementation mode.”
With forums held on college campuses in Houston, Los Angeles, Honolulu, Las Vegas and Philadelphia, Brennan chose to personally attend the NMCC event.
“With NMCC’s wind power technology program, we saw something that was incredibly visionary, and pragmatic and practical at the same time. The community college here is in a position to crank out the future generation of employees, technicians and innovators that are going to launch a new industry that’s going to be able to supply power to states in New England — and even Canada if you wanted — and that’s something that we wanted to help tell the story of throughout the country,” he said. “I wanted to come to see what’s working here so I can share that story with other teams across the country that are struggling to find their sea legs to launch new efforts.”
The featured speaker at the forum was Dr. Habib Dagher, who is leading the state’s research efforts in deepwater offshore wind.
“I’m here to talk about the opportunities Maine has to create jobs by using its vast natural resources,” he said. “In this case, we have offshore wind, which is our largest renewable resource. The state of Maine has the equivalent of 149 gigawatts of wind, which is the equivalent of 60 nuclear power plants worth of wind, blowing every day of the week, every week of the month, every month of the year. The whole state of Maine only uses 2.4 gigawatts of electricity, so we have a huge resource that’s simply blowing off of our coasts.
“Our goal is to harness this resource cost effectively and bring it back home, and create jobs at the same time,” said Dagher. “Our goal is to be the world leader in floating wind technologies where you could manufacture these wind farms just like you build boats. This industry will support the entire state of Maine; we’ll need technicians, engineers, manufacturers of components and parts, so we’re looking at potentially thousands of jobs being created in our state by harnessing this wind energy.”
As director of the Advanced Structures & Composites Center at the University of Maine, Dagher is one of the world’s leading advocates for developing high-performance and cost-effective composite materials for advanced structural applications. The Center received major funding for its deepwater offshore wind initiative, including over $7 million from the Department of Energy to lead and coordinate the Deep Wind National Research Program, $12.4 million from National Institute of Standards and Technology, and $10 million from Maine state bond issues for the construction of the Offshore Wind Laboratory. Opening this spring, the lab will create a facility unique in the world for its capacities for the design, manufacture and testing of structural hybrid composite and nanocomposite components for deepwater offshore wind structures.
“Right now we collectively in the state of Maine ship out five billion of our dollars in fossil fuel prices. That’s our single largest export,” said Dagher. “If we can keep some of these dollars in Maine, we can create a lot of jobs. This plan — over time — will allow us to create up to 15,000 jobs; it’s a major opportunity for our state.”
In addition to the presentations by King and Dagher, the student-led event included a panel discussion with six leaders in Maine’s alternative energy sector. Participating in the interactive dialogue with attendees were John Flannery, owner of John’s Electric and Solar, a business based in Patten that provides electrical, wind and solar services for residential and light commercial applications; Todd J. Griset, an attorney with the Preti Flaherty law firm’s energy and telecommunications group based in Portland; Virginia Joles, director of communications and economic development for Maine Public Service Co., who is involved with Leaders Encouraging Aroostook Development and the Aroostook Partnership for Progress; Wayne Kilcollins, wind power technology instructor and coordinator for New England’s first associate degree wind power program at NMCC; Andrew Plant with the University of Maine Cooperative Extension, who has been researching liquid and solid biofuel for farmers; and Paul Williamson, director and principle coordinator for the Maine Wind Industry Initiative.
The day-long forum also included opening remarks by the two lead student organizers, Benjamin Dutil, who will be among the first wind power technology graduates from NMCC this May, and Gene Martin, a first-year student in the business administration program. Dutil and Martin worked collaboratively with Natalie St. Pierre in the NMCC development and college relations office to coordinate the event.
“At the beginning I couldn’t have imagined that we would have two rock stars like Gov. Angus King and Dr. Habib Dagher participate in our forum,” said Martin. “It was overwhelming.
“Being a business administration student, [helping to organize the forum] really helped me develop leadership skills, soft skills and how to work collaboratively with a team,” he said. “It was an honor to work with all these people, and I couldn’t be happier.”
Members of Maine’s Congressional Delegation also prepared remarks expressing their support for clean energy to share with “Maine Event” participants. U.S. Sen. Susan Collins and Congressman Michael Michaud both videotaped messages that were aired at the forum, while comments from U.S. Sen. Olympia Snowe were read by Snowe’s regional representative, Sharon Campbell.
