Raleigh NC| North Carolina’s Green Machine

Creative Sparks Across the State Ignite New Energy Sources

Algae into engine fuel. Hog manure into electricity. One-man hydroelectric power plants.

North Carolinians are coming up with some new environmentally-friendly ideas to produce electricity and fuel within the state. These entrepreneurs are propelled both by President Obama’s promise to increase renewable energy and N.C’s recent law ordering an increase in the mix of energy production. Legislators have set the bar high. The goal is that 3 percent of total utility sales in 2010 will be renewable, growing to 12.5 percent by 2012.

To top it off, the N.C. Green Business Fund is offering up grants of up to $100,000 to promising technologies. With this incentive, more than 300 ideas have already been submitted this year.

Right now, these small ventures are creating little of the state’s energy, but they are going to be important factors in the coming years. To diversify the state’s energy sources and increase green energy, we’re going to need these projects to grow and multiply.

Solar farms and turbine-powered hydroelectric plants dot rural locations rarely noticed by the passerby, so how is word getting out? It’s important that entrepreneurs take advantage of green blogs and social media tools so their ideas can take flight. It’s only fitting; a modern social movement has the ear of modern social networking. An aggressive approach might yield results in a race to achieve the 12.5 percent goal by the end of Obama’s term.

Photo via Flickr