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Friday, December 5, 2008
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Klobuchar tours area renewable energy firms
Associate Editor BAXTER - Sen. Amy Klobuchar, D-Minn., listened to Brainerd lakes area entrepreneurs discuss their renewable energy businesses and shared her own tale of unsuccessful attempts to burn garbage over a Bunsen burner in a seventh-grade science project.
The exchange took place at Silent Power Inc., a firm that makes products for the renewable energy and back-up power markets, at Baxter Industrial Park.
Klobuchar was on a two-day, 17-county Main Street Jobs Tour that focused on job opportunities with infrastructure and renewable energy products. Other area stops were made in Little Falls and Pine River.
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Sen. Amy Klobuchar, D-Minn., talked with Karlo Goerges and Mike Shervey of Pequot Tool and Manufacturing Thursday during her visit to Silent Power Inc. in Baxter. Klobuchar was on a Main Street Jobs Tour throughout the state focusing on opportunities for job creation on renewable energy projects.
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Brainerd Dispatch/Steve Kohls
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The first-term senator said she was part of the "Gang of 20," a group of 10 Democrat and 10 Republican senators who were working on a blueprint to help create energy jobs and establish needed infrastructure. She said that Minnesota has made great strides in areas such as wind energy the state has recently been "leap-frogged" by other states.
"We're proud that our state has been so innovative," she said.
It's important to create jobs on Main Street not just on Wall Street, Klobuchar said, adding that she wanted to support businesses that actually make things. She praised the "vigorous entrepreneurship" of companies such as Silent Power.
The senator said she would prefer to see investments in farmers and workers in the Midwest rather than oil cartels in the Mideast. The reasons she cited included national security and the environment.
"The answer to all of this is our own home-grown energy," she said.
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Sen. Amy Klobuchar, D-Minn. (left), talked with former state legislator Don Samuelson (partially obscured), former U.S. Rep. Rick Nolan, and Arnie Johnson, incoming chairman of board of Silent Power Inc., the Baxter business the senator toured Thursday.
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Brainerd Dispatch/Steve Kohls
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Next week, she said she'll travel with Sen. John Kerry, D-Mass., to Poland for a international climate change conference.
Silent Power CEO Todd Headlee said his firm employs 13 people and deals with 12 contractors. He hopes to soon double the number of employees and potentially employ hundreds of workers in five years. The jobs would be design, customer support and sales.
In a brief presentation Headlee showed the company's renewable inverter, an in-home battery standby system for solar energy. He said reports indicate there would be a 30 percent increase in U.S. electricity consumption by 2030. New technology, Headlee said, play a role in this demand since the addition of a plasma screen and a set-top box increases a household's energy consumption by 2.7 percent.
He said the federal government could help his industry by establishing an investment tax credit; considering a moratorium on capital gains investments on smart grid start-ups for the next five years and establishing an energy reduction tax credit.
MIKE O'ROURKE may be reached at mike.orourke@brainerddispatch.com or 855-5860.
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