Tonight I was visited by someone from the Citizens Action Coalition of Indiana, and it inspired me to make the following plea to our nation’s leaders:

To our Leaders at all levels,

It’s time to get serious about Renewable Energy. This country has made some good steps, but it’s time for more serious action. We need a National Renewable Energy Standard (RES) for the United States. We need it for four reasons: environmentalism, to maintain our economy, to avoid an energy shortage, and for national security.

A Renewable Energy Standard is a plan that requires utilities to gradually increase the percentage of renewable energy in the total energy that they provide. Twenty states already have their own Renewable Energy Standards, and it’s time to follow their lead. This can be done locally, statewide, or nationally. With enough leaders at all levels working on it we will be able to have an impact.

I live in Indiana, and the main thing that has been in the news in this state regarding Renewable Energy is biofuel. Since we are a corn and soybean-growing state it makes sense to promote biodiesel, and I am very happy with the progress and the attention that biodiesel has gotten so far, but there is another area that deserves greater attention in Indiana and throughout the nation: wind.

I have just learned that most of the northern half of Indiana is more than suitable for wind power, and there are many, many areas in the country that are underutilizing their wind power potential. I recently chose to pay more in my home for electricity that comes from wind power, and I was amazed to find that they were going to import it all the way from a Minnesota wind farm. That’s three states away! It just doesn’t make any sense to me that we don’t have enough wind power generation in this state for our needs. Not only would it create jobs, and leave us with cleaner air, but even better then all the obvious benefits, there is a great double benefit for our farmers. A farmer could be growing soybeans or corn for biodiesel in the same field where he was farming wind. Not only would he get the income from the crop, but he would also get a nice chunk of cash from the operators of the wind farm ($5000-7000/yr from what I hear). Wind power is profitable very quickly and with current technologies, and unlike oil, we will never run out of wind. I have even read about farmers who have started their own wind cooperatives. We need to do as much as we possibly can to encourage this kind of thing.

The most pressing reasons for massive and immediate action to support Renewable Energy are our wars in the Middle East. Our citizens are overseas dying in wars that our own President now admits are not working. Imagine where we might be now with Renewable Energy if even a tenth of the money spent on our failed wars had been spent on energy research five years ago when we went to Iraq. Now imagine where we would be if ALL of it had been spent on Renewable Energy research. We could have taken the wind out of the sails of our problems in the Middle East. It’s surprisingly hard to imagine, but we could someday be free of foreign oil in a sustainable way, and that would make a number of our current foreign affairs problems vanish.

As a leader you are in a special position to make a greater change than someone like me. Most of the time issues that are even remotely environmental, like Renewable Energy, are seen as a Liberal crusade, but I think that most Americans would support action that would make us less reliant on foreign oil. Renewable Energy is an especially good choice since it can be cost effective (and cheaper in some cases), but it requires forward-thinking, planning, and government support. I am no expert, but it is my understanding that the petroleum industry enjoys special considerations from the government that Renewable Energy doesn’t get. It’s time to either level the playing field, or tip it the other way.

It’s not too late. Any action that you, as a leader, can take to make it easier, cheaper, cooler, or more profitable for greater use and development of Renewable Energy will create jobs, sustain our economy, clean our environment, save lives in our Middle East wars, and perhaps even reduce the threat of terrorism by getting us out of that region.

Thank you for your time, and thank you for your efforts to make our nation great.

Mark Hayward

More info on wind power