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Garvey Focuses on “Bottom-Up” Solutions
To Energy in Minnesota
On the Tuesday evening of February 27, the Full Committee of Senate District 41 Republicans convened for its monthly dinner meeting with a very crowded agenda. Co-Chairs Jerry Paar and Linda Presthus called the meeting to order at 6:25 PM and after the opening ceremonies and the dinner service, plunged right into the business of the evening. Al Heavens from The University of St. Thomas College Republicans, Linda Masica from the Edina City Council, Ron Erhardt our State House Representative from 41A and Neil Peterson our State House Representative from 41B one by one presented updates and comments on issues and events in their respective offices and organizations. 
Our keynote speaker, Ed Garvey is Deputy Commissioner for Energy and Telecommunications at the Minnesota Department of Commerce and his talk was especially timely in light of the recent energy bill signed into law by the Governor. He touched on a wide range of energy issues in an informative and relaxed presentation that broadened everyone’s view of the way government works in the area of energy efficiency and environmental politics. He described how his department organizes the problems into areas of transportation and electricity production and works to advocate the kinds of bottum-up market-oriented solutions that solve problems with a minimum of government intrusion in private affairs. He described the recently signed energy bill as the first of several bills meant to address different segments of the total picture with a set of flexible standards designed to do away with mandated spending on defined projects. In their place Minnesota will set out goals that define savings and increased efficiencies and allow producers to flesh out the details of how goals are achieved.
Throughout Mr. Garvey’s presentation he repeated the theme of “bottom-up” solutions that empower both producers and consumers in the quest for energy efficiency and the need for Minnesota to provide the power to fuel economic growth. As his presentation came to an end, Mr. Garvey addressed several questions from the floor and discussed issues like the practicality of nuclear power and the relative total efficiency of ethanol and wind energy and biomass fuels. In the process he brought up the notion of carbon content and carbon footprints as a unifying concept that could offer a more practical way to address political problems going forward and might make agreement on solutions easier to get to in the future.
As the evening wound to a close, the Chairs reminded all of us why we’ve worked so hard to make this the best BPOU in the state of Minnesota. Jerry and Linda said an emotional farewell that surprised and touched everyone in the room and reminded everyone of the challenges ahead and the monumental contribution of these two very special people.
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