Friday, Aug. 25, 2006 | 7:22 a.m.
Illinois has 76,000 farms covering nearly 80 percent of the state's land area, according to its Agriculture Department. Most of the 28 million acres of farmland is used to grow corn and soybeans - crops that can be used for fuel as well as for food.
The abundance of corn and soybeans is at the center of an energy plan announced this week by the state's governor, Rod Blagojevich. He proposed spending $1.2 billion over the next 10 years on a "homegrown" approach to energy needs. His plan includes state investments in new ethanol, biodiesel and coal, and feedstock gasification plants.
"It means that if we make the right investments now, within 10 years, we'll be able to produce enough energy from our own natural resources to cut (Illinois') dependence on foreign energy in half," the governor, a Democrat, said of his plan.
We are impressed with the ambitious proposal, which takes advantage of resources that Illinois has at its disposal in plentiful supply. His vision has an uphill battle, as Democrats do not have the three-fifths majority they need in the Illinois Legislature to approve spending bills.
Nevertheless, the proposal represents a bold idea emanating from the governor's office, something Nevada has lacked for some time. Granted, the governor of Illinois is running for re-election, and his plan takes some of the wind out of the sails of the energy plan of his Republican opponent, who has said she wants to make Illinois "the clean-energy capital of the nation."
Even still, the plan is exciting, perhaps doubly so given that both candidates are promoting a new direction for their state that would address the national energy crisis while recharging their state's economy. Blagojevich says his plan would create 10,000 permanent jobs and an additional 20,000 construction jobs.
We would like to see Nevada's gubernatorial candidates come up with a plan this bold. In 1993, during a short-lived push to make Nevada a center for hydrogen production, using power from the sun, an analyst with the American Hydrogen Association told the Sun, "Nevada is among only about a half-dozen sites in the world where the solar radiation and land mass is ideal for solar-hydrogen production."
Supposing there had been enough political will at the time to get this industry moving? Nevada would be sitting pretty, with the energy crisis that was predicted at the time now fully upon us. We obviously don't have enough corn and soybean crops to form the basis of an energy plan, but we do have sun, land, wind and geothermal resources.
With the right leadership, we, too, could be making national news for our plan to help reduce this country's dependence on foreign oil.
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