We celebrated clean energy on Sunday July 5th under the wind turbine at Portsmouth High School! Conceived by Cool Aquidneck Island, the event was designed to educate Rhode Islanders about renewable energy and energy efficiency.
With a sunny and windy afternoon, with 25 exhibitors and about 200 visitors, the energy fair exceeded our expectations and received a lot of publicity.
We've posted photos below, and you can read our press clippings.
Newport This Week and the Newport Daily News both wrote long stories about the event; unfortunatelyl they do not make these available to read on line. On-line stories do appear at:
![[WWW]](http://wikispot.org/wiki/eggheadbeta/img/sycamore-www.png){kind=small}
''Newport Now''
Poster by Jeff Shainline.
Photos by Russ and Beth Milham, with permission.
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Kosmos & Thames, of Portsmouth, donated three of their beautiful science kits, which became the objects of a silent auction. The winner of the biggest kit, Power House, was Daniel Donnelly III. Daniel also aced the Scavenger Hunt.
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Our Welcome Table at the entrance to the exhibit area, manned by Ben Stookey.
At the left is the first question on the Scavenger Hunt: How thick is Earth's atmosphere. Answer, if the earth is the 21" green circle, 99% of our atmosphere extends out no more than one-eighth of an inch!
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Staged under the wind turbine at Portsmouth High School, the event enjoyed a cooling (and multi-kilowatt!) breeze from the southwest.
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Tina Dolen, Executive Director of the Aquidneck Island Planning Commission, and board member, Dick Adams, highlighted bike trails which would be created if the Commission's plan for the Navy land along the west shore of the island come to fruition.
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Rita Kerr-Vanderslice of Clean Water Action talks about the "pollution Patrols" she runs with kids at various organizations on the island. The group walks around town looking for particulate emissions (black smoke), excessive idling (5 minutes is the max permitted by local ordinance), and other impacts on global warming of our vehicles.
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The Sierra Club, one of the event's co-sponsors, promoted bicycling and walking. The club has helped to create a new transportation plan for Rhode Island, as a means of reducing the single-biggest producer of greenhouse gases in the state - transportation.
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The region's only producer of carbon-neutral fuel, Newport Biodiesel, brought a truck they use to collect the raw material for their biodiesel - used cooking oil from restaurants. The company's fuel oil is available for delivery to those who heat their homes with oil.
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People's Power & Light were offering to let you choose to have your electricity from entirely renewable sources, even though it comes through National Grid. The small surcharge for this power goes to subsidize the building and operation of wind turbines like the one whirring away over the Energy Independence Day fair.
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The energy activist organization Step It Up was asking visitors to pick the most important number in the world, and arguing for 350. If we can get the CO2 in Earth's atmosphere to 350 parts per billion, we will not experience global warming. Currently CO2 is at 390 and rising.
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Interfaith Power & Light introduced their program for congregation members to measure their carbon footprint, before and after taking steps to dramatically improve it.
Many visitors wanted to learn about how the Portsmouth wind turbine works and how it was erected. The organization responsible for spearheading the project, the town's Economic Development Committee (right), were there to explain.
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From Providence, Lights Out, Green In came to urge everyone to pledge to use less electricity for lighting, especially by turning off lights during the brightest hours of the day.
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The Rhode Island council of MoveOn.org, the citizen lobbying group, recruited members to their most active group, "the core," and talked with visitors about the clean energy legislation currently in Congress.
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Island Solar's photovoltaic panels facing south competed with the wind turbine facing west. Both will someday have a place in every community.
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National Grid unveiled a program in May to pay a bounty for people's old refrigerators, the kind that are very inefficient with the power they use. The company invited kidsto write 'good-bye' messages on this one.
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