Pete Weisenberger
Welcome to the Mississippi Biomass & Renewable Energy Council website. I am honored and privileged to serve as president of the council this year.
We believe every source of energy that is available from within our own boundaries must be represented and be a part of our energy solution. Our vision is rather simple—ENERGY SELF-SUFFICIENCY—available from friendly partners around the world and especially here at home. Not only is this a simple economic issue, it’s a national security issue. It’s not protectionism in the economic sense; it’s just common sense.
We have challenges and barriers that are preventing Mississippi from realizing its full potential. Barriers include financing, infrastructure, regulatory issues, education and research & development. We need constructive dialogue at a very public level to move Mississippi to the top of the renewable energy leadership list. MBREC is here to help facilitate that role.
We expect to be an unbiased, transparent source of information. Sound, peer-reviewed science will win in the marketplace, given a fair and equitable opportunity. We are here to work with everyone—industry, government, consumer groups—everyone is welcome in our ranks.
Our signature event each year is the Southern BioProducts and Renewable Energy Conference, held this past April in Tunica. From across the U.S. and Britain, scientists, researchers, students, public policy makers, legislators, state office holders and staff, lenders, investors, business people, consumers and a myriad of interested individuals came to the conference and heard a wide variety of talks and discussions about the possibilities of renewable energy—particularly biomass and bioproducts. Everyone there demonstrated a "can do" attitude. Now, I’m the least technical guy in the room. I’m a numbers man. But I could sense that we are on the verge of achieving something. It’s not a sprint, it’s a marathon . . . a long and never-ending marathon.
President John F. Kennedy, in 1962, made a commitment that we would put a man on the moon in that decade, and we did. "We choose to go to the moon," the President challenged the country "in this decade, . . . not because that will be easy, but because it will be hard—because that goal will serve to organize and measure the best of our energies and skills."
President Ronald Reagan, throughout his life and in his 1980s presidency, was an eternal optimist. He believed, just as President Kennedy did, that Americans, challenged to achieve a noble goal, would do so. He believed that it did not matter who got the credit if the job got done.
We can get this job done. We’ve only just begun.
