http://www.martinsvillebulletin.com/article.cfm?ID=22141

Group links energy, national security

Monday, January 18, 2010

By GINNY WRAY – Bulletin Staff Writer

Alternative energy producers such as Red Birch Energy can help increase national security.

That is the message of the National Veterans for American Power Tour, which stopped in Henry County on Sunday.

“I don’t want to send friends into a war over energy,” said Lela Graham of Charlottesville, an Army veteran who was among those on the tour, which stopped at Red Birch Energy in Bassett Forks.

Graham and three others rode on a blue bus with “More jobs, less pollution, greater security” written on its side. The bus had been in Charlottesville on Saturday, and it was headed to Danville later Sunday where 5th District U.S. Rep. Tom Perriello was to meet with the veterans.

From there, the bus will travel to Missouri, Colorado, New Mexico, Arizona, Nevada, Washington, Montana, North Dakota, South Dakota, Nebraska, Minnesota, Wisconsin, Illinois, Michigan and Ohio, according to its Web site. The trip is sponsored by Operation Free, a coalition of veterans and national security organizations who see climate change as a threat to national security.

The veterans believe that America’s dependence on oil is providing funding to its enemies. Or, as Graham put it, the nation is “funding both sides of the war on terror.”

At the same time, climate change is destabilizing countries, “creating failed states which provide breeding grounds and recruiting opportunities for terrorists around the world,” Jon Powers, chief operating officer of the Truman Project and an Iraq war veteran, states on Operation Free’s Web site.

“There are 157 families in Virginia who would say that the cost of moving from fossil fuels to clean power is negligible” compared with the cost of the lives of Virginians lost in recent wars, said Chuck Tyler, an Army veteran traveling on the bus that stopped here. He was referring to the 157 Virginians who have died in recent wars.

During the bus tour, Operation Free volunteers are urging residents to ask their senators to vote for the Clean Energy Jobs Act, Senate Bill 1733, Tyler said. He called it a “first step in a move toward clean American power.”

That also is a goal of Red Birch. Graham, Tyler and National Guard veteran Stefan Stent of Washington, D.C., toured the energy company Sunday, three days after it received $750,000 in federal stimulus funds to install a system to use glycerin to generate electricity.

Glycerin is a byproduct of the biodiesel fuel produced and sold at Red Birch. Glycerin has little value now, but Red Birch part-owners Gary Sink and Dean Price plan to burn it to generate electricity to power their refinery and the Red Birch Country Market next door. If they have electricity left over, they will put it on the national electric grid, Sink said.

The beauty of the system, in terms of national security, is that it decentralizes energy production and removes the threat of terrorism, said Sink, a Vietnam-era Army veteran who said he “absolutely” agrees with Operation Free’s stands.

Sink pointed to the fuel tank farm outside Greensboro, N.C., as an obvious type of target for terrorists who want to strike at the nation’s transportation system and infrastructure.

“This model (at Red Birch) dispels the need for tank farms” because the electricity would be produced and sold on site, he said.

In addition, he said, for every $1 spent to make fuel in this country, 90 cents stay where the fuel is made and the other 10 cents go for taxes. “If you make it in this country, the money stays in this country,” he added, rather than funding terrorists around the globe.

The system also poses no environmental threat, Sink said, because all its raw materials are biodegradable.

He and Price said they had funded the operation themselves so far, but they could go no further. Their options were to wait for the economy to improve or ask the government for help, which they did.

But, Price added, they would not have received the money if they had not had a working model to show the viability of their idea.

They will use the money to develop a prototype for commercial burners. If that is successful, they hope to replicate the model at other Red Birch Markets by forming cooperatives with local businesses, Sink said.

It is, according to Price, a “world-changing idea” that is rooted here in Southside Virginia .

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