MOUNT VERNON — In a conference call Wednesday, U.S. Sen. Sherrod Brown, D-Ohio, announced his new bill to promote green energy research and manufacturing. Brown said the bill’s incentives for the development of new technologies could help turn Ohio into the silicon valley of renewable energy.
“The next green energy company that can change the world is out there waiting to happen,” Brown said.
He then listed a series of cutting-edge research programs going on across the state, including the fuel cell research and development being done as a cooperative venture between Mount Vernon’s Rolls-Royce Energy Systems and Stark State College of Technology in Canton. Brown noted that he very much had the Rolls/SSCT program in mind when he was proposing incentives to help companies pursue bold, new ideas, instead of letting new energy development happen elsewhere, as has so often been the case in recent years.
“Great ideas are left on the drawing board,” Brown said. “Or worse yet, get produced overseas.”
Brown said green energy was inevitable, but that importing it wasn’t. He said the new bill would be an opportunity for Ohio, which has the experience, infrastructure and skilled labor pool for heavy manufacturing to find new industrial and technological jobs to replace the manufacturing jobs which have gone overseas. He added that “brown field” areas which have suffered massive losses of manufacturing jobs would be targeted for investment.
According to Brown, many small towns in rural areas are brown fields, too, due to the impact of job loss when even one significant manufacturer leaves.
The bill calls for $36 billion to be devoted to incentives and pilot programs over the next five years, starting with $1 billion the first year, and then going up each year. The grants would be distributed by a board of industry experts appointed by the president.
The bill does not indicate how these actions would be funded.
“If I had my druthers, we would end the oil industry tax breaks, the industry that’s making more than it ever has and more than any other industry,” Brown said, pointing out that those incentives amount to $18 billion every year. He also said that as the Iraq war winds down over the next few years, money being spent there could be applied to green energy programs.
Brown’s bill does not specify specific the types of energy research that would be funded.
“We’re not picking winners or losers here,” Brown said.
Instead, he said, it is designed to support research and development of any viable ideas, which could include such things as solar energy, wind power, ethanol made from switchgrass, hydrogen energy cells, biodiesel made from algae and more.
Brown added that he hopes to make his office a central source for the promotion of green development, which would include the expansion and promotion of local food systems, such as those being developed in Knox County by Kenyon College.
