Perriello talks new energy at roundtable

RUSTBURG — Rep. Tom Perriello held a roundtable discussion for new-energy leaders in the 5th District on Friday, and about 60 of them spent four hours brainstorming ideas to make the region a center of economic recovery.

Perriello said he would use those ideas as the platform for a meeting he hopes to have with U.S. Energy Secretary Steven Chu to convince him that Southside Virginia should be “the model for the new-energy economy.”

Southern Virginia is a resource-rich environment for renewable energy and independence, one discussion group said, dubbing it “the Perriello paradigm.”

Many of the business leaders and local-government officials in the room already were producing energy from farm products and methane gas from landfills. Others, such as Bret Aker of Charlottesville, talked about ways to improve cars that run on electricity.

“I’ve never seen so many Charlottesville and Southside people in a room before,” joked Perriello, who is from Albemarle County and pulled together support across the district to unseat former Rep. Virgil Goode in last fall’s election.

Energy resources in Southern Virginia range from farms that can grow fuel-producing switchgrass or canola, to research laboratories funded by the state Tobacco Commission in Bedford County, Danville and South Boston, participants said.

It also has high-wealth communities that can produce venture capital, one discussion group said.

Craig Nessler, who leads Virginia Tech research in biofuels, said he envisioned a new model for producing electricity: small generating plants running on locally produced biofuels in each of the Tobacco Commission’s 34 counties across southern and Southwest Virginia.

Soils are suitable for the fiber-heavy plants that are needed, and the climate is warmer than in the Midwest where farms produce most of the corn now being used for ethanol, Nessler said.

Solar-energy panels also could be deployed in the region, particularly in flat terrain, participants said.

Three municipal electric companies, in Bedford, Danville and Martinsville, could serve as prototypes for ways to manage a smart grid carrying power generated by different types of plants, from hydroelectric to biodiesel and other vegetation-derived fuels, participants said.

John Kennedy, director of research at the Institute for Advanced Learning and Research in Danville, said the region’s intellectual assets have only just begun to be used.

“The tobacco commission has planted the seeds” of economic growth for the region, Kennedy said.

“To grow, they need input from the federal government and local governments,” Kennedy said.

Perriello said the roundtable’s purpose was about winning.

Many of the ideas presented at the roundtable would constitute wins if they come to fruition, he said.

“I’d much rather win a championship” by making southern Virginia a national leader in energy, he said.