What's the Connection Between Clean Energy and Climate Change?

State, national, and local experts will be talking about how climate change is affecting rural business, agriculture, forestry, and outdoor recreation and how rural landowners and businesses in our region can remain resilient during the 2014 Harvesting Clean Energy Conference.

Hear from leading experts and practitioners about the steps to successful clean energy projects that can help you cut costs and diversify revenue for your business or facility operations—be it on the farm, in the forest or in the city. Learn how you can improve efficiencies and produce clean energy, feedstocks, and co-products for yourself and for market. The renewable energy opportunities addressed include biofuels, woody biomass, microhydro, geothermal, solar, wind, and combined heat and power.

The conference is set for February 4-6 at the Red Lion Colonial Inn in Helena, Montana.

The Harvesting Clean Energy Conference is held each year in a different city in Oregon, Washington, Idaho, or Montana. The February conference will be the 13th in the series. Its organizer, NCAT, is headquartered in Butte, Montana.

Go online here for more information about the conference or to register: http://harvestcleanenergy.org

The website also has information on becoming a conference sponsor, a schedule of events, and information on previous conferences.

Here are just a few of the offerings you’ll find at the conference:

Changes in Climate and Landscape in the Northern Rockies

What does the future hold for the Northern Rockies landscape? This panel will describe regional climate trends, projections and impacts that we might expect in our forest landscapes due to changing climate.

Risk and Rural Resiliency: Economic and Social Impacts from Wind Energy Projects

Learn more about the social and economic impacts to rural communities brought by wind projects, both large and small. Speakers will discuss how local governments work with developers to maximize benefits and minimize challenges to development of large projects in addition to looking at the impact of small and medium-scale projects.

There also will be case studies about solar, hydro, and wind power, and biofuels production, among other topics.

The 2014 Harvesting Clean Energy Conference will be organized around five subject “tracks:”

Track A. The Big Picture: Economic and Environmental Realities of Clean Energy

Track B. Innovations and the Future of Clean Energy

Track C. Getting a Clean Energy Project Off the Ground

Track D. Risk and Rural Resiliency—How Climate Change is Affecting Rural Business, Agriculture, Forestry, and Outdoor Recreation

Track E. Alternative Niche Markets: Downstream Opportunities

Early Registration

The first 50 rural businesses and landowners who are involved in agriculture, forestry, and the clean-energy industry to register will get a $50 discount on the registration rate, bringing the cost down to only $145.

Registrants who sign up for the discounted registration should use the code HCE.

NCAT is a private non-profit organization that works to foster and promote sustainable technologies and systems, especially for the benefit of economically disadvantaged individuals and communities.

 

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