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24 March 2008
Renewable Minnesota
The speakers are Minnesota Governor Tim Pawlenty; Ralph Jacobsen, of Innovative Power Systems; Bob Gibbons, of the Minneapolis Transit System; and Roger Ruan, of the University of Minnesota.
The video was produced in March 2008 by America.gov.
(begin transcript)
Governor Tim Pawlenty: “Well, I come from Minnesota, which is the land of 10,000 lakes. There’s a deep and long conservation heritage -- environmental heritage -- in my state. We pride ourselves on that.
“Well, in the United States we have this great tradition of states playing the role of the so-called laboratories of democracy. And that’s certainly happening in the area of clean energy and greenhouse gas emissions.”
Ralph Jacobsen (Innovative Power Systems): “One of the things I see that’s really coming together here in Minnesota now is we are looking at what others have been doing, learning from that, and putting together the right pieces of the puzzle.”
Bob Gibbons (Minneapolis Transit System): “Well, clearly, it takes political leadership to set an agenda. Governor Pawlenty has been a strong proponent of environmental technology, a very strong supporter of the use of biodiesel.”
Roger Ruan (University of Minnesota): “What’s biofuels? (Laugh) Okay -- all those liquid fuels made out of biomass, to try to grow algae to see which ones produce a lot of oil. The main advantage of using algae is because it does not compete with food. If you use this wastewater to grow this algae, you can help clean up this wastewater. Algae is very efficient at utilizing CO2. It can actually reduce a lot of the greenhouse gas CO2 in the air.
Gibbons: “The public transit service here in Minneapolis-St. Paul is committed to reducing the greenhouse gas emissions. One of the things that we’ve been talking about is hybrid-electric buses. And this type of vehicle gets 26 percent better fuel mileage. It produces 90 percent fewer emissions than the buses in our fleet that they’ll replace. We wanted to prove their technology in our operating environment. Here we’ve got some pretty harsh winters, some pretty cold temperatures. It’s not black smoke belching out of tailpipes any longer. You want to be good to the environment by thinking about sharing a ride. We want to be good to the environment while you’re riding with us.”
Pawlenty: “You know, we’re starting to see communities saying, “As we plan our energy future and think about our community values…” -- they’re pitching in and adopting greenhouse emission goals.”
Jacobsen: “There’s a light rail line being planned for the corridor between downtown St. Paul and downtown Minneapolis.”
Gibbons: “No pollution from the train itself; it operates on electricity. And about 15 percent of the energy comes from renewable sources.”
Jacobsen: “There’s just an explosion of interest in solar energy. We can add solar energy into the mix in a way that can be tied to the light rail -- just to push that train down the tracks.”
Gibbons: “The train is energy-efficient and sensitive to the environment, and buses are as well.”
Ruan: “So there is a lot of interest right now from both the federal government and the state government -- and also from a lot of local industries.”
Jacobsen: “I’m part of kind of a groundswell to make it happen.”
Pawlenty: “Well, I think it starts with us as individuals. Everybody can do some things individually to use energy more wisely.”
(end transcript)
(Distributed by the Bureau of International Information Programs, U.S. Department of State. Web site: http://usinfo.state.gov)
