BY AIMÉE CHRISTENSEN
The Sun Valley Institute works to build lasting quality of place, to strengthen our local economy, security and environment, and the Institute’s food program, the Local Food Alliance, leverages the power of food to strengthen our community.
This week Local Food For Thought is covering another sector that could benefit our county, state, and beyond: energy! The Institute was pleased to host a speaker series earlier this month in Boise and Idaho Falls called, “Driving Innovation for Idaho’s Prosperous Future.” The speakers hailed from the Idaho National Laboratory, Idaho Power, POWER Engineers, and the Risky Business Project and focused on how exciting new developments in energy could benefit our state. The following is the first part of an article, Idaho’s Business Opportunity: Energy Resilience, that the Institute’s executive director, Aimée Christensen, authored in Idaho Business Review’s October 5 edition. We hope this provides food for thought for our county’s future.
Idaho has an immediate opportunity: To capitalize on energy resilience. This will create Idaho jobs, bring revenue to the state’s rural and urban communities, and increase the security and reliability of our power grid.
The ways that we produce, distribute and use energy are undergoing a massive and rapid transformation. The recent deep decline of clean energy costs coupled with technology advancements are driving the growth of distributed, decentralized energy resources, with the military leading the way. Storage and microgrid technologies are becoming cost-effective, innovation is popping with things like digitalization and blockchain, and solar has accounted for 55 percent of all U.S. electricity added so far in 2018, according to Business Insider.
Governments, businesses, cities and communities are rapidly turning to clean, more local, reliable energy systems that can provide the energy resilience they need.
Read the full piece here: https://idahobusinessreview.com/2018/10/05/idahos-business-opportunity-energy-resilience/