Top Ten Energypreneur Benefits of passing HR 2454 Friday

10. People won't think you're as cooky when you run through the streets shouting "CLEAN ENERGY IS COMING! CLEAN ENERGY IS COMING!"

9. You can go back to school to get a degree in "Alternative Energy Engineering" or "Wind Power Science" or a BS in "Distributed Electricity Generation Sciences." The possibilities are endless becaue the bill invests in new academic programs for the green sector.

8. You can call your out of work cousin or uncle and say "I think I've found the perfect job for you: energy auditor."

7. In that vein, being "audited" won't be a bad thing. it will SAVE you money.

6. The real price of inefficency and pollution will finally be part of the price of energy, making pollution free, high efficient energy the force to be reckoned with.

5. New career in America: Carbon Trader. Mad Money will have a lot more to talk about.

4. A new excuse for Dad to use when he's at the store: "But honey, we need a new TV/Microwave/Stereo/Computer/DVD player - this one is MORE ENERGY EFFICIENT!"

3. Skilled tradesmen will have lots of work building new, highly efficient homes - and low income people who have homes from pre-1976 will get assistance buying new ones.

2. There will finally be a place to plug in your Chevy Volt besides the garage.

1. A new cultural phrase - "As American as green energy."

Be a Noah

While out in the yard enjoying the arrival of spring and tending to the work of getting things growing again outside, I listened to a chapter of Hot, Flat, and Crowded by Thomas Friedman that was incredibly fitting for the week ahead. As proof of how the universe works, the ideas presented by Friedman reinforced a conversation a friend and I had this morning over oatmeal and eggs: that the sustainability movement in residential energy as well as commercial has the opportunity to fundamentally reshape how we do things. However, the answer to a new sustainability model is not to wait for some megacompany to come along with the incredible single invention that will solve our problems. 

According to Friendman in the book, "Noah had one ark to save the earth's biodiversity in his day, and we need a million of them to save the biodiversity in ours....Some say the key to solving our energy problem is just one really smart Thomas Edison - one inventor who can come up with that magic breakthrough to generate abundant, clean, reliable, cheap power. Maybe."

I tend to think that's a very BIG maybe, and for that reason why sit around and wait. A friend and I spoke this morning about the immense opportunity green jobs and green entrepreneurship brings to our region, and just how few companies out there are engaging in the work now. We talked about how few people in our state today have the training and certification to engage in the work of greening energy, and if they are out there, we aren't all connected as we should be. 

If energypreneurs can muster the will and courage to take a leap into the business world, not only could we push the envelope when it comes to sustainable business practices in our region, but we could potentially create hundreds of good paying jobs and successful companies in the process.