2009 proved to be one of the most successful years for the Tennessee Valley Corridor (TVC) since its inception nearly 15 years ago, according to TVC Chairman, Doug Fisher.

Fisher said, “Despite a tough economic climate, the Corridor managed to shine and grow, making significant progress and adding strong private sector investments to the list of regional wins in 2009. Between the Volkswagen assembly plant in Chattanooga continuing to grow and bringing thousands of new jobs to the region, and Nissan North America choosing to test its all-electric, zero-emissions vehicle, the Nissan LEAF, in markets across the state of Tennessee, the Corridor is proving to be the go-to region for advanced transportation in the South.”

“Other new investments taking root in the Corridor last year saw the advancement of our region’s initiatives in energy innovation. From Wacker Chemie establishing a billion dollar, 500-employee solar facility in East Tennessee, to approximately 40 farms across the state growing switchgrass to be converted to ethanol at a new plant in Vonore, Tenn., to TVA leading the way in renewable energy and nuclear innovation – 2009 also proved that the Corridor is leading the way in energy innovation and renewable energy research.”

Mr. Fisher added that the Corridor’s federal assets also attracted many new missions and new opportunities, which will result in new job creation.

He said, “With the new, expanding missions at U.S Army’s Redstone Arsenal and the potential of over 4,500 new jobs and thousands of more spin-off jobs coming to North Alabama thanks to BRAC; Y-12 National Security Complex achieving the highest nuclear weapon dismantlement through-put level in more than 25 years; and ORNL’s Jaguar supercomputer being named the world’s fastest in November, 2009, we have so many federal assets that continue to demonstrate why the Corridor has become one of the premiere science and technology regions in the nation.”

Mr. Fisher said a major driver for the Corridor has been the regular partnerships and teamwork throughout the region that comes from meeting and working regularly together across state and regional lines.

“Last year’s success in the Corridor was celebrated at our National Summit, which returned to the birthplace of these events – Oak Ridge, Tennessee,” said Mr. Fisher. “The very first National Summit was held in Oak Ridge nearly 15 years ago, and it was powerful to both look back at how far the Corridor has come, as well as to look forward to our future missions and opportunities.”

Mr. Fisher added that second successful event, the 22nd in a series of such science and technology conferences the Corridor has hosted, took place in Murfreesboro, Tenn. in late November and brought together over 400 regional and national leaders to help advance the entire Tennessee Valley.

He said, “From expanding the Corridor footprint to officially include the science and technology-rich region of Western North Carolina; to the Corridor’s Vets to the Valley initiative that is helping transition our nation’s Veterans from military service, through education, to employment in vitally important technical, scientific and engineering fields in the Valley; to forming a tangible connection between Oak Ridge and Huntsville by helping establish a new Oak Ridge-Huntsville Partnership Office on campus of UAHuntsville; to celebrating 75 years of the Great Smoky Mountains National Park – 2009 was a terrific year for our Corridor, and demonstrates we are a region on the move and poised to remain at the forefront of solving some of our nation’s greatest challenges.”

Mr. Fisher said 2010 looks even brighter. “The Corridor is already working on and planning for our next National Summit – set to take place in Washington, D.C. this May 25-27,” he said. “We look forward to connecting with our Congressional leaders where they live and work during this year’s summit, and look forward to bringing our regional leaders to Washington and showcasing all of the good work being done in the Corridor.

“Between this important National Summit, the new jobs and expanded investments in the Corridor from the continued growth in projects like the Volkswagen Supplier Park in Chattanooga or the new Confluence Solar plant in Clinton, Tenn., I have no doubt that one year from now we’ll again be revisiting what a successful year it’s been for our region.”

The Tennessee Valley Corridor is a multi-state regional economic development organization dedicated to promoting the Tennessee Valley Corridor as one of the nation's premier science and technology centers, and to leveraging the Valley's abundant research and technology assets and institutions for maximum regional economic development and new job creation.

Since it was started in 1995, the Tennessee Valley Corridor has built an alliance of community, business, education and government leaders through a series of regular regional economic summits led by the Corridor's bipartisan and multi-state Congressional delegation, made up of 10 Congressmen and spanning a five-state region, and a blue-ribbon board of regional leaders. These events have strategically linked the technology-rich Tennessee Valley Corridor -- from North Alabama through East and Middle Tennessee into Southwest Virginia, Southern and Eastern Kentucky and Western North Carolina.

Building on such regional assets as NASA's Marshall Space Flight Center, the U.S. Army's Redstone Arsenal, the U.S. Air Force's Arnold Engineering Development Center, the Department of Energy's Oak Ridge National Laboratory and Y-12 National Security Complex, the Tennessee Valley Authority, the Oak Ridge Institute for Science and Education, the Great Smoky Mountains National Park, the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration’s National Climatic Data Center in Western North Carolina, the National Transportation Research Center, the Center for Rural Development, the National Safe Skies Alliance, several world-class research universities and dozens of corporate leaders in science and technology, the Tennessee Valley Corridor organization has helped showcase the region's quality of life and the people, business, natural and scientific resources needed for high-tech research, development, business and investment in the 21st Century.

For complete information on the Tennessee Valley Corridor and the upcoming TVC National Technology Summit, please visit www.tennvalleycorridor.org.

Confluence Solar Inc. plans to build a $200 million solar manufacturing plant in Clinton, Gov. Phil Bredesen and company officials announced on January 21.

John DeLuca, a co-founder of the Hazelwood, Mo.-based company, said the 200,000-square-foot facility in Clinton is projected to create 250 jobs once it reaches full capacity. Depending on demand, that could be as soon as within 18 months, but the company said as few as 50 and 75 people will be enough to get operations started.

DeLuca, who once worked at Oak Ridge National Laboratory, said the choice of the site off Interstate 75 in Anderson County was strengthened by the proximity to the lab and to the new stimulus-funded Solar Institute at the University of Tennessee.

"For a small startup company like ours, it is hard to overstate the importance of being close to ... the people and the analytical resources available there," he said.

He also cited the polysilicon plants being built in Tennessee by Hemlock Semiconductor Corp. and Wacker Chemie AG. Both plants will produce the material used by Confluence Solar to make premium quality silicon ingots for solar cells.

DeLuca said 17 other Tennessee communities competed for the plant.

The governor noted that the announcement comes on the heels of another Clinton company, SL America Corp., winning a major contract to make automatic shifter assemblies for the new Volkswagen plant being built in Chattanooga.

"No matter what the weather is around the state, I think the sun is shining in Anderson County right now," he said.

Bredesen said Thursday's announcement was evidence that Tennessee's emphasis on green energy investment is paying off.

"I'm becoming convinced that it's increasingly difficult for companies in the clean energy sector to ignore the momentum that we're building in Tennessee," he said.

Bredesen said Thursday's announcement was distinct from efforts to attract what he has called a "major" commercial investment related to Tennessee's biofuels program.

Bredesen in November revealed the potential investment when he argued a legislative panel's concerns about Tennessee's involvement in the state's biofuel initiative could scare off the company. The panel later relented and approved funding for a pilot biofuel plant in Vonore, and the governor said he hoped to announce the commercial investment by the end of the year.

"This is not it," Bredesen told reporters after the Confluence Solar announcement. "It hasn't gone away, we're still working on it."

"We're appreciative to Confluence Solar for this investment in Anderson County," said County Mayor Rex Lynch on Thursday. "We're committed to doing our best to provide this cutting edge company with a world class workforce."

"Confluence Solar could not have chosen a better community in which to locate," said Clinton Mayor Scott Burton. "Confluence Solar will make Clinton, Tenn., an important center for new solar technologies and will provide good paying jobs in the process."

Robin Smith, a Republican seeking election to U.S. Rep. Zach Wamp's Third District congressional seat, said in a statement Thursday morning that she is pleased with the news.

"This is welcome news for our area," Smith said. "I am pleased to see the valuable resource Tennessee has in Anderson County paying off for our citizens.

"Confluence Solar will join the other companies and research facilities that have propelled Anderson County to the forefront of transforming the ways we generate energy," Smith said.

Wacker Chemical's North American chief spoke at a work force diversity forum in late January, saying he's "very excited" about the future of the company's operations.

While Wacker has announced plans for a $1 billion plant in Bradley County, company Chief Executive Officer Ingomar Kovar declined to speak with reporters about the project after the forum.

Dan Howell, executive assistant to County Mayor Gary Davis, said Wacker in the last 30 days has put up a sign on its Bradley site that states the plant is "coming soon."

"As far as I know, it's on target," he said, adding that Mr. Kovar likely had a tight travel schedule.

Wacker earlier this month was awarded $128 million in federal tax credits. To take advantage of those, there's a requirement it get grading or building permits by the end of the year, officials have said. The polycrystalline silicon factory would employ about 500 people.

Mr. Kovar, whose parent company is based in Munich, Germany, said at the forum that being different isn't bad.

"It's OK," he said. "I don't see different as a negative."

Gary Farlow, president of the Cleveland-Bradley Chamber of Commerce, said at the forum he gets questions all the time such as when will Wacker's plant start coming out of the ground.

"Just because you don't see something happening doesn't mean nothing's happening. There's a whole lot of things that have to go on behind the scene -- engineering, design, permitting," he said. "These things don't pop out of the ground overnight."

Christian Hoferle of Hoferle Consulting, who moderated the forum, said while Germans may appear to be overanalytical, behind the scenes they are moving.

"They may be moving faster than some of us think," he said.

Celia Schneck, human resources manager for Chattanooga wind tower maker SIAG Aerysin, said local people at the business that was recently bought by a German company are learning to work with their European counterparts.

She said at the Cleveland State Community College forum that Aerysin has business in the Czech Republic and France, and few of its customers are in the United States.

"We have to be flexible," Ms. Schneck said. "We have to adapt to customers' needs."

As the Hemlock Semiconductor plant rises from the earth, officials at the solar material manufacturing plant are already getting feelers from customers about locating near the Clarksville, Tenn., facility.

It's a sign of the trickle-down effect economic developers across the state are hoping for as Hemlock and Cleveland-bound Wacker Chemie AG — both world leaders in manufacturing polysilicon, the raw material of solar cells — put down roots in Tennessee.

Like the auto industry before it, these billion-dollar investments offer promise of a widespread boon to the state, should the firms attract peripheral companies in the photovoltaic industry.

However, an opportunity does not a given make.

Tennessee is competing both with states that present more attractive markets for solar products, as well as an industry already well-entrenched overseas.

While many are likening the state's solar boom to Tennessee's first automaker announcement a couple of decades ago, key differences exist between the two industries.

Large plants like those planned by Wacker and Hemlock start the solar food chain rather than complete it, therefore they don't automatically bring with them a host of suppliers, says Terry Strange, plant manager for Hemlock Semiconductor in Clarksville.

'It is pretty close to being opposite of what you have with the car manufacturers,' he says.

Building a solar panel, the product that comprises the bulk of the industry, begins with the creation of polysilicon, a semiconducting material also used to make cell phone and computer chips. That material is then sliced into wafers, which are treated to free up their electrons. The wafers are connected to wires to make solar cells, which are strung together with wiring, sandwiched by glass panels and, voila, the photovoltaic module is born.

That very basic description comes courtesy of Rhone Resch, president and CEO of the Solar Energy Industries Association, a national trade group for the solar industry.

Some companies, such as Sharp Electronics, buy the polysilicon from a company like Wacker or Hemlock, process it — in Sharp's case the material is sent to Japan to be made into solar cells — and make the panels. Sharp's solar panels are assembled in Memphis. As the industry develops, it's also becoming more fragmented, Resch says, with companies specializing in one or another component of the process.

'There's two business models within the solar space, one in which a company is integrated … where they will handle all the various aspects of manufacturing,' Resch says. 'And then what we've seen, and I think what we're going to continue to see, is greater specialization.'

One example is Confluence Solar, a St. Louis-based startup specializing in monocrystalline technology, one of two processes used to make wafers for solar cells.

The company, according to news reports, is considering Tennessee as a possible location for its manufacturing facility. Late last year, the Clinton City Council approved selling land to an unnamed solar manufacturer considering setting up a $400 million, 500-employee manufacturing facility. The company has not yet announced a decision on the site and a Confluence spokeswoman would not comment on the process.

How many such firms the state will land remains to be seen.

Demand soft within state

The United States is not yet a hot spot for solar in global terms, Resch says. In spite of federal stimulus dollars targeted toward renewable energy development, incentives remain largely a patchwork among states — and Tennessee is not leading the pack, he says.

European countries offer incentive programs for distributed generation of solar power, and Asian countries, such as Malaysia, offer perks such as a 20-year tax holiday.

'The U.S. federal government offers no federal incentives,' Resch says, although a potential renewable energy portfolio requirement in energy legislation passed by both the House and Senate looks promising.

Tennessee may be a good place to set up manufacturing operations thanks to good interstate access, cheap and consistent power, available labor, etc. Polysilicon manufacturers ship product all over the world, but other companies will also take into consideration the local market's potential for solar, he says.

Ranking Tennessee in the 'top 10' states for solar economies, Resch says that Tennessee doesn't merit top billing because 'there's no natural market that's developing' for solar.

'You've really got to export most of your products outside the state,' he says. 'It's critical if Tennessee wants to see more jobs that they create a market within their own state.

'For example, the No. 1 state (for solar) in the country is California. The no. 2 state is New Jersey,' both in terms of market and solar-related jobs, he says. Those jobs come both from business coming into the state and from companies serving New Jersey's residential and business customers adopting solar thanks to state incentives.

In the meantime, changes in overseas markets are beginning to drive investors to at least window shop in the state.

In early January, a European investor looking to set up large solar installations toured Tennessee, meeting with state officials in Nashville as well as local business leaders in Knoxville.

Spain, which through aggressive national incentives created the world's No. 1 solar market has since backed off the program, leading companies to seek greener pastures. Germany is also reducing the amount it pays for solar-generated power.

Companies from Europe and elsewhere are 'looking at this country as an opportunity,' says Stephen Levy, executive director of the Tennessee Solar Energy Association, which recently was chartered in Knoxville. The group helped coordinate the local meeting with the European investors.

For now, conversation is virtually all that's come of the two polysilicon manufacturers' decision to site plants in Tennessee.

Still, says Strange, 'I would say it's positive that they're even thinking about it and asking about it.'

The number of workers building Volkswagen’s Chattanooga auto assembly plant has topped the 2,000 mark, according to officials.

Construction of the $1 billion factory slated to start production in little over a year is meeting deadlines, they said.

“Overall, building is on schedule,” said Don Jackson, VW’s president of manufacturing for the automaker’s Chattanooga operations.

Thilo Brockhaus, VW’s construction project manager, said that about 2,100 workers are on site at Enterprise South industrial park.

Mr. Brockhaus said it was just nine months ago that the first structural column for the initial building, the facility’s future paint shop, was put into place.

Officials have said the number of construction workers at the site likely will peak at somewhere under 3,000.

Mr. Jackson said equipment for the plant’s body shop is starting to arrive. Installation of paint shop equipment is about a third finished, officials said.

In addition, Mr. Jackson said maintenance personnel, those who take care of the highly technical equipment, have started training at Chattanooga State Community College.

He said about 400 permanent VW employees have been hired so far, with production workers being brought on in numbers early this year. VW is slated to employ more than the 2,000 workers.

“It’s such an exciting time,” Mr. Jackson said recently. “People have new careers, new opportunities. This is the most exciting phase to see new people learn new jobs.”
�
The VW official also said that with a tight 2010 construction time schedule, the company has taken key steps related to work safety.

“We have a number of contractors working in a small space,” Mr. Jackson said. “If they work individually, they don’t have a clear vision of how to work efficiently and safely.”
�
He said the company has implemented a team activity that gets contractors together and establishes clear working zones.

“Through our efforts we’re working very safe to keep the project on time,” Mr. Jackson said.

Volkswagen officials said that it is starting work on a 500-employee supplier park next to the main VW assembly plant that is due to go into production early next year.

Frank Fischer, VW Chattanooga president, said work will start on the supplier park soon and it should be ready by June. He said it will feature two buildings that are each over 220,000 square feet.

There will be a Volkswagen facility manager for the supplier park.

Mr. Fischer said at least six companies will occupy the supplier park. He said contracts are still being worked out with the firms and they could not yet be named.

They will supply such items as exhaust systems, tires and wheels, front and real axles, fuel tanks, seats, floor carpets, headliners and door panels, brake corners, center console kits, wire harnesses and front and rear fascia.

He said the motors will mainly be coming from Mexico, but some motors will arrive from Europe. The gearboxes are produced in Japan.

Mr. Fischer said Volkswagen would prefer that the motors and gearboxes be produced as close to the plant as possible.

Officials said VW has hired 350 employees thus far at the main assembly plant - with a majoring coming from Hamilton County. It will eventually have 2,000 workers. There are expected to be 9,000 spin-off jobs from the VW operation. The Gestamp firm, one of the main suppliers that will be in a separate area near the plant, will provide 230 jobs.

The first group of production team members will be hired this month.

Officials said VW has met its minority quota in the hiring thus far.

Mr. Fischer said the complex process of putting together the huge assembly plant "is still completely on schedule."

He did not give any new details about the vehicle to be produced at the plant, but showed visuals of a sleek compact car. He said VW recently premiered a new compact coupe hybrid at a car show in Detroit. It gets 56 miles per gallon and includes a 27 horsepower electric motor.

Mr. Fischer said Volkswagen is continuing to meet with suppliers, including a third session held Thursday. He said they are being admonished to stay on the tight schedule the main plant is following.

He said equipment is being installed in various portions of the assembly plant, and he said the training center is also rapidly being equipped and will begin worker training soon. The first robots have been put into place at the plant.

He said the assembly plant was built larger than originally planned to accommodate the possible need to build additional vehicles.

Local components sourced to Tennessee firms stands at $307 million, he stated.

A Wolfsburg, Germany-based information technology services company has leased office space in downtown Chattanooga with plans to hire 30 people within 12 months and up to 100 in two to five years.

Honigsberg & Duvel Corp. is seeking work from Volkswagen and other companies, said Claudia Raabe, vice president of the Chattanooga office.

"Our main focus is automotive services," said Ms. Raabe. She said between 60 percent and 70 percent of the company's work in Germany is for VW, which is also based in Wolfsburg.

Steve Hunt of Berry and Hunt said Honigsberg & Duvel Corp. is leasing space at One Central Plaza, 835 Georgia Ave.

"We're excited to have H&D here in downtown Chattanooga and in our building," Mr. Hunt said. He said the building is owned by Chattanooga businessman Jim Berry, and Brenda Purcell of Re/Max Renaissance Realtors assisted Honigsberg & Duvel Corp.

VW is building an auto assembly plant in Chattanooga with plans to hire over 2,000 workers and start production in the first part of 2011.

Ms. Raabe said her company has its own IT training center in Germany, and officials hope to develop something like that here over the next five years.

"We do a lot of desktop services and office maintenance in the IT business," Ms. Raabe said. She said company officials plan to open the office later this month.

Ms. Raabe said the business works for VW affiliates Skoda in the Czech Republic and Audi in Ingolstadt, Germany.

Honigsberg & Duvel Corp. employs about 1,200 people worldwide at more than 20 locations.

SL Tennessee LLC, the first South Korean firm to locate in the state, recently announced a $35 million expansion of its plant in the Clinton/Interstate 75 Industrial Park that will add 300 jobs.

Work on the new 100,000-square-foot building is expected to begin in about a month and is targeted for an October completion, Anderson County industrial recruiter Tim Thompson said.

The company makes gearshift assemblies, parking brakes and lighting products. It is a parts supplier for General Motors, Hyundai, KMG and Volkswagen.

The company last month became the first firm to win a contract from Volkswagen Group in North America to supply parts to the new VW plant now under construction near Chattanooga.

SL Tennessee will supply automatic shifter assemblies for the new midsize sedan that will be built at the Chattanooga-area site. It will also supply VW production in Puebla, Mexico.

The Clinton expansion announced today was in the works before the VW contract was awarded, Thompson said.

He said behind-the-scenes efforts to land the expansion began in November, and there was stiff competition for the project involving another company site in another state.

"We had a month time frame to get everything taken care of," Thompson said.

"SL Tennessee's expansion is a testament to the strong business climate we've worked hard to create," Gov. Phil Bredesen said. Bredesen and Economic and Community Development Commissioner Matt Kisber joined SL Tennessee officials in making the formal announcement of the project.

SL Tennessee has expanded three times since it located in Clinton 2001, Thompson said.

The current facility includes 164,000 square feet of building space. Thompson said the company recently purchased five acres from Clinton for the expansion at a cost of $15,000 an acre. He said the company has an option on another 10.5 acres.

A massive, $1 billion office park serving Redstone Arsenal could begin sprouting from the ground near Interstate 565 and Research Park Boulevard this spring.

Huntsville Mayor Tommy Battle said the city, the Army and private developers are closing in on a deal to turn a 470-acre field near the arsenal's Gate 9 into offices for the Rocket City's growing defense community.

It will eventually include 4 million square feet of office space - roughly half the size of Cummings Research Park - and employ about 14,000 people, Battle said.

"This project is basically going to be Cummings Research Park South," he said.

Plans also call for two hotels, restaurants and some retail - things like copy shops and dry cleaners that cater to office workers. The park is expected to be under development for about 20 years.

The project will help in the short term, Battle said, by providing much-needed elbow room for Huntsville's many defense firms. And it will position the city well for the next round of military base consolidations in 2015, he said.

"It's a visionary plan to continue Huntsville's success," Battle said Friday. "Our children and our children's children will definitely see a benefit from this."

Outlining the deal

Battle, Redstone commander Maj. Gen. Jim Myles and others sat down with The Times' editorial board last week to explain how the complicated "Enhanced Use Lease" deal - three years in the making - will work.

The land, which is owned by the federal government and generates no taxes today, would be annexed into Huntsville and the office park buildings subject to property, sales, liquor and lodging taxes.

Battle said he anticipates a "financial windfall" of about $80 million just from sales taxes on construction materials.

The park's developer, LW Redstone, would finance things like access roads, water lines, sidewalks and streetlights by purchasing a $76 million municipal bond from the city. Bond money would also be used to relocate the Gate 9 visitors center and an electric substation.

Battle said the city would repay the company for its infrastructure investment, plus interest, using property tax money from the new office buildings - 50 in all, costing about $30 million each.

The city's obligations: run sewer lines to the property; spend $2.5 million moving Gate 9 deeper into the arsenal on Rideout Road; and oversee all infrastructure work on LW Redstone's behalf.

A bill to be introduced in the Legislature in Montgomery this week would allow Huntsville to form a special tax increment finance (TIF) district needed to make the deal work.

The plan, which will be presented to the Huntsville City Council and Madison County Commission in the coming weeks, minimizes risk to taxpayers while giving LW Redstone strong incentive to move forward quickly, Battle said.

The faster the company puts up tax-producing office buildings, the faster it pays off the bonds.
"I can't think of anything that could be structured any better to protect the citizens of Huntsville," Battle said.

"Somebody else is financing the infrastructure, then they're getting paid back by the (tax) revenue generated by their buildings."

'Unique to the Army'

Once LW Redstone pays off the bonds - it has 35 years to do so - all property taxes generated by the $1 billion development would revert back to the city, state and Madison County.

However, 5.5 mills of the total 58 mills in city property taxes collected on the buildings would flow to local schools from the beginning, Battle said.

LW Redstone is a partnership formed by Montgomery commercial developer Jim Wilson, who built the swanky Riverchase Galleria shopping center in Hoover, and a publicly traded company that Battle said won't be revealed until later.

The developers would pay the arsenal a minimum of $2 million per year to help with base maintenance, he said.

Myles said the project is "unique to the Army" and would help solve an office space crunch on the arsenal that will grow more critical with the transfer of another 2,800 military jobs over the next two years.

"We're trying to fast-track this as much as possible because of the dire need," Battle said.

The bulk of the office park will be on arsenal property just outside Gate 9, but about 80 acres behind the fence would be reserved for companies with greater security needs.

Because the park is meant to support the Army's mission, Battle said Redstone leaders would have "veto rights" over its tenants.

Gate 9, used by more than 20,000 federal employees and contractors every weekday, will be shifted about 3/4-mile to the south, Battle said. The visitors center, which sits on land earmarked for the office park, will also be torn down and a new center built farther south.

Myles said he wants to change the fencing in that area so people can get to the arsenal golf course and Officers' & Civilians' Club without having to pass through security.

Those facilities have required security checks since the Sept. 11, 2001, terror attacks.

Crown jewel

Battle said most of the office park will be LEED-certified, a designation given to buildings that conserve water and energy, reduce carbon dioxide emissions and generally tread lightly on the planet.

Said Joe Vallely, the city's economic development director: "I think it's going to be a crown jewel."

The bill pending in the Legislature would allow the establishment of TIF districts on annexed land next to federal installations, including Redstone, Maxwell Air Force Base in Montgomery, Fort Rucker in Dothan and Anniston Army Depot.

Its House sponsor, Rep. Randy Hinshaw, D-Meridianville, is optimistic the bill will be dealt with quickly. State Sen. Tom Butler, D-Madison, will shepherd the bill through the Senate.

"It will be co-sponsored by the entire (local) delegation - everybody is on board," Hinshaw said Thursday. "So we should be in pretty good shape."

He said the bill will likely be introduced Tuesday and referred to the County and Municipal Government Committee chaired by Rep. Bill Dukes, D-Decatur.

"Usually the Speaker (of the House, Rep. Seth Hammett) is very good about allowing us to get our economic development issues up and handled by the entire House," Hinshaw said. "So, I'm optimistic.

"BRAC is our number-one priority as far as future economic development," Hinshaw said, referring to the Pentagon's next Base Realignment and Closure decision. "This is a continuation of making sure we're prepared."

By the numbers

$76 million: Cost of access roads, water and sewer lines and other needed infrastructure
14,000: People that will eventually work in the office park
20: Years it will take to complete
4 million: Square feet of office space, equivalent to four Sparkman Centers
3/4 mile: Distance Redstone Arsenal's Gate 9 will be moved south on Rideout Road
350: Hotel rooms for visiting federal employees and contractors
$80 million: Estimated sales tax income from construction materials

About 160 to 170 local business leaders attended a fast-paced, high energy breakfast meeting sponsored by the Oak Ridge Chamber of Commerce recently at the DoubleTree Hotel.

The C. of C.'s annual "Program of Work" kickoff breakfast featured discussions regarding billion-dollar budgets, Oak Ridge's "volunteer" spirit and, yes, even retail.

Guest speakers included the U.S. Department of Energy's Gerald Boyd, ORNL's Thom Mason, Ted Sherry of the National Nuclear Security Administration (Y-12 Site Office), B&W Y-12's Darrel Kohlhorst and Oak Ridge Mayor Tom Beehan.

"2010 is a bright time for Oak Ridge," said Chamber Board Chairman Chuck Hope, who acted as master of ceremonies for Tuesday morning's event — and encouraged everyone to don the sunglasses placed on their tables.

During their separate addresses to those attending Tuesday's breakfast meeting, both Hope and Mayor Beehan predicted more retail activity in Oak Ridge "over the next 12 months."

Referencing everyone's busy schedule these days, Chamber President Parker Hardy challenged members of the business community and the community at large to volunteer their individual talents toward a more collective effort.

"It is not about time, it's about heart … a heart for this community," Hardy said.

In one of the more emotional points in the program, John McKittrick of the ORNL Federal Credit Union, accepted this year's Eugene Joyce Lifetime Achievement Award; while Mike Belbeck of Methodist Medical Center of Oak Ridge was recognized as the Chamber's "Volunteer of the Year."

"It's very easy to get involved in this community," Belbeck said. "And if you're not involved, I would encourage you to do so."

Read more about this event and other local news items online and in Wednesday's print edition of The Oak Ridger, your hometown newspaper for more than 60 years.

More than 650 people from across Rutherford County commemorated the community's successes of 2009 and heard the Chamber of Commerce's vision for this year at the annual Business at Its Best celebration.

Blake Smith, 2009 chair of the board for the Chamber, cited the recent groundbreaking of the new Chamber of Commerce and Visitor's Bureau that is currently under construction along Medical Center Parkway, acquisition of Claimtrust headquarters, Nissan's EV battery plant, the VA billing center and future Wei Chuan manufacturing and distribution plant as achievements that were accomplished even in a down economy.

"Where in the world would you rather be?" he asked the crowd gathered at Embassy Suites Hotel and Conference Center in Murfreesboro Friday evening. "Where is there a better place for successes?"

Smith also touted the retention of TSSAA's Spring Fling high school sports championships and acquisition of the U.S. Youth Soccer National Presidents Cup in Murfreesboro as revenue-driving victories from last year.

The event also included recognition of several local business professionals for their service, including Business Legend of the Year recipient Bob Spivey.

Various testimonials from community members offered praise and gratitude to the former Smyrna mayor and businessman, who was said to have grown the city's employment, residential and commercial opportunities by managing the city like a business. He resigned only after suffering a stroke last year, but even now continues to invest in numerous endeavors throughout the county.

In his acceptance speech, Spivey spoke of growing the area around Sam Ridley Parkway and how Smyrna can put 12,000 people to bed, feed them breakfast in the morning, offer a place for them to get gas and shop all while watching a movie in the 14-screen cinema.

"We don't send people to other cities to spend their dollars," he said.

Murfreesboro City Manager Rob Lyons also received an honor at the celebration. He was presented with the Leadership Rutherford Pinnacle Award for answering the call of duty in the aftermath of the Good Friday tornadoes, as former city manager Roger Haley was out of town at the time.

"He's an exceptional leader, and the leadership he displayed during the tornado was simply extraordinary," said Paul Lamb, Leadership Rutherford president, who presented the award.

Kim Kersey received Diplomat of the Year award for putting in countless hours to recruit businesses to join the Chamber.

Also recognized for his efforts in growing a business was Allen Jackson, pastor of World Outreach Church, who was awarded Business Person of the Year.

Ringing in its 30th anniversary as part of the community, World Outreach has grown from 150 members to more than 6,000.

"He is a true business leader," said award presenter Norman Brown. "It's simply amazing how he's grown the church (by) expanding facilities and adding new jobs."

Brown, who officially accepted the gavel as the 2010 chair of the board for the Chamber, offered his goals for the year, beginning with the grand opening of the new Chamber of Commerce and Visitor's Bureau.

The board also plans to enhance the Chamber's branding through new marketing techniques and a new website and logo. Additionally, Brown said 2010 goals aim to increase the Chamber's programs to include more government and community events, as well as increase Economic Development's efforts and focus.

"We should appreciate our successes and not dwell on misses," Brown said, adding that near-misses demonstrate the county's competitiveness with organizations across the country.

He challenged everyone in the room to move forward together. Should it happen, success will take care of itself, Brown said, citing Henry Ford.

This mindset is exactly what keynote speaker Bryan Townsend emphasized in his address.

"You can't be the best if you don't care and put your heart into it," he said. "You don't become the best unless you care enough to get it right."

Through a series of comedic anecdotes, Townsend encouraged attendees to "take your right foot, slap the accelerator to the floorboard and give it everything you've got."

Gov. Bev Perdue recently announced the recipients of federal Recovery Act funding for energy efficiency and renewable energy projects, of which a large portion – $739,756 – is coming to the AdvantageWest region.

"Main Street" energy project funding recipients:

• Morganton (Burke Co.): $101,995 for energy efficiency upgrades involving two condo-units and eight businesses belonging to five properties in the Main Street district. Properties are incorporating energy upgrades including insulation, heating and air conditioning units, hot water systems, lighting, appliances, windows, toilets, general weatherization, awnings and roofs.

• Spruce Pine (Mitchell Co.): $66,938 for the installation of a solar photovoltaic system to be located on the roof of a vacant service station in downtown Spruce Pine. The solar system will produce a 12.3 percent energy cost reduction in the first year of operation for Craftsmen Inc./The Calafate Group. The energy generated from the solar system will be used to partially offset the costs associated with operating drying kilns which are used in the manufacturing process to dry, sterilize, and convert large sections of tree bark into the company's "Bark House" brand exterior shingles. Funding will also assist in energy efficiency upgrades of three kilns. In total, the project represents a 52.3 percent reduction in energy use by the manufacturer.

• Hendersonville (Henderson Co.): $52,200 for energy efficiency upgrades in three Main Street businesses as well as a street-lighting retrofit. Upgrades include heating and air conditioning equipment retrofits, insulation, solar hot water installation, lighting retrofits and occupancy sensor controls. The changes will result in an overall 40 percent reduction in electricity use by the business owners. The street lighting retrofit includes the replacement of 32 light fixtures on Main Street with LED light fixtures for a savings to the town of $11,500 annually.

Energy Efficiency and Conservation Block Grant program recipients:

• Valdese (Burke Co.): $200,000 to replace one pump and one variable frequency drive in Lake Rhodhiss Wastewater Treatment Facility's influent pump station and replace three fixed mechanical aerators with a smaller, more efficient aeration system.

• Asheville (Buncombe Co.): $200,000 to Buncombe Co. Schools to continue a lighting retrofit program by replacing 17,720 lighting fixtures with high-efficiency fixtures in 11 school buildings.

• Morganton (Burke Co.): $118,622 for five projects: Install updated heating and air conditioning controls in several buildings to provide greater efficiency; upgrade the heating and cooling management system in Morganton's Municipal Auditorium; install occupancy sensors in bathrooms and offices in multiple buildings; retrofit for more efficient lighting in several locations; and insulate Community House.

More grant funds come to the region

In addition to the grant funds described above, there have been more awards recently made in the AdvantageWest region. The Town of Hudson (Caldwell Co.) recently received $250,000 in Community Development Block Grant funds under the Small Business Entrepreneurial Assistance (SBEA) program from the Division of Community Assistance. The SBEA program is part of an ongoing statewide effort to assist small businesses and encourage place-based economic development. Learn more about the SBEA program via email from Valerie Moore, the Division of Community Assistant Community Development Financial Consultant, or by calling 919.733.2850.

Excuse the employees of APT Research if they seem a little exuberant this weekend.
The Huntsville company learned it has been awarded a contract worth more than $209 million from the Missile Defense Agency and add more than 100 jobs.

"We had a celebration," said Myra Swoope, the company's human resources manager. "We're excited."

APT Research, an employee-owned business, is one of three winners for the Missile Defense Agency engineering and support services (MiDAESS) contract to provide engineering support services to the Redstone Arsenal-based MDA. APT's award is for Quality, Safety and Mission Assurance (QSMA) support.

"This has the potential to be the largest single contract in APT's history," said Meredith Hardwick, vice president of contracts and accounting.

APT is the prime contractor and its team includes companies such as SAIC, Cobham, Wyle and MTI, among others. APT, which was founded in 1990, has 75 employees at sites in Research Park, as well as Cocoa Beach, Fla.; Yuma, Ariz.; and White Sands Missile Range, N.M.

"This is a major milestone in APT's history," said company President Tom Pfitzer. "We have been posturing ourselves for this type of prime contract for the last 20 years.

The $209.6 million contract could bring up to 120 jobs.

"This work is an outgrowth of previous work we have performed for the Missile Defense Agency, including THAAD, GBI, GMD and others," said Saralyn Dwyer, vice president and MiDAESS program manager. "It is exciting to have the opportunity to manage this consolidated program."

A recently awarded $209 million Missile Defense Agency contract will likely lead to more jobs in the area.

Houston-based Bastion Technologies received one of three MDA Engineering and Support Services QSMA contracts, each valued at over $209 million.

Bastion has 200 employees at its Huntsville operations and is the only contractor responsible for all QSMA services at Marshall Space Flight Center, supporting programs such as the space shuttle and the International Space Station.

"Bastion (is) pleased to be selected by MDA and eagerly accepts the challenges for providing world-class QSMA services to ... MDA programs and projects," said company President Jorge Hernandez.

The Bastion team includes Millennium Engineering and Integration; Tybrin, a subsidiary of Jacobs Technology; Safeware; and Acta.

Bastion's 700 employees provide QSMA services to four NASA field centers, the Army's Redstone Safety Office and the Air Force's Vandenberg Flight Test Center. QSMA, a critical component of product development, ensures the safety and quality of the product from development through witnessing the tests.

"Our team has current experience working with MDA, we understand MDA's requirements, and we will continue to work diligently with MDA, build on our current experience and implement cost savings and innovative approaches resulting in the highest quality, safety and mission assurance services needed now and into the future," Hernandez said.

"Bastion looks forward to not only assisting MDA, but also bringing new jobs and growth to the Huntsville community."

There's no reason for a city to be there, just a stream and a broad Appalachian valley. But Joseph Anderson wanted a city, and in the 1850s he willed one from the ground after a railway company built its state-line terminus on his father-in-law’s farmland. He named it, oddly, Bristol, after one of England’s biggest ports. “Paradise” was his second choice. Now, after the decline of the area’s timber and coal industries, paradise is what Bristol has left to sell. The city’s cost of living is 20% below the national average. The mountains beckon, as does NASCAR’s Bristol Motor Speedway. And Bristol offers what 87% of America’s towns and counties lack: the optic-fibre internet.

Bristol, Virginia and Bristol, Tennessee face each other across State Street, six blocks with a restored art deco theatre and 14 empty shop fronts. To the north, electricity comes from Bristol Virginia Utilities, which answers to the city council, a common arrangement in rural America. In 1999 BVU ran optical fibre among its substations and city offices, at first purely for internal use. It used its fibre to save the city money on its phone exchange, but local businesses soon wanted the same service. Home internet service followed in 2002. Then, with $9m in state and federal grants, BVU pushed its fibre north to eight counties in Virginia’s Coalfield region.

And the fibre brought jobs. In 2007 both Northrop Grumman, a big American defense contractor, and CGI, an international IT consultancy, said they would hire between them 700 technicians, consultants and call-operators at offices in nearby Lebanon, Virginia, part of BVU’s fibre backbone. Both cited the area’s universities and low cost of living, but neither would have come without BVU’s investment, which Northrop calls absolutely critical. A 2010 paper by Jed Kolko for the Public Policy Institute of California found evidence of a causal relationship in America between the arrival of broadband and employment growth; and the lower the population density, the stronger the effect. Wes Rosenbalm, BVU’s boss, sees the equation much as Joseph Anderson did 150 years ago. “Broadband is jobs,” he says. “This is the next depot, the next highway.”

Should cities be in the business of providing fast internet access? It depends on whether the internet is an investment or a product. BVU could not afford to maintain its fibre backbone without selling the internet to consumers. And it could not build a subscriber base without offering cable television and a telephone line as well; households these days expect a single price for all three services. This has put it in direct competition with firms that already offered limited DSL and cable-modem access, which are fast enough for watching YouTube but not for Northrop Grumman. Fibre is expensive, and a purely commercial business would not have been minded to pay for it.

All this is true for much of rural America, and it is an analogue of the reason why municipal utility companies were launched in the first place: to electrify thinly-populated areas where commercial utilities would not go. But it also raises the prickly question of competition. The Federal Communications Commission will have to take up this matter when it sends its broadband plan to Congress in March. Since 1995, at the urging of telecoms companies, 18 states have erected barriers to entry for municipal utilities. In Florida, projects must prove positive cash-flow within four years; in Minnesota they require 65% approval in a referendum.

Rick Boucher, south-western Virginia’s representative in Congress and a key figure in securing BVU’s expansion grants, supported wording in the 1996 Telecommunications Act which, he thought, protected the right of “any entity” to enter the market. But many states have ruled that local governments are not “entities” in the required sense, an interpretation confirmed by the Supreme Court in 2004. Mr. Boucher is trying to get a more watertight bill passed. In his district—just as when the railway came—when the fibre arrives, towns throw parties.

A pioneering new fuel cell technology -- born in Silicon Valley and nurtured and tested, in part, at UTC's SimCenter -- could usher in a new approach to how electricity is created and distributed.

Bloom Energy CEO K.R. Sridhar unveiled his long-awaited "Bloom Box" on February 24th in Sunnyvale, Calif., nearly a decade after the former NASA scientist developed the concept to make oxygen for a planned mission to Mars.

When the Mars venture was scrapped, Mr. Sridhar revised his invention to make power instead -- without any electric wires and with only about half the carbon dioxide emissions of most other electricity generation.

"In five to 10 years, we would like to be in every home," Mr. Sridhar told Leslie Stahl on "60 Minutes" Sunday night.

A version of the power-generating box successfully was tested at UTC's SimCenter. By April, a 100-kilowatt Bloom Box will be placed on top of the EPB building in downtown Chattanooga, similar to other such devices now working to power corporate giants such as Walmart, FedEx and Google.

"We're just delighted that folks in Chattanooga were able to play a part in helping this exciting venture, and it looks like it's about to go gangbusters," said Joe Ferguson, EPB chairman and a director at Chattanooga's Enterprise Center, which helped direct federal aid for testing the device.

Backed by major California venture capitalists, Bloom Energy reportedly has raised nearly $400 million to develop and produce the Bloom Boxes. But company officials have yet to announce any prices or production schedule.

LOOKING FOR LOCAL BOOST

When they do, Chattanooga boosters hope to use their support and ties to the invention to secure a piece of the potential energy bonanza.

"We're now at the commercialization of this technology which we have been involved with for a long time," said U.S. Rep. Zach Wamp, R-Tenn., who helped secure nearly $10 million in U.S. Department of Energy and naval propulsion grants over the past six years to help nurture the project with tests at University of Tennessee at Chattanooga's computer simulation center.

"This could have a tremendous impact for the world in creating new energy sources that are not connected to the grid and which are cleaner and more efficient than much of today's generation," Rep. Wamp said.

U.S. Sen. Bob Corker, R-Tenn., said local manufacturing of fuel cell equipment has been his dream since he traveled in 2002 as Chattanooga mayor to meet with Mr. Sridhar, known as K.R., when the business venture began as Ion America in a small office in California.

"We wanted to see if there was anything we could do in Chattanooga to tie into the technology of Silicon Valley," he said.

Sen. Corker said the Bloom Boxes offer the prospect of cleaner energy generation without having to run transmission lines to remote areas. They can use a variety of fuels such as natural gas or biomass fuels for power and, when mixed with oxygen through the patented layers of the box, generate electricity.

"When you think of remote areas like in Africa, where I was recently, this really could transform the way power is delivered in our world," Sen. Corker said.

However, some remain wary of claims the box can generate clean, efficient power at a reasonable cost.

"I'm hopeful, but I'm skeptical," Michael Kanellos, editor of Greentech Media, told "60 Minutes." "The little plates (inside the Bloom Box) have to work not just for a day or a week but for years, and then they have to get the price down to a reasonable level."

In the crowd for today's announcement of the Bloom Box in California will be the SimCenter's Dr. McDonald, who served as Mr. Sridhar's mentor when the fuel cell project was birthed at the NASA's Ames Research Center.

"This offers tremendous potential, and our tests for K.R. have shown that it works," Dr. McDonald said.

Over the past five years, the SimCenter has conducted a variety of simulated tests on the reliability, flow patterns and output of the Bloom Box system.

The governor and a gaggle of corporate and college officials will gathered recently in Vonore to christen the nation's first biorefinery dedicated to turning switchgrass into "grassoline."

Officials hope the demonstration plant, which also uses corncobs as raw, non-edible material for making ethanol, will prove the process is economically and environmentally sound.

DuPont Danisco Cellulosic Ethanol LLC and University of Tennessee-Genera Energy LLC will show off the 74,000-square-foot demonstration facility that can produce 250,000 gallons of ethanol from agricultural residue and bioenergy crops. The venture between Knoxville and Chattanooga is aimed at starting commercial fuel production by 2012.

Genera Energy was organized in 2008 as a partnership with the university at Knoxville to refine cellulose and carry out capital projects of the university's Biofuels Initiative, a farm-to-fuel business model funded by the state to create a renewable energy industry.

David Richesin, who was recruited about three years ago to grow the common prairie grass at his farm in Philadelphia about 20 miles from the refinery, said he will attend the afternoon ceremony that is to include remarks by Gov. Phil Bredesen.

"The idea of green energy and all, I think it really has a great chance of working," Richesin said.

The Democratic governor has said that "when it comes to the production of clean energy and alternative fuels, (this) is an area where Tennessee can and should take the lead."

Tennessee is spending $70 million on the non-edible switchgrass initiative, which has been informally tagged "grassoline." That includes $40 million for the biorefinery and $30 million for research into growing, harvesting, storing and transporting it.

Congress has mandated sharp increases in ethanol use, requiring refiners to blend 12.9 billion gallons of biofuels in 2010, of which 12 billion gallons would be ethanol, which is mostly made from corn. The mandate soars to 36 billion gallons, mostly ethanol, by 2022.

In December, the Environmental Protection Agency said it wants more tests to determine if car engines can handle higher concentrations of ethanol in gasoline before it decides whether to increase the maximum blend from 10 to 15 percent.

Richesin said he had quit his dairy business and decided to plant on 39 acres of pasture too rocky and steep for row crops like corn or soybeans. He now has about 85 acres in the crop that is supposed to provide a profit of about $100 an acre.

Richesin said switchgrass is "extremely slow to germinate" and a lot of material to cut, bail and handle.

He said his switchgrass "averages 8 or 9 feet tall and is very thick," compared to hay.

"It is not as profitable as row crop farming but better than pasture or hay ground," he said.

Richesin is among about 40 growers who are getting state subsidies to grow the tall, thin plant that is native to the Great Plains, with the hope that the new demonstration facility will lead to a major biorefinery operation.

Supporters of cellulosic ethanol believe it can help expand the biofuels industry.

Ethanol, an alcohol obtained from the fermentation of sugars and starches, is used as an additive to or a replacement for petroleum-based fuels.

Ken Goddard, a biofuels specialist with the university's extension service, said the refinery venture "has outstanding potential for improving income in agriculture."

He said more than 2,600 acres of switchgrass have been grown in the region and another 3,000 acres may be added this year.

"We are just very excited," Goddard said. "We have so much potential. We think agriculture is certainly the most efficient way to increase our energy independence in this country."

At the University of Tennessee, Joe Bozell is seeking ways to make high-value chemicals used in everything from auto parts to nanotechnology from a humble blade of grass.

Switchgrass, which has received lots of attention as a source of biofuel, will become the ultimate feedstock for a biorefinery built by the state in partnership with Dupont Danisco. The demonstration plant, which initially will produce ethanol from corn cobs, started production late last year and held its grand opening recently.

The 250,000-gallon plant will serve as the last step for Dupont Danisco in development of biofuel from the so-called cellulosic sources before taking the process commercial.

But longer term, the facility also should give researchers a platform for development of new fuels, chemicals and energy sources, and that will hopefully draw additional research dollars along with private investment to the region.

That's already beginning to happen. Since the state announced a $70 million investment in the biofuels demonstration plant along with development of a switchgrass supply to feed it, the university and Genera Energy, a for-profit UT spinoff, have been able to leverage the project to get additional funding for related endeavors. Last fall, Genera and UT received approximately $7.2 million from the Department of Energy for further development of switchgrass as a bioenergy feedstock - from comparing plant varieties to testing harvest equipment - and Genera CEO Kelly Tiller has said more such grants are in the offing.

In addition, Gov. Phil Bredesen has indicated that an investment associated with the bioenergy facility should be coming soon, although the timeline for the announcement has lapsed beyond his initial prediction of prior to the end of 2009.

"It's really impressive when you sit back and think about it," said Tim Rials, director of research and development for UT's office of bioenergy programs. "At the end of the day we have a unique … large-scale laboratory."

Valuable Side Business

The new biorefinery not only will serve as a lab for the scientific and engineering aspects of bioenergy production, it will demonstrate the economics of the new industry, too, according to Bozell, professor of biomass chemistry in UT's Institute of Agriculture. And part of the key to that success is to expand beyond the confines of ethanol production, he said.

Bozell is one of a number of researchers across the country exploring how to make chemical products from biomass. For years, petrochemical corporations have used higher value industrial chemicals to improve the profitability of their plants, he said, and the same potential exists with plant-based replacements.

"We've got a good model in today's petrochemical industry," Bozell said.

"There's no reason why the biorefinery will not also benefit from a similar type model."

To that end, Bozell has several projects targeting different types of chemicals that could ultimately tie into a biorefinery such as the one in Vonore. While there are tens of thousands of chemicals to choose from, researchers are aiming for chemicals or families of chemicals that can be produced at the lowest cost and have the potentially biggest impact, he said. Polymers make up a big category of such materials and go into products such as coatings, films and automotive parts. Nanotechnology is another research focus, he said, as are composite materials that replace petroleum-based products, at least partly with material derived from biomass to deliver products such as decking or structural components of cars.

These materials would be derived from the same primary ingredients as required for biofuel production. Of a plant's three primary ingredients - cellulose, hemi-cellulose and lignin - cellulose and hemi-cellulose are the most useful for ethanol production, rendering lignin a waste or byproduct, as Rials likes to call it. "Nothing is waste," he said.

Indeed, researchers are looking at ways to transform lignin from a biofuel byproduct into useful material. Bozell has teamed with Purdue University to pursue production of high value intermediate chemicals and liquid fuel from lignin, and Oak Ridge National Laboratory is testing lignin's potential as a source for carbon fiber - super tough, lightweight material used in aerospace and automotive applications.

In other words, stronger, lighter-weight, more efficient cars of the future could end up being made of the same grass they will run on.

Although most attention at present is focused on the demonstration plant to be operated by Dupont Danisco, an adjoining, smaller process development unit will allow researchers to test new products and processes at a reduced scale. Construction of the unit, which will have an approximately 1,000-per-gallon annual capacity, is now under way with completion expected by the second quarter of this year, said Rials.

The ribbon-cutting for the biofuels plant may be this week, but it will take years to realize the future potential for the plant beyond Dupont Danisco's immediate objectives to commercialize cellulosic ethanol production, Bozell said.

"I think the potential is terrific. There's all sorts of upsides to this," he said. "Once they've got the ethanol part of their operation going, we could imagine getting access to even the next scale higher (beyond testing with the process development unit). That's very positive for the entire biorefining industry."

Peripheral Benefits

With that potential impact in mind, local economic developers are beginning to target the bioenergy sector as they evaluate how best to tap into an industry that is still discovering itself.

Jesse Smith, director of technology for Innovation Valley Inc., a regional economic development organization, is thrilled about the promise of the new biofuels plant, comparing its opening to the announcement of two large solar manufacturers setting up operations in other parts of the state.

"It's analogous to having a Wacker (Chemie) or Hemlock, because when you have a pilot facility … like that, industry people are going to come here because this is the place to come when you're at the cutting edge of science and technology," he said.

Once those companies arrive, Smith said, it's easier to sell them on the benefits of locating and expanding here.

"Getting someone to your region is always half the battle. If you get them here, and they love it here, the battle's half won," he said. "Why would you open a business anywhere else?"

Innovation Valley and other local economic development groups are beginning to evaluate which companies to recruit that might be interested in locating close to the Vonore plant. Among the candidates, Smith said, are firms developing chemical co-products or new ways of preparing feedstock for processing at the refinery. Farm machinery or logistics companies associated with production and transport of the feedstock also might be interested in locating here, he said.

Smith said he also envisions small corporate research and development shops or startups setting up small offices here that could eventually expand.

Next month Smith and other local officials will be hitting the road to pitch the region's bioenergy assets, going to trade shows as a follow-up to a renewable energy ad campaign local groups have already aimed at industry publications.

"I think the impact potential is there, but it's a new target for us," said Doug Lawyer, director of economic development for the Knoxville Chamber. "We're trying to get ahead of it, but at the same time I'm not sure what the impact is going to be. Once this thing starts producing the fuel, I think it's going to point a lot of eyes in this region, and we have a golden opportunity to get the word out."

UT BIOENERGY PROJECTS FEEDSTOCK DEVELOPMENT

Primary researcher: Al Womac
Funding: Department of Energy and John Deere
Scope: The $4.9 million DOE project will demonstrate in quantities need for the bioenergy plant how switchgrass to be made into ethanol will be harvested, chopped, transported and stored. The money will also be used to develop a custom vehicle for the job and assess how handling and storage of the material affects its biofuelworthiness. In a smaller, related project, for the past two years Deer & Co. has sponsored a switchgrass harvest research campaign to improve equipment harvest techniques and storage and determine the impact of switchgrass quality on the potential to make cellulosic ethanol. This project was carried out at UT’s ag research center in Milan, Tenn.

SWITCHGRASS GENETICS

Primary researcher: Neal Stewart and Jason Burris
Funding: Department of Energy
Scope: One way to make switchgrass easier to break down into ethanol is to alter its cell walls using genetic engineering, but the plant is notoriously tough to crack. UT researchers are solving the problem by inventing a tissue culture media that produces cells that are more easily manipulated, making switchgrass cells five times more amenable to alteration. The next step is to introduce the new traits into switchgrass.

BIOMASS DATABASE

Primary researcher: Sam Jackson
Funding: U.S. Endowment for Forestry and Communities, American and Canadian forest product associations and natural resource agencies and USDA’s Sun Grant Initiative.
Scope: Researchers set up a searchable online database that allows users to search online at www.wood2energy.org for industrial and selected smaller-scale users of wood for energy production. The list includes green energy developed and used on-site as a byproduct of a primary manufacturing process such as that produced by sawmills or pulp and paper mills as well as a growing number of facilities dedicated to conversion of wood to energy.

Fuel-stingy buses - powered either by electricity or biofuel - tooling from McGhee Tyson Airport to Oak Ridge and along key side routes.

Solar charging stations for electric cars at the airport, with some gas-free vehicles available for shuttling travelers.

A national lab campus that is "petroleum free" in nine years.

Those ambitious plans to make the Pellissippi Parkway the axis of transportation efficiency and a model for the nation were unveiled Thursday at the National Transportation Research Center.

They're goals - most still being mapped out - of the Oak Ridge Energy Corridor, an initiative for deploying and showcasing the latest in transportation research and demonstration projects.

With a crowd of 50 watching, some of the key players in ongoing and upcoming efforts inked a memorandum of understanding, pledging to work together.

"We believe our efforts will positively impact national transportation and energy security," said Gary Gilmartin, executive director of the Oak Ridge Energy Corridor.

It should also translate into new jobs for the area, said Gilmartin, an employee of the nonprofit economic development group, Community Reuse Organization of East Tennessee. CROET was asked by the U.S. Department of Energy to form the new initiative.

Among those signing the cooperative effort: Oak Ridge National Laboratory, DOE, Metropolitan Knoxville Airport Authority, Y-12 National Security Complex and the city of Oak Ridge.

"You guys are my folks that are going to make this happen," Gilmartin said.

Gerald Boyd, manager of DOE's Oak Ridge Office, voiced optimism in the fledgling effort.

"This particular initiative on transportation, I think, could be a real spearhead in putting this particular region on the map in terms of it being a demonstration site for multiple energy initiatives," Boyd said.

Next up, said Gilmartin: getting local businesses on board.

Among corridor initiatives: boosting the use of electric vehicles and reducing pollution in a region on notice for not meeting federal Environmental Protection Agency air pollution standards.

Gilmartin said the Oak Ridge Energy Corridor doesn't have a budget. "We'll identify funding as we build projects," he said.

Some local transportation studies and projects have already received financing and will be tied into the Energy Corridor initiative, Gilmartin said.

"This regional approach is a model for how metropolitan areas can work together on solutions to challenging problems," Oak Ridge Mayor Tom Beehan said.

The Leaf is "no golf cart — it's the real thing," Nissan North America says of its new all-electric, zero-emissions vehicle.

The automaker is right on target with that assessment.

Nissan gave me an opportunity to drive the car on a short test loop in front of its headquarters building in Cool Springs on Wednesday, and I agree: This is no golf cart. The Leaf drives and accelerates just like an ordinary car with normal brake and accelerator pedals.

But it's extremely quiet, as there is no motor noise. It has surprisingly quick acceleration, giving it the feel of a car with a zippy V-6 gasoline engine.

Although I couldn't give it much of a workout on the test loop, it did seem more than capable of holding its own against other vehicles in such routine duties as passing and merging on the highway. It handled like a sport coupe, and the electronic drive-by-wire steering was precise.

Braking was sure as well, even on Wednesday's wet pavement — thanks in part to the car's four-wheel antilock disc brakes. Top speed is about 90 mph — although I wasn't able to go anywhere near that fast on the test loop.

The car has no transmission — power from the electric motor is transmitted directly to the drive wheels — so there are no gear changes. It had very smooth acceleration from start to highway speed, and 100 percent of the available torque is present at start-up, Nissan says.

It's designed to perform just like any other highway-capable vehicle, with the only compromise being the limited range provided by the lithium-ion battery, about 100 miles between charges.

The electric motor is under the hood, and on the front of the hood is the charging port. A flap lifts up to access the port where the cord from the external charger is to be plugged into the car.

The battery is installed under the rear floor of the vehicle, where it's as protected from impact as possible in the event of a traffic accident.

Today's combat troops must operate and coordinate incredibly powerful and sophisticated weapons, sensors, radars, radios and other systems that have rarely been designed to work together.

An Integrated Battle Command System being developed by a Northrop Grumman-led team could provide a common operating platform and better data sharing among THAAD, Patriot and other air and missile defense systems.And they must do it while someone is trying to kill them.

The soldiers' tasks should get easier in a few years: The Army has chosen Northrop Grumman to develop an Integrated Air and Missile Defense Battle Command System, or IBCS, that will provide a common operating interface and sharing of data among current and future missile and sensor programs, according to Ed McAlister, the company's IBCS program manager.

Someone trained on the Patriot missile system, for example, would find familiar controls and procedures when learning to fire the Surface-Launched Advanced Medium Range Air-to-Air Missile, he said. The systems will also better communicate with one another, coordinating targeting information, the locations of friendly and enemy forces or aircraft and other data, easing the growing workload for troops under fire.

"I like to say we've gotten so enamored with our technology we forgot the guys that have to use it," said Rob Jassey, deputy program manager for IBCS and a retired Army colonel.

"The whole idea of re-engineering our warfighters back into our systems is starting to take a strong hold," he said. "For many of us it's long overdue."

IBCS will integrate include Patriot, SLAMRAAM, Joint Land Attack Cruise Missile Defense Elevated Netted Sensor, Improved Sentinel radar and, if directed by the Department of Defense, the Terminal High Altitude Area Defense and Medium Extended Air Defense System.

IBCS will lower some training costs and increase capabilities of the soldiers and systems, McAlister said. More importantly, it will free soldiers to focus more on the fight and less on the equipment.

"Computers do things fast," he said. "But computers don't deal with ambiguity the same way a human being can. ... It takes a warfighter with experience to be able to look at the context of all that's going on and make the appropriate decision."

Advances in computer and information technology, in terms of speed and packaging, make this integration of systems possible, McAlister said. Better radio technology was required, for instance, to move the enormous amounts of data involved with the required speed.

Northrop will lead a team that includes Boeing, Lockheed Martin, Harris, Colsa and other familiar defense names under a $577 million, five-year contract for IBCS design and development.

"We're doing all the engineering work here" in Huntsville, McAlister said. "We're doing 90 percent of the software development work here" and nearly all the logistics and test support.

In the near term, IBCS will probably create more than 300 engineering- and technology-related jobs for the team, he said. The first Army battalion is to be outfitted in the 2015-16 time frame, and there will be a long production "tail" to follow, with the Army deploying the system as circumstances and budgets allow.

"So the long-term economic impact on Huntsville is very, very positive," McAlister said.
The IBCS contract is also one of the first examples of a new procurement approach for the Army, he said, and it involved a significant prototyping stage, letting program managers actually see and touch the work in development.

"They get a much better sense of what would ultimately be bought" instead of seeing only proposals on paper, McAlister said.

"It's like reading a book and seeing the movie," said Karen Williams, vice president for Air and Missile Defense Systems, Northrop Grumman Information Systems.

She said the Army awarded the "Phase 1" contract in September 2008 to Northrop and Raytheon, and the companies then developed their prototypes and competed for the final work.

"It really was a good acquisition strategy," she said.

Northrop's team knows that there are U.S. troops on the front lines in Afghanistan and elsewhere who will benefit from the technology, and developers are looking forward to getting IBCS into their hands quickly.

"It puts a real point on it for me," McAlister said. "What we're doing we're doing for the warfighter."

The National Nuclear Security Administration authorized the start-up of the new Highly Enriched Uranium Materials Facility at Y-12. The $549 million storage facility will house the nation's stockpile of bomb-grade uranium.

Construction of the high-security facility was essentially completed in late 2008, but months have been spent on finishing touches and a series of safety and operational readiness reviews. Most of the enriched uranium stockpile will be loaded into the new facility within the next three months.

In a statement, NNSA Administrator Tom D'Agostino said:

"Bringing HEUMF online is a prime example of the progress NNSA is making in transforming a Cold War nuclear weapons complex into a 21st century nuclear security enterprise. I commend Y-12 for their efforts in bringing to fruition the construction and operation of a new nuclear material storage facility."

The uranium currently is stored at about a half-dozen facilities at Y-12. It will be consolidated in vaults at the HEUMF.

By accelerating the loading of the new facility over 90 days, a project once expected to take 13 months, officials said they're saving about $26 million in security costs.

B&W, the government's contractor at Y-12, apparently didn't waste any time getting started. Ellen Boatner, a spokeswoman at the Oak Ridge plant, said two loads of uranium were received at the storage facility this morning.

The Department of Energy recently announced that about 1.6 billion hours of processing time on supercomputers were awarded for 69 research projects through the Innovative and Novel Computational Impact on Theory and Experiment program in 2010.

The INCITE work will be done at Oak Ridge National Laboratory, which houses the Jaguar, a Cray XT5 system that currently is the world's fastest computer, and Argonne National Laboratory in Illinois.

Among the projects being touted is an ORNL-Argonne collaboration on design of materials for lithium air batteries. The work will take advantage of computers at both labs and involve scientists from ORNL, Argonne and IBM.

ORNL Director Thom Mason said the battery project was the result of two visits to Oak Ridge last year by IBM's vice president for research. "From those discussions, it became apparent that our partnership had many of the unique capabilities needed to tackle a scientific problem as important and challenging as increasing by more than a factor of 10 the energy stored in batteries for transportation," Mason said in a statement.

About 24 million hours of processing time will be used for work on materials of interest in developing lithium air batteries, which may someday be capable of powering a car for 500 miles on a single charge, the lab said.

"The obstacles to (lithium air) batteries becoming a viable technology are formidable, but the modeling and simulation capabilities of DOE's supercomputers will help us accelerate the innovations required in materials science, chemistry and engineering," Argonne Director Eric Isaacs said in a prepared statement.

"In a major step toward commercialization of a promising therapeutic treatment," Oak Ridge National Laboratory contractor UT-Battelle has exclusively licensed patents on inventions based on the Nell-1 gene to NellOne Therapeutics Inc. — a company spun out of the DOE lab.

A press release states that the protein therapy treatment under development takes advantage of the Nell-1 gene's cell-signaling pathway that controls tissue growth and maturation in mammalian organs.

The foundation for this therapy is research performed by Cymbeline Culiat, who as an ORNL systems genetics researcher identified the role that the Nell-1 pathway plays in tissue growth and maturation.

"Today, Culiat is leading the NellOne research effort to translate the Nell-1 pathway discoveries into a therapy that restores both mass and function to damaged human tissues, such as heart and skeletal muscle," Thursday's ORNL release explained.

If successful, the protein therapy could improve the lives of victims of heart attacks and severe muscle wounds. Other therapies, such as stem-cell treatments, have succeeded in triggering tissue formation but fall short in restoring the actual function of the tissue.

Battelle Ventures, with its Knoxville-based affiliate fund, Innovation Valley Partners (IVP), created NellOne with a $1.5-million seed investment in 2008.

"Our executing this license is confirmation from NellOne that sufficient proof-of-principle experiments have been completed and the company is progressing toward the commercialization of an extremely promising technology that could one day vastly improve the lives of countless heart patients," said Tracy Warren, NellOne chief executive officer and Battelle Ventures general partner.

"NellOne is currently dedicated to the development of intellectual property and moving into a clinical setting," said Warren — noting that it operates out of the IVP office in Knoxville.
"A medical treatment based on the patented technologies is years away, making Battelle Ventures' support even more critical."

Meanwhile, ORNL Partnerships Director Tom Ballard says, "This licensing agreement is a statement not only of NellOne's promise, but also of how vital the support of venture capital investment is during these crucial early years of technology development and nurturing.
"This announcement is an important step along the way to the marketplace past the initial proof-of-concept stage."

Battelle Ventures and IVP have a combined $255 million — $220 million and $35 million, respectively — to create and accelerate early-stage technologies, including in the East Tennessee region.

The original research on Nell-1 was supported by the DOE Office of Science.

UT-Battelle manages ORNL for the U.S. Department of Energy's Office of Science.

A new interactive mapping tool shows the availability of high-speed Internet access, down to an individual address, across the state and can pair that data with geographic and demographic information to help broadband providers determine where to expand their service.

BroadbandStat was launched on February 10th by Connected Tennessee, a nonprofit established to expand the use of technology in the state. The software uses GIS to pair demographic data such as population and local rates of computer and Internet adoption to current broadband availability, with results displayed in a map format. Users can zoom in to particular communities or streets or plug in a specific address. A satellite view allows users to view the specific homes or businesses they're analyzing. Users also can view data by census block, county or region and layer various categories of data.

Potential uses for the information could include broadband investment, grant writing and economic development, according to Michael Ramage, executive director of Connected Tennessee. The group works with local government and businesses to extend high-speed Internet to rural and lower-income parts of the state and sets up programs that can assist residents and organizations in taking advantage of broadband service. The group also operates the Computers 4 Kids program, which awards new laptops to foster children.

"It will allow us a lot of different uses that we have talked about (for) a long time," he said. "I think it's really going to help us do the analysis we need to do to get broadband out to unserved areas in Tennessee."

The new tool was enabled through a federal stimulus grant of $1.8 million. The grant was aimed at mapping and planning to increase the availability and use of high-speed Internet service in the state, Ramage said during a Web conference in which he demonstrated the new program.

The detailed data will allow broadband providers and proponents of broadband expansion to drill down into information about communities that might welcome the service but have been overlooked in the past, he said.

"It's a way quickly for providers to look at potential areas of build-out so they can determine whether a build-out would be cost effective in the area," Ramage said. "Some of these areas that were rural 20 years ago are not rural anymore. Our experience is that by default (providers) assume these areas are rural, and they can't make an investment there."

The data also will help state officials and local decision-makers determine where efforts need to be focused encouraging computer usage and broadband adoption when the service arrives, he said. "Access to broadband is certainly a major consideration that companies evaluate when making site-location decisions, particularly in the regional corporate offices, shared services facilities, and data centers," said Doug Lawyer, head of economic development for the Knoxville Chamber.

According to Ramage, some areas that traditional DSL and cable providers might shun could be candidates for wireless service, he said.

Connected Tennessee will continue to add layers of information to the database, such as the location of local schools, industrial parks and hospitals to the map. And part of the project includes validation of the data provided by Internet service providers to Connected Tennessee.

An important component of that validation will be consumer feedback, said Ramage, adding that users of the tool are encouraged to contact Connected Tennessee with any input about the program or corrections to the map.

Tennessee may not be a mecca for wind power generation, but one local engineering firm will have a hand in how future turbines dotting plains and hills across the country are built.

Inventure Laboratories has developed a piece of equipment aimed at simplifying and reducing the cost of manufacturing the giant bearings that help guide windmills to take advantage of nature's breezes.

The Knoxville company, consisting of a couple of engineers, a couple of office personnel and owner Mike Carroll, was hired by Banyan Global Technologies, a South Carolina business focused on design, consulting and sales in the gear-making industry, to build the machine for a customer getting into the business - the customer declined to be identified for this article.

In a wind turbine, bearings help control the pitch of the blades and direction of the turbine itself as it turns into the wind. They look just like gears that are commonplace in any number of industrial uses - cars, planes, farm equipment - except that they are huge. One of the gears, eight feet in diameter and weighing about one-and-a-half tons, lay on shop floor where Inventure was demonstrating the new product to its customers Monday morning.

"As you look at the rapid expansion (of the wind industry) . there was definitely a shortage of machinery to make these bearings," said Darryl Witte, vice president of sales for Banyan.

The current manufacturing method involves a $500,000 piece of equipment that requires the bearing be lifted into place and each tooth in the gear is machined by hand, Witte said. Depending on the size of the bearing, the process can take two to 10 hours, he said.

Inventure's machine, on the other hand, is a much smaller piece of equipment that sits atop the bearing-to-be and machines it automatically. By changing out a couple of components, customers then can transform the machine into an inspection device to check for flaws in the finished product.

"These machines bring the machine to the gear instead of the gear to the machine," said John McCracken, partner and engineer with Inventure who, Witte said, "took my idea and made it better."

The equipment will cost $70,000-$80,000 for the basic version, $100,000-$110,000 with the inspection capability added on, Witte said, and the machining process will be cut to 15-20 minutes.

"We've just diminished the whole thing in a really nice tight package with the development of this tool," Witte said. In addition to reducing the capital investment for customers, he said, they will save money on labor and achieve the added benefit of a higher quality product. After putting the new equipment through its paces at its current customer's site, Banyan will begin selling the piece of equipment to other customers, first in the U.S. and then internationally.

"All the manufacturers that are in this market want to differentiate themselves from somebody else," he said.

That said, the recent economic downturn has put a damper on the wind power industry, which was growing at breakneck pace a couple of years ago.

"For right now in the domestic market we're hopeful to sell four to 12 pieces in the next 48 months," he said. "The ramp up of wind has plateaued a little bit. I've talked to three people that want to buy right now" but can't because of market conditions.

Still, the development of such machines demonstrates the evolution of the wind industry from a one-at-a-time manufacturing process for turbine components to full-fledged mass production requiring more automated processes as wind farms sprout up across the country and around the world, Witte said.

And while geography and politics will likely keep wind turbines from marking Tennessee's landscape, Inventure principals hope the peripheral benefits of the industry will be felt here for a long time to come.

The real estate market shows signs of life, unemployment dipped and personal income in the United States increased $44.5 billion in December.

Good signs all, but the most intriguing business story so far this year is a plan to increase research into lithium-air batteries.

The Department of Energy said recently it would devote 24 million hours of processing time on supercomputers at Oak Ridge National Laboratory and Argonne National Laboratory in Illinois to develop more powerful lithium-air batteries.

Lithium batteries have a variety of applications, including long-range battery packs for automobiles.

All-electric cars have been around for more than a century, but have never really caught on, even though maintenance and operating costs are cheaper than gasoline- or diesel-powered cars.

The reasons for this are many - conspiracy theorists blame Big Oil and the formerly great Detroit carmakers - but one of the biggest barriers to mainstream acceptance has been battery technology.

Cars that drive 100 miles or less on a battery charge and the lack of a public recharging infrastructure aren't very appealing to consumers used to seeing gas stations on every corner and being able to drive 400 miles on a tank of gasoline.

However, the appeal of battery-power would get a serious boost if researchers could up the range of lithium batteries to, say, 500 miles.

Atlanta; Memphis; Charleston, S.C.; Jacksonville, Fla.; Cincinnati and Washington, D.C., are within a 500-mile drive of Knoxville.

I test drove an EV1 - an electric car produced by General Motors in the late 1990s - and greatly enjoyed the sensory experience. It was surprisingly powerful and so very quiet. Other than the chatter of the salesman, all I could hear was the sound of the tires rolling over the pavement as I merged onto the freeway.

But no way did I want one. The range was too limited.

Many consumers are still concerned about range, said Leslie Grossman, founder and president of the Knoxville Electric Vehicle Association.

"What's always held us back is the battery," Grossman said.

Although most people typically drive 50 miles or less at a time, they don't like the idea of being constrained by battery range, Grossman said.

"It's the what-if-I-need-it scenario. I want to make sure I can get there," she said.

Development of a reliable 500-mile battery certainly would ease consumer concern about running out of juice in the middle of nowhere.

With fuel costs rising and consumers looking to cut expenses, interest in electric vehicles has grown, said Grossman, vice president, investment adviser representative with TrustFirst Inc. in Knoxville.

KEVA membership has increased steadily since the group was founded a year ago and it has a compiled a 300-name mailing list of people interested in learning how to convert their cars to electric-power.

The association plans to hold a conversions workshop in the second quarter. People interested in attending the workshop should e-mail Grossman at ev@lesliegrossman.com.

Intuitive Research and Technology employees have provided training on ground-based countersniper and surveillance systems for more than a year for the Army's Product Manager-Robotics and Unmanned Sensors.

Now, those employees will be able to use a "traveling classroom" to help trainers and soldiers being deployed to Afghanistan learn how to use the systems managed by PM-RUS, said Glenda Blevins, a program manager with Huntsville-based Intuitive.

The 53-foot-long, 22-foot-wide mobile training center is at Intuitive's corporate offices this week. It's a customized project by Kentucky Trailer Technologies, the Walled Lake, Mich.-based operating division of Kentucky Trailer. It designs and manufactures custom vans and trailers and mobile command and training centers for commercial and government customers.

"The training center is an all-in-one system," Blevins said. "Everything is here that a trainer would need," including Internet and computer access, a projector screen and interactive whiteboards. The center can accommodate 36 students at a time, or a partition can be used to create two classes of 18 students each.

"It provides a flexible and versatile training strategy to train soldiers on the suite of PM-RUS products," Blevins said.

An example of the equipment is Current Force Unattended Ground Sensors, which allow the detection of hostile forces and their vehicles up to a thousand meters away, while minimizing the risk to soldiers. It allows information to be transmitted to the command within three minutes of detection.

Intuitive has had two trainers working with the PM-RUS effort since September 2008, and "we're bringing two more on board," said Blevins. The number of trainers is expected to grow over the next year.

"We've given demonstrations or trained over 3,400 Army soldiers on PM-RUS products at various facilities," including Fort Benning, Ga.; Camp Pendleton, Calif.; and Fort Carson, Colo.

Marshall Space Flight Center engineers are continuing to work on Ares rocket designs, even though the White House has announced plans to kill the program and shop new rocket work to private companies, center Director Robert Lightfoot said in early February.

Under law, any changes to the Ares program will have to be examined by Congress with the possibility of hearings as the proposed budget is worked across Capitol Hill this year. Work on Ares continues because the program is still in the 2010 budget year, Lightfoot said.

President Barack Obama's proposed $19 billion budget for NASA, which eliminates the Constellation program to return to the moon on Ares rockets, is for fiscal 2011.

"We are in the middle of preliminary design work," Lightfoot said. "As you might guess, this is still a big distraction."

Lightfoot said Marshall can't change its course until Congress acts.

"You have to remember this is going to change. This isn't the final budget at all, and by Oct. 1 - at the earliest - this will be a different budget. It always happens that way," said Lightfoot, who has been with NASA 20 years.

The federal fiscal year will begin Oct. 1, but Congress has missed that deadline consistently since 2001.

The Alabama delegation in Washington has pledged to fight the cuts, with U.S. Sen. Richard Shelby, R-Tuscaloosa, continually pledging support for the Ares program.

Steve Cook, former Ares manager at Marshall, said debates in Congress and across the nation are crucial "to this sweeping change because it is such a major one. Congress will most definitely play a role in this."

Cook said that while work continues on Ares, the looming threat of cancellation could affect the more than 2,000 people across North Alabama who work on the program.

"It can't help but be there in their minds. There are people who will say, 'I've worked on X-33, X-34, the Space Launch Initiative, the Orbital Space Plane and other programs that were ceased over the past decade, and now I'm on Ares. Maybe I should go on to something different,' " said Cook, now director of space technologies at Dynetics in Huntsville. "There's just no meat on the bones of where NASA is meant to be going in this budget."

Obama wants the space agency to shift course from developing large rockets to discovering new technologies and creating efficient rocket engines. The $3 billion a year spent on the Constellation moon program would be redirected to broad technology development.

If that happens, Lightfoot said, Marshall would still play a large role because science, technology and propulsion are all key roles Marshall plays within NASA.

"This is our 50th year, and we've seen a lot of programs come and go. Marshall is very adept at adapting to change."

Members of the Alabama congressional delegation swiftly rallied around the Constellation moon mission Monday, saying that the Obama's administration's proposed cancellation is far from the last word on its fate.

"Congress cannot and will not sit back and watch the reckless abandonment of sound principles, a proven track record ... and the destruction of our human space flight program," Sen. Richard Shelby, R-Tuscaloosa, said in a statement.

Shelby is the top Republican on the Senate panel that helps write NASA's budget. In this fiscal year's budget, he restored $600 million in proposed cuts to the Constellation program and helped to limit NASA's ability to end or change the program, an accompanying news release said.

To varying degrees, Shelby's sentiments were echoed by Reps. Parker Griffith, R-Huntsville, Robert Aderholt, R-Haleyville, and Artur Davis, D-Birmingham, as well as Sen. Jeff Sessions, R-Mobile. Joining in the drumbeat of denunciation were lawmakers from Florida and Texas, states that also have big stakes in the venture.

One thing is virtually certain: The administration's plan will get an exhaustive look on Capitol Hill as lawmakers debate a dramatic change in NASA's direction. The outcome likely won't be settled until this fall, when work on the agency's fiscal 2011 budget is wrapped up.

Already, Sen. Bill Nelson, D-Fla., plans to use a Feb. 24 hearing to explore the feasibility of continuing with Ares I testing in the hope of developing a "light" version of the Ares V cargo launch vehicle "so America isn't relying only (on) commercial vendors," a spokesman said via e-mail.

Whether opponents can carry the day in Congress as a whole is an open question. Sen. Barbara Mikulski, a Maryland Democrat who chairs the NASA budget panel, did not respond to a request for comment Monday on the White House plan.

One observer questioned, however, whether Constellation backers can leverage enough support to undo all of the proposed $3.5 billion cut.

"I think it'd be hard to have that big of a whack restored," said Steve Ellis, vice president of Washington, D.C.-based Taxpayers for Common Sense, a nonpartisan watchdog group that backs the administration's stance.

"Manned space exploration is prohibitively expensive," Ellis said in an e-mail.

"Considering the budgetary hole we are in, it makes sense to pursue private partnerships and continue unmanned space exploration rather than dump more cash into a bloated, over-budget" program.

NASA officials made similar arguments in a conference call with reporters, adding that halting the Constellation program won't necessarily mean a permanent end to manned space exploration by the United States.

Alabama lawmakers weren't convinced.

In his statement, Shelby said the administration's budget "begins the death march for the future of U.S. human space flight."

Starting with the late John F. Kennedy, "we've been blessed with having presidents ... who have supported this vision," Sessions said in an interview. "It's pretty clear now that we don't have that."

Sessions also questioned the wisdom of breaking up "a fabulous team of scientists," and said he found it inconceivable NASA could save money by starting over with a private company.

Aderholt sounded a similar theme in a news release. "Under the president's plan," he said, "there is no telling how many years taxpayers could be on the hook while these programs come up to speed."

Davis, who is running for governor, said in a release that he would work with other lawmakers to push the administration to reverse course and that the possible loss of 2,200 jobs "is an unacceptable blow to North Alabama's economy."

For Griffith, the White House announcement comes barely a month after he jumped parties and was subsequently stripped of his committee assignments -- including a seat on the House science and technology panel -- by majority Democrats. The freshman lawmaker has yet to get any new assignments as a Republican.

"Not necessarily," Griffith replied Monday when asked whether he would be better positioned to affect the debate if he were still on the science committee. "This is an appropriations question; this is a money question.

"My greatest leverage is going to be working with my delegation," Griffith said, "working with our NASA caucus, working with our people who are very keenly interested in space ... who see space exploration as the heart and soul of America," whether in Texas, Florida, California or elsewhere.

NASA Administrator Charles Bolden said he is still working out the details of Marshall Space Flight Center's role if Congress approves President Barack Obama's budget, killing the current plans to go to the moon and beyond.

But Bolden, in talking recently with Times reporters and editors, said Marshall has the engineering and science talent to be heavily involved in the administration's new plan for NASA: to develop advanced space exploration technologies and break other scientific ground while private contractors take over the daily work of taking astronauts to the International Space Station.

Bolden said he'll have more specifics by Feb. 24, when he briefs a congressional committee on the NASA budget. He said he has "tiger teams" of NASA managers working to figure out what advanced technology projects the agency will tackle and what each center's role will be.

He said some elements of the budget still aren't clear to him, such as whether NASA will actually design and develop a heavy-lift rocket to get humans out of Earth orbit. The budget plan mentions a heavy-lift rocket, but it doesn't say specifically what NASA would do in developing one.

"To me, it means I can go off and build a precursor and go and test it and fly it," Bolden said, but he's still got to get more guidance from the White House science adviser and the Office of Management and Budget as to what the budget reference to a heavy-lift vehicle allows NASA to do.

Still, he said, Marshall excels at technology development, climate studies and developing robotic systems, among other specialties - things that are high on the president's agenda for NASA.

"They have played a vital role with NASA since its inception, and I don't see that changing," Bolden said, noting that Marshall is celebrating its 50th anniversary this year.

Still, Bolden couldn't say whether the transitioning of NASA's role would involve job cuts. He said he hopes not.

"A (reduction in force) is something I don't even want to think about," he said. Bolden said, likely, NASA will need more people "down the road" but couldn't say when that would be.
Until the details are clear, Bolden said, NASA workers must forge ahead.

"We pride ourselves on being able to respond to adversity," Bolden said, referencing the agency's bounce-back from the Challenger and Discovery shuttle disasters.

Bolden, who said he agrees with President Obama's vision for NASA, said he still thinks NASA should be the leader in developing the technology to go to Mars. But he said the Constellation program was too far adrift budgetwise and timewise to get it done.

"I'm still talking about going to Mars. I'm the nation's dreamer," Bolden said. "I get paid to go off and dream. The secretary of defense can't go off and dream. The NASA administrator can."

President Obama sent a $19 billion NASA budget request to Congress on Feb. 1, which included a five-year plan to boost space spending by $6 billion to pay private companies to build rockets to take cargo and astronauts to the International Space Station.

U.S. Sen. Richard Shelby, R-Tuscaloosa, and others in Congress have vowed to fight the changes, as have leaders in Huntsville. Mayor Tommy Battle plans to announce a task force later this week to lobby Congress to kill the president's budget and keep the Constellation moon plan in place.

The space shuttle program is scheduled to end by early 2011 at the latest, and the local shuttle program workers were going to be transferred to the Ares rocket programs that are the crux of the Constellation space exploration plan.

With the new rocket work disbanded, there is no clear path for those shuttle employees, but Bolden said those details should emerge "not in years, or months, but most likely weeks. We are working every day to plan this and make it a smooth transition," he said.

Critics of the Obama space plan point out that setting up private companies, like Falcon rocket-maker SpaceX, duplicates what NASA can already do and sets space exploration plans back.

"I think the problem here is that the private sector doesn't really know what 'private space' means," said Steve Cook, vice president for space systems at Huntsville-based Dynetics and former Marshall Ares program manager. "Is it telecommunications? Is it launch vehicles? Is it research and science? All of those are functions and business models from established companies."

Bolden said private companies would provide access to space, like a taxi-cab ride, while NASA would focus on space exploration. NASA already has some 88 percent of its budget tied up with a wide variety of private space companies that range from Orbital Sciences, with 3,300 workers, to Boeing, which employs 155,000 nationwide. In Huntsville, companies such as Teledyne Brown Engineering have about 1,500 people doing a variety of space work.

A veteran of four space shuttle missions, Bolden answered critics who say the administration wants to give private companies free rein over rocket building, without any oversight or competition.

"They are not going to take over and fly wherever they want and however they want," Bolden said. "There will be NASA involvement and oversight - especially from Marshall because NASA cannot have a role in any propulsion effort without the expertise of Marshall.

"I would not place my friends and colleagues on top of any vehicle that I wouldn't put myself on. No company wants government oversight, but nothing will fly that hasn't been (tested and certified)."

Bolden conceded the next few months would hold a lot of changes for the proposed budget. It still has to wind its way through Congress, which will make changes.

"I'm under a law attached to the 2010 budget that says I cannot make major changes to Constellation without consulting Congress in the process. I plan to do this," Bolden said. "I would hope this process would not delay and drag out the president's plan (for NASA)."

U.S. Rep. Zach Wamp of Tennessee believes the success of the Tennessee Valley Corridor he founded 15 years ago could be repeated by a "Defense Corridor" along Interstates 65 and 24 from Redstone Arsenal in Huntsville through his Volunteer State to Fort Campbell, Ky.

Wamp represents Tennessee's 3rd District and is a Chattanooga native who hopes to be the Republican Party candidate for governor. He's pitched the Defense Corridor idea at some campaign stops and points out the region is ripe for this kind of effort.

Huntsville is a big winner from commands and jobs moving here under the 2005 Base Realignment and Closure decision, Wamp said. The missions here meet national and international needs and, in an era of persistent conflict and geopolitical instability, it's unfortunately likely those needs will continue to grow.

During tough economic times, states with a balance of private and government work will be better positioned, "especially when it's in defense and homeland security," he said.

"The economy of Alabama is much more resilient because of Huntsville."

Wamp wants that kind of resiliency for Tennessee.

"I believe this is our future. And Huntsville and our partnerships are very much a part of it," he said.

In 1995, Wamp pushed for the "Technology Corridor" to spur regional economic development, especially in manufacturing and energy, in the region between the research infrastructure and assets established since World War II at Oak Ridge in Tennessee in the north, to the tremendous high-tech hub of Huntsville in the south - Redstone, Marshall Space Flight Center, the University of Alabama in Huntsville, Alabama A&M University, Cummings Research Park and more.

"We very much supported what's happened in Huntsville and vice versa," Wamp said.

U.S. Rep. Parker Griffith, R-Huntsville, said Wamp's Defense Corridor is a good idea.

"His concept and his implementation of the Technology Corridor has been a very, very big success. It's a good model to replicate," Griffith said.

"We would be a huge anchor for that" Defense Corridor he said, pointing out Huntsville's continuing growth in space and missile defense, Army aviation, defense acquisition and contracting, research and more.

For a Defense Corridor, Wamp said the idea is to get the major institutions in the area - government installations, universities, county and local governments, legislatures, etc. - under a memorandum of understanding that they're going to work together. You get the congressional delegations and governors involved and, over time, build an identity for the corridor that attracts business and industry.

Next-generation manufacturing and defense technologies are going to come south, Wamp said, "and they need to come to Alabama and they need to come to Tennessee."

There is a already a great work force here, he said, and facilities such as the former Saturn plant in Spring Hill, Tenn., are available in addition to the region's traditional advantages of low taxes, little union influence and a high quality of life.

Wamp said Tennessee already has a good defense portfolio: Oak Ridge is home to sophisticated intelligence missions; there is the Arnold Air Force Base Engineering and Development Center in Tullahoma; an unmanned vehicle maker named ISR Group is in Savannah, Tenn., and is the largest employer in a seven-county area; and Vanderbilt and Middle Tennessee State University have strong research and space curricula and programs.

Thousands of Tennesseans already drive to Redstone for work. He said if Tennesseans support what goes in Huntsville and vice versa, it's been proven both states will be better off.

Wamp said he hopes the Defense Corridor takes off, regardless of the Tennessee and Alabama governor's races.

"I think it's a big deal no matter who gets elected," he said. "Even if for some reason I don't become governor, any of these candidates would be crazy not to take this best idea in the field and make it a reality."

Rep. Bart Gordon has a busy agenda planned for his final year as chairman of the House Science and Technology Committee — and parts of it will have a direct impact on the future of Tennessee.

The primary goal for the Murfreesboro Democrat, who is retiring after 26 years in the House, will be to reauthorize the America COMPETES (Creating Opportunities to Meaningfully Promote Excellence in Technology, Education and Science) Act, which was signed into law in 2007, his first year as committee chairman.

The legislation, which Gordon authored, promotes basic research, particularly on clean energy, and improved teaching of science and math.

Key to this effort is the creation of a new agency within the Department of Energy: the Advanced Research Projects Agency-Energy, designed to focus on high-risk, high-reward research on problems, such as what to do with nuclear waste, that have inhibited the development of clean energy. ARPA-E, as it is known, is modeled after DARPA, the Defense Department research agency that was created in 1958 in response to the Russian launch of the Sputnik satellite.

DARPA is credited with developing the predecessor to the Internet, and Gordon is hoping for similar breakthrough developments from APRA-E, with some of that research based in Tennessee.

Gordon said the Oak Ridge National Laboratory, Vanderbilt University and other state institutions are major recipients of federal research money. "All this is coming together to really make Tennessee a center of new alternative, green energy jobs," Gordon said.

At a committee hearing late last month, APRA-E Director Arun Majumdar testified that since its launch in April 2009, the agency has awarded 35 contracts, including research on a large-scale liquid metal battery to store electrical power and a new turbine design, modeled after a jet turbine, that would be smaller and more efficient than the massive wind turbines that now dot the landscape. Startup funding of $400 million was included in the $787 billion economic stimulus legislation.

President Barack Obama's budget proposal last week included $300 million for the agency in fiscal 2011.

"I would like to see higher numbers, but for a new program, that shows a real commitment," Gordon said.

Reauthorizing NASA at a time when the space agency's mission seems uncertain will be the other major task for Gordon's committee this year.

Obama stirred controversy last week when his budget proposal called for eliminating the Constellation program, which is designed to return astronauts to the moon, and replacing it with an effort that relies more on commercial companies. Gordon is skeptical of the plan.

"My position would be to continue with the existing program until (Obama) can demonstrate there is a better alternative," Gordon said. "The burden of proof is on the president."

Other topics with a Tennessee connection that the committee will tackle this year include:
- Promoting research to allow for earlier warnings of tornadoes and other natural disasters. Gordon said the average advance warning time for a tornado is 14 minutes, which he hopes can be cut in half.
- Pushing research on nuclear power, including processing and storage of spent nuclear fuel. Obama's budget calls for an additional $36 billion in loan guarantees for advanced nuclear power plants.

After 47 days without a committee assignment, U.S. Rep. Parker Griffith may have found a seat overseeing national energy policy and health care reform.

Republican leaders recently recommended Griffith for the Energy and Commerce Committee, one of the oldest standing committees in Congress.

As a Democrat, Griffith had held seats on three committees, including two influential groups, one that allocates highway dollars and another that oversees the NASA budget.

But Griffith switched from the Democratic Party to the Republican on Dec. 22 and was forced by rule to resign those seats in a letter dated Dec. 20. Thursday, Griffith touted the benefits of his new assignment.

"This appointment to the House Committee on Energy and Commerce is a great victory for the Tennessee Valley and our state," Griffith said in a statement. "This assignment will give me a voice in the continuing debates over health care reform legislation as well as new energy regulations that affect every Alabama family."

Griffith's new committee holds a wide jurisdiction, overseeing energy policy, health care, foreign commerce, consumer protections, tourism, medical research and foreign communications.

But members of one of his former committees held a hearing this week on the proposed NASA budget, criticizing the administration's plan to drop the Constellation manned-spaceflight program, which employs more than 2,000 people in Huntsville.

Doug Dermody, chair of the Madison County Democratic Party, said the new appointment seemed to offer little immediate benefit. "When North Alabama's pressing need is job protection for NASA, Parker can spend his time dealing with the Toyota recall."

Griffith said the new assignment will let him help develop legislation that influences broadband technologies and biotech research, two areas that also affect thousands of jobs in North Alabama.

And Republican members of the Alabama delegation were quick to line up to offer formal congratulations and tout the influential nature of the assignment. In particular, U.S. Rep. Robert Aderholt, R- Haleyville, noted the committee's role in energy policy affects TVA concerns in North Alabama.

"More than half the legislation that passes the House comes through the Energy and Commerce Committee," said Rep. Jo Bonner, R-Mobile.

But Griffith's opponents in the Republican party were outspoken.

"This is a disaster for the Tennessee Valley," said Mo Brooks, a member of the Madison County Commission who is seeking the Republican nomination for Griffith's seat. "When we need someone who can help fight the Constellation battle, we have lost the Science and Technology Committee where that battle will be fought."

Brooks also said Griffith could have used his other former assignment to help steer road dollars to North Alabama to help with growth. "If this was Houston with oil wells or Louisiana with refineries, it would be wonderful. But it's not. It's very much a disappointment."

Les Phillip, a former Navy helicopter pilot who is also seeking the Republican nomination, said: "I guess it sounds like a good committee. I hope he enjoys it, because he might not be there after Jan. 11."

Committee assignments in the House are handled within the parties. According to a statement from Griffith's office, minority leader John Boehner recommended Griffith for the post, based in part on his views on health care.

"We need Parker Griffith's experience as a physician and a small businessman on this committee," said Boehner, citing proposed health care legislation. "We need a conservative voice on this committee to stand up for our families and small businesses."

Since taking office last year, Griffith has most often voted with Democrats. But he had opposed several prominent Democratic initiatives, including health care reform. Griffith cited that disagreement among his reasons for switching parties.

But the Energy and Commerce Committee is chaired by Henry Waxman, D-California, a leading proponent of health care reform. In the last few weeks, the committee has held a variety of hearings on crib safety, a cable company merger, an oil company merger, childhood obesity, coal waste and deceptive funeral home practices.

"Alabama has not had a seat on this committee for more than 15 years," Griffith said, "and I am honored to bring this representation back to our state."

The Energy and Commerce Committee lists 59 members. That includes two who show up in Griffith's finance report at the very end of the year. Rep. John Shimkus, R-Illinois, gave Griffith $2,000 after the switch, while Rep. Jan Schakowsy, D-Illinois, received a refund of $1,000.

Griffith replaces Rep. Greg Walden, R-Oregon, who, according to a spokesman for Boehner, accepted a spot as the chair of the Republican Leadership Committee.

According to the Center for Responsive Politics, a nonpartisan group that tracks campaign spending and lobbying, members of the Energy and Commerce Committee are subject to intense lobbying because their debates affect telecommunication and pharmaceutical giants. The committee recently gave up oversight of insurance companies and securities firms.

"However," reads the center's summary, "there's enough left to ensure committee members of continued strong financial support from some of the country's most powerful companies, keeping this committee among the most desirable in Congress."

U.S. Sen. Bob Corker cited Volkswagen's green technology initiatives in the building of its Chattanooga plant, saying the factory will be "the most environmentally sound manufacturing facility in the world."

"The way they're going about building this facility ... with the newest technology that's available making automobiles," he said after an hour long tour of the plant.

Ironically, Sen. Corker, R-Chattanooga, said the city came close to not meeting the federal environmental emissions standards to attract an auto assembly plant such as VW's.

"I don't think people realize how close we came to being in a position in which our community could not actually even recruit a facility like this," he said.

But the senator noted city and Hamilton County efforts to slash air pollution to make sure the area met environmental standards.

Frank Fischer, VW's chief executive for the Chattanooga operation, said the green features of the plant, slated to open in little over a year, fits with the city's efforts.

According to VW, the plant will hold a bevy of features to save energy and money, including efficient electric motors and storm water recycling.

Sen. Corker said people don't realize yet how the jobs the $1 billion plant and its suppliers will produce affect the region for years to come. The plant and spinoff companies are expected to create 11,477 jobs, according to a University of Tennessee study.

Sen. Corker lauded partnerships which helped woo the German automaker.

He said the city and county cleared the Enterprise South industrial park site even before VW picked Chattanooga and helped put the project on schedule.

"It's a testament to people coming together with a vision and sticking together," Sen. Corker said.

County Commissioner Bill Hullander said he's impressed with the project's pace.

"There will be a lot of changes out here," he said.

Senators Lamar Alexander (R-Tenn.) and Bob Corker (R-Tenn.) and U.S. Representatives Bart Gordon (D-Tenn. 6) and Marsha Blackburn (R-Tenn. 7) released the following statements regarding the U.S. Department of Energy’s finalization of a $1.4 billion loan agreement with Nissan North America to upgrade its Smyrna, Tn., factory to build advanced electric automobiles and an advanced battery manufacturing facility, bringing approximately 1,500 jobs to Tennessee.

“This is great news for Tennesseans looking for good jobs in our state’s auto industry,” Senator Alexander said. “Building electric cars and trucks is a key step towards achieving a clean energy future for our country, and Nissan has recognized Tennessee’s strong auto workforce and our state’s capacity to be at the forefront of this electric car revolution. Thanks to the partnership between Nissan, TVA and the state of Tennessee, Tennesseans soon will be able to charge our cars overnight for a few dollars instead of emptying our pocketbooks to fill them with gasoline.”

“As I said in June when this was first announced, I believe this venture at Nissan is really the nexus of what we’ve tried to create in Tennessee: good paying jobs that move our state and country ahead and help us become more energy secure. This means 1,300 jobs for the area, it secures Tennessee’s position as a leader in America’s energy future, and it continues to tell the world that Tennessee is THE place to do business, especially automotive business,” said Senator Corker, a member of the Senate Energy Committee.

“This investment will be an incredible boon to thousands of families in Smyrna and across the state, and it could not come at a better time. According to Nissan’s filing, the project could ultimately create as many as 10,000 additional jobs in the construction, supply and service sectors,” said Congressman Bart Gordon, who represents Smyrna. “The jobs the Department of Energy’s loan will create are exactly the kinds of jobs that I have fought to bring to Tennessee: high-tech, high-paying and close to home. This project will cement Tennessee’s status as a leader in advanced manufacturing and green industry.”

“Tennessee is an emerging world leader in new energy and this loan will go a long way to enhancing that reputation. As with the Leaf as our reputation for innovation grows, so will the number of new jobs,” Rep. Blackburn said.

Nissan plans to use the proceeds from the loan to produce its all-electric vehicle, the LEAF, at its existing Smyrna, Tennessee, plant. Nissan will offer electric vehicles to fleet and retail customers, and plans to ramp up production capacity in Smyrna up to 150,000 vehicles annually. Nissan anticipates the project may result in an increase of up to 1,300 jobs with an estimated annual payroll of $300 million in Smyrna when full production is reached. Retooling of the existing plant and construction of the battery plant will result in about 250 jobs.

Gov. Bob Riley stopped in Huntsville on January 25th to promote his three-prong "Jumpstarting Jobs" plan, saying though government may not be able to create jobs, "government can at least create an environment" for businesses to grow and prosper.

With the state's unemployment rate reaching 11 percent in December, "we understand we need to do something and we need to do something now" to stimulate job growth, Riley said at the Huntsville/Madison County Chamber of Commerce after meeting with chamber officials.
Riley believes the current recession will be different than previous ones.

"The economy is growing," he said, "but employment numbers aren't."

Jumpstarting job growth in the state must be the Legislature's top priority in the current session, the governor said. Referring to the plan that would let voters decide whether to take $100 million a year for 10 years from the Alabama Trust Fund to spend on highways, bridges and railroads statewide, Riley said, "That's not an immediate jobs plan, (the tax incentive plan) is."

"If we pass (the road-building plan) tomorrow, the people of Alabama won't have an opportunity to vote on it until November," he said.

The "Jumpstarting Jobs" plan includes:

• A one-time income tax credit of up to $1,500 to an employer for each full-time worker hired who is receiving unemployment benefits. The job must pay a wage of at least $10.55 an hour, with higher credits available for higher paying jobs.

• An income tax credit of $500 to businesses for every new job created in the 25 Alabama counties with the highest unemployment rates.

• A provision allowing the owners of businesses with fewer than 25 workers and their employees to deduct 200 percent of the amount they pay for health coverage from their state income taxes. Employees of small businesses could also deduct twice the amount they contribute to health insurance premium payments.

U.S. Senators Jim Webb and Mark Warner and Representatives Tom Perriello and Rick Boucher today announced two grants totaling more than $21.5 million to expand broadband Internet infrastructure in Virginia. The grants, awarded through the Department of Commerce’s National Telecommunications and Information Administration (NTIA), will support the deployment of broadband infrastructure in unserved and underserved areas, enhance and expand public computer centers, and encourage sustainable adoption of broadband service. These investments will help bridge the technological divide, boost economic growth and create jobs.

The grants are funded by the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act, supported by Senators Webb and Warner and Representatives Perriello and Boucher.

The two grants announced today will add 575 miles of new high-speed Internet infrastructure in Southern Virginia. The grants were announced during a press conference call with White House Chief Technology Officer Aneesh Chopra, Senators Jim Webb and Mark Warner, and Representative Tom Perriello.

“These projects are valuable in terms of attracting new businesses, allowing medical professionals to give better care, and giving tens of thousands of local residents access to the internet,” said Senator Webb. “Southside and Southwest Virginia have been hit hard by the economic downturn. It is our duty to provide this part of the Commonwealth with a fair shot at the future. I have consistently fought for the expansion of high speed internet in Virginia's rural areas and I am pleased the American Recovery and Recovery Act prioritized this funding.”

“Building-out the broadband capacity in Southwest and Southside Virginia is a critical piece of our effort to expand economic and educational opportunities in rural parts of our state,” Senator Warner said. “This investment will create enormous educational opportunities for young people and open new markets to our existing businesses and entrepreneurs that will add to the long-term economic competitiveness of these communities.”

Further information about the two grants announced for Virginia today:

Mid-Atlantic Broadband Cooperative: $16 million infrastructure grant with an additional $4 million in applicant-provided matching funds to add 465 miles of new fiber that will directly connect 121 K-12 schools in Southern Virginia to an existing 800-mile fiber high-speed network. By improving connection speeds for these schools from 1.5 Mbps to at least10 Mbps, these new fiber connections will allow the schools, many in isolated areas, to take advantage of distance learning and virtual classroom opportunities. In addition, the expanded fiber network will spur affordable broadband service to local consumers by enabling more than 30 Internet service providers to connect to the project’s open network.

Virginia Tech Foundation, Inc.: $5.5 million infrastructure grant with an additional $1.4 million in applicant-provided matching funds to add 110 miles of open access fiber-optic network between Blacksburg and Bedford City an existing network operated by the Mid-Atlantic Broadband Cooperative. The resulting network will cross six counties in Virginia’s Appalachian region, and provide direct high-speed connections to Virginia Tech’s main campus in Blacksburg and the Virginia Tech Carilion School of Medicine in Roanoke, enhancing the ability for both institutions to collaborate on cutting-edge medical and other scientific research with institutions in the United States and abroad.

“This is a huge boost for Southside Virginia, benefiting our kids' educational success in the short term and building our region's long-term competitive advantage for the 21st Century,” said Representative Perrriello. “I'm thrilled these stimulus funds will expand Internet access for consumers in our small towns and rural communities, giving our workforce the competitive edge they deserve.”

NTIA received more than 1,800 applications during the first BTOP funding round and is currently awarding grants on a rolling basis. Including today’s announcement, NTIA has now awarded 19 grants totaling approximately $228 million under the program. In addition, NTIA has awarded $97 million in mapping and planning grants to 51 states and territories. A second round of BTOP applications will be accepted through March 15, 2010.

Representative Boucher, who represents communities benefiting from the awards announced today said, “These federal funds will provide many more residents in the Ninth Congressional District with access to high speed Internet services. Just as first canals, then railroads and then highways were major arteries of commerce in earlier eras, in the 21st Century, access to broadband will be a defining feature of economic success for rural communities. Step by positive step our expanding broadband infrastructure is assuring that Southwest Virginia’s communities will be at the center of economic opportunity and these federal funds will help us achieve this goal.”

The American Recovery and Reinvestment Act provided a total of $7.2 billion to NTIA and RUS to fund projects that will expand access to and adoption of broadband services. Of that funding, NTIA will utilize $4.7 billion for grants to deploy broadband infrastructure, expand public computer center capacity, and encourage sustainable adoption of broadband service. RUS will use $2.5 billion in budget authority to support grants and loans to facilitate broadband deployment in primarily rural communities. NTIA plans to announce all grant awards by September 30, 2010.

“By expanding broadband Internet access in unserved and underserved parts of Virginia, we can bring new opportunities for jobs, innovation, and economic growth to these communities,” said White House Chief Technology Officer Aneesh Chopra. “The grants announced today will also help improve education in rural parts of the state, facilitate scientific and medical research at Virginia universities, and lay the groundwork for more consumers to ultimately get affordable broadband service where they live.”

U.S. Senator Lamar Alexander recently released the following statement regarding U.S. Secretary of Energy Steven Chu’s announcement of the formation of a Blue Ribbon Commission on America’s Nuclear Future to provide recommendations for developing a safe, long-term solution to managing the nation’s used nuclear fuel and nuclear waste:

“This commission and the president’s endorsement of a new generation of nuclear power plants are welcome steps that will enable the United States to catch up with the rest of the world in building the most reliable way to produce cheap, carbon-free electricity.

"If the president’s budget, as rumored, also increases loan guarantees for new nuclear plants, that would be a third significant step. This will help put our country on a course toward a low-cost, clean-energy future and move us away from a national windmill policy that has been the energy equivalent of going to war in sailboats.”

In light of the administration’s decision not to proceed with the Yucca Mountain nuclear waste repository, the president directed Secretary Chu to establish a commission to provide advice and make recommendations on issues including alternatives for the storage, processing, and disposal of spent nuclear fuel and nuclear waste.

The president’s proposed budget for Fiscal Year 2011 is expected to include an increase in the currently authorized level of loan guarantees for nuclear power from $18.5 to $54 billion. These loan guarantees would enable utilities to lower the cost of financing and cost the taxpayer little to nothing when the loans are paid back.

U.S. Sen. Lamar Alexander urged Congress to move ahead with tough new restrictions on emissions from coal-fired power plants instead of waiting for passage of climate change legislation to clean up the nation's dirty air.

Alexander, R-Maryville, and U.S. Sen. Thomas Carper, D-Del., have filed a bill that, if approved, would force coal-fired power plants to reduce mercury emissions at least 90 percent by no later than 2015. The measure also would require plants to cut emissions of sulfur dioxide by 80 percent by 2018 and nitrogen oxides emissions by 53 percent by 2015.

The reductions would be achieved through use of emissions-control equipment, such as "scrubbers" on smokestacks, and other technologies.

The proposal does not set a limit on the emissions of carbon dioxide, which scientists say is one of the causes of climate change. How to reduce carbon emissions has been one of the primary focuses of climate change legislation that passed the U.S. House last year and a similar bill that has stalled in the U.S. Senate.

Alexander does not support the climate change bill and argues that its "cap and trade" provision for controlling carbon emissions would drive up electricity rates and send jobs overseas.

But while discussions on how to approach carbon emissions are ongoing, he said, improvements in technology have made it possible to achieve significant reductions in mercury, sulfur and nitrogen without a significant cost to consumers.

"We're going to be using coal plants for the foreseeable future in our country, and there's no excuse for operating coal plants without pollution control equipment that takes care of sulfur, nitrogen and mercury emissions," Alexander said.

The Alexander-Carper proposal should not be seen as an alternative to the stalled climate change legislation, Carper said. At the same time, he said, there's no point in further delaying new restrictions on the emissions of mercury, sulfur and nitrogen.

Mercury can contaminate crops and water supplies, harming the brain and other vital organs, and is especially harmful to pregnant women and children. Sulfur dioxide and nitrogen oxides can contribute to respiratory illnesses such as asthma and other lung diseases.

Air pollution from power plants can also damage the nation's natural resources, such as Great Smoky Mountains National Park.

"Millions of people come to the Smokies every year to see the 'blue haze' the Cherokees sang about, not the grey smog that power plant emissions help to create," Alexander said.

Alexander and Carper have been pushing similar legislation since 2004. But this year, they believe, several factors have improved the bill's chances of passage.

For example, technology that can help power plants attain the proposed emission cuts has improved and is more readily available. Also, the bill has "tri-partisan support" - six of its sponsors are Democrats, five are Republicans, and one is an Independent.

In addition, the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency is moving forward with new air-quality standards to reduce the pollutants, yet hundreds of counties across the nation will be unable to comply with the new regulations, which will make it difficult for them to create and retain jobs.

Setting tough national limits on emissions from coal-fired power plants will "stop dirty air from blowing into Tennessee and other states" and will help them meet the new EPA regulations, Alexander said.

The emissions cuts imposed under the legislation could eventually save 250,000 lives and more than $2 trillion in health care costs, according to the EPA. The cost to consumers would be minimal: The EPA estimates electricity rates would rise just 1.5 percent to 2.5 percent over the next decade if the bill becomes law.

Congress needs its full attention this year on helping the economy and creating jobs, U.S. Rep. Phil Roe told about 160 business and government leaders at a Rogersville/Hawkins County Chamber of Commerce legislative breakfast recently.

“We need to focus on job creation in this country,” Roe, R-1st, said at the event held at the Hawkins County Education Training Center. “It’s not health care. People need work. We’ve got 10.9 percent of our people in this state unemployed. In Michigan, it’s 16 percent. ... We’ve got to change the way we’re going or we’re not going to have anyone working in this country.”

Businesses, Roe said, remain worried about health care costs, energy costs from pending cap-and-trade legislation and community banks restrained from making loans because of federal oversight.

Roe, a member of the House Education and Labor Committee, complained the committee did not meet with Labor Secretary Hilda L. Solis until about a week and a half ago.

“She should have been in front of our committee a year ago talking about how we help create jobs,” he said.

Roe, a retired obstetrician/gynecologist, said a constituent asked him at church about where health care reform legislation is headed. A reform bill has passed in the House but not in the Senate.

“He grabbed me by my coat. He said ‘Doc, let me tell you something: You fix your cat. You kill this (reform) bill,’” Roe told the group.

Roe also railed against federal spending.

“It’s cold in Washington right now,” Roe said. “You know it’s cold when two politicians are standing on a street corner and their hands are in their own pockets.”

One state lawmaker at the event also complained about federal spending and its impact on state government.

State Sen. Mike Faulk, R-Church Hill, noted only $12.4 billion of the state’s proposed $28.4 billion budget is state dollars.

“The federal government has made the state junkies waiting for our next fix. ... We’ve got to break this addiction,” Faulk said. “There’s an anger, there’s an angst with the federal government that folks perceive it is just throwing our money away.”

Faulk used the example of the Tennessee Hospital Association’s decision to recommend a tax on non-government-owned hospitals’ gross revenue to draw down federal funding for TennCare and avert about $200 million in proposed state funding cuts. TennCare is the state’s expanded Medicaid program.

“If those (proposed cuts) pass, hospitals will close. ... Not all of them but those who are marginal will go out of business. ... The hospitals collectively are asking the General Assembly to tax them. ... That’s sort of hard to understand for me,” Faulk said.

“Some how, some way we’ve got to figure out how to end that federal addiction because it is madness.”

State Rep. Mike Harrison, R-Rogersville, warned “hard decisions” will be made to pass the next state budget with state revenues still moving downward.

Harrison pointed out that funding for Tennessee’s Coordinated School Health program, championed by the late Hawkins Countian Connie Givens, is still in the budget.

He also lamented the loss of a friend and political operative, Danny Roy Price, who recently passed away unexpectedly.

“I probably would not be here today if not for his work. ... He touched a lot of lives,” Harrison said of Price, a field representative for Roe’s office.

Both Harrison and Faulk also lauded the work of Tennessee Agriculture Commissioner Ken Givens of Rogersville.

Givens, Connie Givens’ husband, thanked the crowd for prayers and support, and also thanked the news media for its coverage of the Coordinated School Health program, which attempts to improve student health. Connie Givens passed away last November.

Givens also joked about Harrison’s repeated suggestions that he is running for re-election.

“What I tell you today you can probably believe because I’m not running for anything,” Givens said.

The National Climatic Data Center will be the lynchpin of a new national office to help forecast the changes to the climate that are affecting sea levels, droughts, ice sheets and weather patterns worldwide.

In the same way the National Weather Service posts daily and weekly forecasts, the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration will create a new Climate Service office to help forecast how climate change may affect communities over the decades.

“We're trying to put under one tent the main players who deal with climate on a day-to-day basis,” said Tom Karl, the current head of NCDC who was named Monday as interim director of the new office. “It puts (NCDC) on the map in a very visible role, and there will be more jobs and growth in Asheville.”

About 1,000 employees and researchers currently work on climate, scattered among various labs and stations of NOAA.

The federal government will add six regional climate service directors who will report to Karl as the interim director. Congress still has to approve money for the new office. NOAA has yet to announce where the office will be headquartered.

“NCDC is just one piece of the puzzle,” said Scott Hausman, the agency's deputy director. “We need to have a single authoritative voice of information as local, state and federal governments need information on climate change to make policy decisions.”

NCDC responds to more than 5 million requests annually from lawyers verifying weather conditions on a particular day for a court case to state planners needing to plan for water shortages in case of drought.

Just as residents can check their weather conditions for the next few days, Hausman foresees tools that would allow property owners to check on climate conditions over the next few decades that could affect a beachfront home on the North Carolina coast.

“Over the next few years, we'll be developing the tools to bring all that data together,” he said.
The 2009 report of the United States Global Change Research Program said that climate-related impacts are already happening, from longer growing seasons to earlier snowmelt and increases in heavy downpours.

Meanwhile, the Cooperative Institute for Climate and Satellites, a research arm of the NCDC, will begin hiring around new 50 positions, including researchers, scientists, drought specialists, information technology workers and others, said Otis Brown, who heads the institute.

Those jobs could pay from $50,000 to $100,000 from post-graduate specialists to senior scientists.

Brown welcomed the news of a climate service office to help highlight the work of the NCDC and the institute. “Probably the outstanding challenge in the next 20 years will be how we deal with climate change. This new Climate Service office could actually give us some options with which way we want to go on locally, regionally and nationally,” Brown said.

President Obama has asked Congress for more than $7 billion for nuclear weapons activities in the National Nuclear Security Administration's budget -- which recommends an overall increase in funding next year for a new uranium processing facility at the Y-12 National Security Complex.

The NNSA wants a 4.7 percent overall increase for infrastructure to more than $2.3 billion -- including money for major long-term projects to replace aging buildings for uranium work at the Oak Ridge plant and plutonium work at the Los Alamos National Laboratory.

According to NNSA spokesperson Damien LaVera, the budget total for the Y-12 plant is $792.5 million -- or about $50 million more than this year's budget. However, $140 million of that is for work on the uranium processing plant.

The proposed uranium processing facility would be located next to the Highly Enriched Uranium Materials Facility (HEUMF) at Y-12.

The HEUMF was finished earlier this year.

"We started loading material last week," LaVera said Tuesday.

The HEUMF is for enriched uranium storage and will be used for maintaining the U.S. nuclear deterrent and as a source of fuel for the Naval Reactors program.

The new facility will be for processing enriched uranium and the $140 million is expected to be spent to build the facility, which will replace the buildings that have been on the site since the Manhattan Project.

"They go hand in hand," LaVera said. "This will be the only place in the country that will handle our stockpile storage mission, our Naval Reactors mission and efforts to prevent the spread of nuclear weapons to other countries."

The $7 billion request is part of the president's overall request of $11.2 billion to manage the stockpile, secure vulnerable nuclear material, recapitalize infrastructure and continue cost-saving management reforms, according to a NNSA press release issued Monday.

In addition to the $7 billion for the weapons activities appropriation, up $624 million from Fiscal Year 2010, the budget includes more than $2 billion for stockpile support activities (up $405 million, or 25 percent); $1.6 billion for science, technology and engineering (up $153 million, or 10.4 percent); and more than $2.3 billion for infrastructure (up $102.6 million, or 4.7 percent) -- including funding for major long-term construction projects to replace aging and expensive-to-maintain buildings that house critical capabilities for plutonium and uranium.

In addition to the NNSA budget request, the Department of Energy's budget request for Oak Ridge National Laboratory is about $1.9 million.

"It's a good budget for Oak Ridge," said ORNL Director Thom Mason. He said the nuclear weapons activity work at ORNL pertains to high priority projects such as nonproliferation activities, research, energy and science.

After years of planning, followed by multiple hearings and reviews, the National Nuclear Security Administration's preferred alternative for the construction of the Uranium Processing Facility at the Y-12 National Security Complex is moving through the final steps to enable construction and operation. The decision to build UPF is timely, fully justifiable and clearly in the nation's best interest.

I understand, appreciate and respect the views of those who have written and spoken in opposition to UPF. However, I believe many of the objections that have been raised are not supported by the known facts. Rather, they reflect unfounded assumptions and/or lack of understanding of the current and future mission of Y-12. As long as Highly Enriched Uranium exists, we need a facility to ensure it is managed safely and securely. Addressing this need without further delay is clearly a national imperative.

Some opponents have assumed that UPF is needed only for increasing the number of nuclear weapons. Fully documented studies have established that UPF is essential even if the nation never builds another nuclear device. It will become the nation's most important facility for safely disassembling existing nuclear weapons as the nation's stockpile is reduced and a major resource for reprocessing uranium for nuclear fuel. Further, the UPF will ensure that the United States maintains the capability to contribute to international nuclear non-proliferation efforts.

Some who oppose UPF have proposed an option of upgrading existing facilities at Y-12 as a less expensive approach to meeting these needs. Actually, the previously mentioned studies show that this alternative is more costly over time than the construction and operation of UPF. Arguments for this alternative to UPF do not take into account the savings associated with the enormous footprint reduction and consolidation of facilities. These operating cost reductions include reduced electrical power and water consumption, lower maintenance and security costs and operational efficiencies from modern equipment and new technologies. The most highly secured areas of Y-12 now occupy approximately 150 acres compared with only a 15-acre site required for the new UPF operations. NNSA estimates operational savings greater than $200 million a year, which means that UPF will pay for itself in a relatively short time.

The proposal for renovating and continuing to use current facilities also fails to recognize the operational complexity and safety issues associated with renovating these 40- to 50-year-old facilities while continuing operations at required levels.

UPF will be a major contributor to President Obama's commitment to seek the peace and security of a world without nuclear weapons through enhancing the ability to dismantle existing weapons and support non-proliferation in an environment that is more secure, safer for employees and less costly for our nation. Those who really believe in these goals should be advocating the rapid move to the construction of UPF.

The government’s Oak Ridge operations have flourished over the past decade, with consistently good budgets via the Department of Energy that enabled major construction projects and new research facilities — notably the $1.4 billion Spallation Neutron Source — to come to fruition. In some cases, the new facilities brought new missions with them, including studies of biofuels and nano-materials of all sorts.

The period of prosperity was topped off last year when about $1.2 billion in Recovery Act money came to town, sparking a new wave of cleanup projects at Oak Ridge National Laboratory and Y-12 and footing the bill for all sorts of other things, including an accelerated schedule for building a chemistry lab at ORNL.

Oak Ridge has been on quite a roll. So it was reasonable to expect the tide to turn a bit when President Obama’s budget proposal for fiscal year 2011 arrived — especially with all the advance talk about fiscal constraint and austerity.

That really wasn’t the case, however, when the requested spending allotments for Oak Ridge were revealed.

“We think the job outlook is good,” said Gerald Boyd, DOE’s Oak Ridge manager, citing the strong budget estimates for ORNL (about $1.65 billion) and other programs. “How much additional hiring we’ll be doing as a result of this, it probably won’t be a lot. But we’ll certainly be maintaining (the current employment numbers), and there’ll probably be additional hiring as a result of Recovery Act money that we got in ‘09.”

Boyd is an even-keel sort of guy, but even he was pleasantly surprised by the early budget numbers — especially the proposed $450 million for environmental management activities in Oak Ridge.

Various reports had circulated inside and outside of the Department of Energy in the weeks before the 2011 budget request was released, with strong indications that DOE’s cleanup allotment was about to take a big hit, and the general feeling was that Oak Ridge might get hit the hardest of all the DOE sites.

“Everything else had been looking OK for a while, but the EM budget was not looking good,” Boyd said. “There were several scenarios out there, one of which was a radical cut. So, we were afraid that if that happened that could have led to layoffs and having to stop projects. Fortunately, that got fixed.”

The state of Tennessee is continually on DOE’s case to boost the environmental spending in Oak Ridge, holding DOE accountable for cleanup milestones already negotiated and pushing for new commitments.

Although DOE has invested billions of dollars in Oak Ridge cleanup projects over the past 20 years, there is a feeling that Oak Ridge lags behind some of DOE’s other cleanup sites — such as Hanford, Wash., and Savannah River in South Carolina — in the pecking order for money. According to Boyd, he works harder on EM than any other DOE program.

“I would say that out of all of the things I’m working on right now, that the EM cleanup budget in Oak Ridge is my personal highest priority. It is the thing that I believe that we really need to address … I spend a lot of time trying to negotiate additional funding for EM in Oak Ridge. We have made some progress, but it is difficult in these times.”

U.S. Rep. Zach Wamp, R-Tenn., said in early February that the Department of Energy, as part of an "expected new agreement" with USEC Inc., will provide $45 million for additional testing and demonstration activities for USEC's American Centrifuge Project.

The near-term effect will be to save about 100 jobs in Oak Ridge, Wamp said in a statement distributed to the news media. Beyond that, the funding should better position USEC for the $2 billion in loan guarantees that the company is seeking from DOE, he said.

Oak Ridge has been a manufacturing hub for the Ohio-based centrifuge project that would provide a new capability for uranium enrichment in the United States. The manufacturing effort is a partnership of USEC and Babcock & Wilcox. USEC has about 185 employees at the Oak Ridge facilities, while B&W has about 125. Those numbers have dropped considerably since USEC began "demobilizing" the project last fall.

USEC spokeswoman Elizabeth Stuckle confirmed that the federal agency had informed USEC of plans to provide the $45 million for upcoming testing of centrifuge machines. She said the $45 million is the same funding allotment that DOE initially said it would provide last year. Under the new agreement, USEC will provide a matching amount of money for what Stuckle described as a critical evaluation of machines slated for commercial use.

Stuckle said the DOE funding will save about 400 jobs in Ohio, Tennessee and West Virginia during this bridge period, which USEC hopes will lead to loan guarantees and deployment of the American Centrifuge Plant. Ultimately, that could create as many as 8,000 jobs, she said.

"We are pleased that DOE has taken this encouraging action to support a technology that is critical to our energy and national security and to American jobs," Stuckle said.

USEC is constructing the American Centrifuge Plant at Piketon, Ohio, to enrich uranium for use as fuel in nuclear reactors. The company is seeking $2 billion in loan guarantees for the project. DOE initially turned down the application but then provided additional time for USEC to resolve technical concerns raised by DOE reviewers.

Stuckle said USEC is assembling and starting to spin some of the machines in the lead cascade of commercial centrifuge machines at Piketon. She said these machines are different from the prototypes that have been running since 2007.

The cascade of commercial machines will start operating toward the end of the first quarter of 2010, and after running for a couple of months, the test results will be used by USEC when the company re-submits its application to DOE for loan guarantees, Stuckle said.

Four people nominated to serve on TVA's board of directors promised a congressional panel they are committed to making sure the public utility provides low-cost clean energy and indicated that is likely to include more emphasis on nuclear power.

Nuclear power "needs to be part of the solution," said Marilyn Brown, an energy policy expert from Atlanta who formerly worked at Oak Ridge National Laboratory.

Brown and the other nominees - Bill Sansom of Knoxville, Neil McBride of Oak Ridge and Barbara Haskew of Chattanooga - sailed through their confirmation hearing before the Senate and Environment Public Works Committee.

Sansom already has served one term on TVA's board and is nominated for another. McBride is an attorney with a long record of public advocacy. Haskew is an economics professor who for eight years managed TVA's rate staff.

President Barack Obama nominated all four to the nine-member board last year and they must be confirmed by the U.S. Senate.

During Tuesday's confirmation hearing, the Senate panel heard testimony from the nominees but didn't decide whether to send their nominations to the full Senate. A formal vote is expected within weeks.

However, the panel's chairwoman, U.S. Sen. Barbara Boxer, D-Calif., said she does not foresee any problems. "So far, so good on everybody who has been nominated," she said.

The committee's top Republican, U.S. Sen. James Inhofe of Oklahoma, also said in a statement he intends to support the nominees.

Tennessee's two U.S. senators - Lamar Alexander and Bob Corker - praised each of the nominees and their qualifications for the board. "There is no more important institution in our region than the TVA," Alexander said.

In her opening remarks, Boxer mentioned the 2008 coal ash spill at TVA's Kingston Fossil Plant and said the tragedy highlighted some of the "hidden costs" to public health and safety from fossil-based fuel.

Sansom, who was on the board when the appeal was filed, said TVA is working to make its coal-fired plants cleaner. TVA already had planned to invest $3 billion to further reduce emissions. But the decision to appeal was made because it would have been impossible to meet the court-ordered time frame for upgrading or installing scrubbers on the plants, Sansom said.

McBride said while the TVA board's primary obligation is to assure a reliable supply of "fairly priced power" for people, businesses and industries, the board also should promote accountability and transparency.

Under questioning from U.S. Sen. Sheldon Whitehouse, D-R.I., the nominees agreed there is scientific evidence that manmade carbon pollution is at least partly responsible for adverse changes to the environment.

If confirmed, Sansom and Haskew would serve on the TVA board until 2014. Brown would serve through 2012; McBride's term would end in 2013.

TVA is updating a long-range plan to weigh its energy options and match them with anticipated demand and is getting ready to examine six "plausible futures" it may face over the next 20 years.

The Tennessee Valley Authority is updating its Comprehensive Integrated Resources Plan and gave a presentation to about 15 people at a public meeting at TVA headquarters recently.

During the summer, TVA started gathering and analyzing information to forecast energy needs, examine existing capacity, look at supply options and make calculations.

"We are just finishing up that phase of the study right now," said Gary Brinkworth, TVA's manager of capacity planning. "We will be moving into the actual simulation and modeling stage."

This will be step three of a six-step process that should result in a completed plan for the TVA Board to vote on by spring 2011, Brinkworth said. TVA has identified six scenarios it might face, depending on what happens to the economy:

(1)The economy recovers more strongly than expected, creating high demand for electricity. Renewable energy legislation is passed, demand for commodity and construction resources increase and electricity prices are moderated by increased gas supply.
(2)Mitigating climate change becomes a national priority and the costs of carbon allowances, gas and electricity increase significantly. Industry focus turns to nuclear, gas, renewable energy sources and conservation.
(3)The economy fails to recover and there is a prolonged period of low power demand. Federal climate change legislation is shelved.
(4)The economy grows stronger, demand for electricity is high, but a "game-changing" technology emerges, resulting in an abrupt decrease in power demand.
(5)The United States puts a focus on reducing dependence on foreign fuel sources. The supply of natural gas is constrained, gas and electrical prices rise and energy efficiency and renewable energy become prime objectives.
(6)Federal climate change regulations pass and drive up fuel and electrical costs, making U.S. industries non-competitive. An economic downturn results.

Brinkworth said TVA will do modeling with those scenarios to try to come up with the most flexible strategy.

"We are going to try to identify one or more plans that survive in all six of those worlds and then try to prioritize those plans," he said.

These will eventually be presented in public meetings. Information on the Comprehensive Integrated Resource Plan is online at www.tva.gov and anyone may post comments at www.tva.gov/IRP.

The goals of the U.S. Army Security Assistance Command, which handles foreign military sales, aren't very different than those of the North Alabama International Trade Association, according to USASAC Commander Brig. Gen. Christopher Tucker.

Tucker was the keynote speaker for the association's annual meeting recently at the Embassy Suites hotel.

USASAC is among the commands moved to Redstone Arsenal under the 2005 Base Realignment and Closure decision. Its new headquarters building won't be finished until 2011, but USASAC is already established here in temporary quarters.

As BRAC moves are completed and the new headquarters opens, the number of international visitors coming to Redstone to visit USASAC should grow, Tucker said, and "may create opportunities for you and your organizations to talk about the capabilities and abilities that are available here in northern Alabama. ..."

"As we look to the future, we anticipate a large volume of interest as more and more countries see the quality of the products that many of your organizations produce, or the services that they provide."

The quality of U.S military equipment, and of the training and assistance available, has spurred tremendous growth in foreign military sales, he said.

In fiscal year 2008, there was $14.5 billion in Army foreign military sales alone. In 2009, sales jumped to $23.9 billion.

Currently, USASAC has 175 open cases in support of Iraqi security forces or national police, with $2.5 billion in undelivered value, Tucker said. And, just since October, the command has executed 22 cases in support of the buildup in Afghanistan worth $1.5 billion, and security assistance programs supporting Pakistan worth about $350 million.

There is still a lot of work to do with Iraq and Afghanistan to be able to bring U.S. troops home, he said. But there is also work elsewhere, "to build and strengthen partnerships that will help us support peace and stability around the world."

Tucker pointed out one example of international partnership playing out in our own hemisphere as thousands of U.S. soldiers, sailors, airmen, Marines and Coast Guard members work in Haiti.

"Think about it," he said. "Yesterday, the 2nd Brigade of the 82nd Airborne Division moved into Haiti, along with a large contingent of Marines, and now there are almost 11,000 U.S. military personnel in that small country, bringing them humanitarian assistance.

"Folks, that's your military. Executing humanitarian assistance at the drop of a hat" while simultaneously conducting a major repositioning of forces out of Iraq and into Afghanistan.

"That's the kind of capability that you and your organizations provide to our military, as well as the support that you give our great soldiers," Tucker said. "It's because of what you do for us that allows us to do so much for you."

Top state officials say a planned Center for Systems Studies here could be the next HudsonAlpha Institute for Biotechnology - a breakthrough facility that creates new jobs, research opportunities and prestige for the state.

Gov. Bob Riley and key lawmakers spent more than an hour recently being briefed by former NASA administrator Mike Griffin on the systems center planned at the University of Alabama in Huntsville.

Griffin is an eminent scholar at UAH, and he will head the center, which will study the way complex systems interact in major research, commercial and government projects.

"This is how we began HusdonAlpha," said state Sen. Roger Bedford, D-Russellville, chair of the Senate Finance and Taxation General Fund Committee. "We came up and looked and talked about the concept and we met with the principals like we've done today, and the state stepped up and invested in that ... and I hope we'll have some good news for you in the future."

"This is an excellent opportunity for the state of Alabama that shows what we can do when we work together," said state Rep. John Knight, D-Montgomery, chair of the committee that writes the General Fund budget in the House.

"We've done this for HudsonAlpha, we've done this for many things across the state, and this is just another opportunity for us to show the products we have in the state."

Knight and Bedford helped steer a $50 million state investment proposed by Riley for HudsonAlpha through the Legislature.

UAH isn't aiming for that much, but the news conference was held in the field where UAH hopes to build the center, clearly a multimillion-dollar investment.

Riley called on State Finance Director Bill Newton to say if the money is there.

"We certainly are hopeful this can work out," Newton said. "Money is lean, but we're not out of money, and when you want to make something a reality, which this sounds like it should be, the governor just invites me across the hall into his office and says, 'Go make this work.' "

"I wish that were true," Riley said, laughing.

A new 62,500-square-foot building for Defense Acquisition University's South Region campus in Huntsville will allow the Department of Defense agency to provide training for more students.

"We trained about 7,700 people last year," said Gary Byrum, director of operations at DAU South Region. With the expansion, the number of students is expected to grow by around 25 percent, reaching about 9,500, he said.

DAUs Huntsville office can also accommodate nearly 6,000 distance-learning students a year, he said.

DAU, which has 20 regional campuses and satellite locations in all, educates and provides certification training to acquisition employees in the Department of Defense and other government agencies and defense-related private industry. It also offers the Senior Service College Fellowship program, a 10-month program for high-level civilian DoD managers, in Huntsville, Detroit and Aberdeen Proving Ground.

A ribbon-cutting ceremony was held Tuesday at the Huntsville facility at 7115 Old Madison Pike.

Established in Huntsville in 2002, DAU has occupied about 35,000 square feet of space in two nearby buildings, Byrum said.

"We've expanded from eight classrooms to 12 classrooms," he said, and the new building has about 100 private offices.

There are now just under 100 employees at the Huntsville DAU facility, and "we intend to increase that number," Byrum said.

Classes are expected to start in the new building around March 22.

Huntsville-based Triad Properties is the project's developer and will manage the facility. McShane Construction, based in Rosemont, Ill., with a regional office in Auburn, was the general contractor.

Oak Ridge Associated Universities (ORAU) is partnering with Oak Ridge National Laboratory (ORNL), Siemens Foundation, College Board and Discovery Education, a division of Discovery Communications, LLC, to collaborate on a special program as part of new, nationwide education initiative that supports the Obama Administration's call to advance science literacy among American students. The program, called Siemens Teachers as Researchers (STARs), is a two-week, residential professional development program that will host 20 middle school and high school science and math teachers for short-term research experiences at ORNL.

The partners met in January at ORAU's Center for Science Education to plan the first-year pilot program scheduled to occur later this summer. STARs participants will spend most of their time at the lab conducting research, participating in facility tours, and attending scientific seminars given by ORNL researchers. Participants will also engage in a number of workshops at ORAU's Center for Science Education classroom with topics focused on classroom technologies, how to integrate scientific research into the classroom, and sharing lesson plans and best practices.

"Advancing science and education has long been the mission of ORAU, and providing teachers with the tools and experiences to enhance instructional methods for the STEM disciplines will go a long way toward enriching the education of the next generation of scientists and engineers," said ORAU President and CEO Andy Page. "Partnerships and programs like these are fundamental to making that mission a reality."

"Making available some of the world's best scientific facilities is one of the things we can do to inspire teachers and students," said Thom Mason, ORNL director. "Working with the Siemens' Foundation is a perfect way to introduce teachers to some of the most exciting research in the scientific community."

The STARs program is part of a larger initiative called The Siemens STEM Academy, designed to advance science, technology, engineering and math (STEM) education in the U.S. by engaging educators from across the country through hands-on and multimedia professional development opportunities that will ultimately improve STEM education for students nationwide. In addition to the STARs program, this larger initiative will also include a Siemens STEM Academy Institute, a STEM Academy Online Portal, and a "Brains of Science Connect" Webinar Series, all designed to give educators across the country an opportunity to connect with each other, share resources, and interact with today's eminent scientists.

Oak Ridge Associated Universities [link to: www.orau.org] is a university consortium leveraging the scientific strength of 98 major research institutions to advance science and education by partnering with national laboratories, government agencies, and private industry. ORAU manages the Oak Ridge Institute for Science and Education for the U.S. Department of Energy.

Oak Ridge National Laboratory [link to: www.ornl.gov] is a multi-purpose science and energy laboratory managed by UT-Battelle for the U.S. Department of Energy.

The Siemens Foundation [link to: www.siemens-foundation.org] provides more than $7 million annually in support of educational initiatives in the areas of science, technology, engineering and mathematics (STEM) in the United States. Its signature programs include the Siemens Competition in Math, Science & Technology, Siemens Awards for Advanced Placement, and The Siemens We Can Change the World Challenge, which encourages K-12 students to develop innovative green solutions for environmental issues. The Foundation's mission is based on the culture of innovation, research and educational support that is the hallmark of Siemens' U.S. companies and its parent company, Siemens AG.

Discovery Communications revolutionized television with Discovery Channel and is now transforming classrooms through Discovery Education [link to: www.discoveryeducation.com ]. Powered by the number one nonfiction media company in the world, Discovery Education combines scientifically proven, standardsbased digital media and a dynamic user community to empower teachers to improve student achievement.

In aspiring to make the University of Tennessee a top 25 public research institution, school and state officials should take their lead from President Kennedy's 1960 promise to put a man on the moon by the end of that decade.

Establishing a timetable will set a specific and attainable goal, and that already is on the minds of university leaders.

"We've been after this for a while," UT System Interim President Jan Simek said in a recent interview "In my time at UT," he said, "I will teach at a top 25 university - before I retire, and I'll retire inside of a decade."

Simek said the process for becoming a top 25 public university began years ago, but a recent challenge by Gov. Phil Bredesen has put the quest on a fast track.

Bredesen, in the last year of his second term as governor, provided an incentive with the announcement of further developing the partnership between UT and Oak Ridge National Laboratory. Bredesen's plan, approved in a special legislative session, would establish a graduate energy sciences and engineering program.

The program will get its initial boost with $6 million in state funding and could create up to 200 faculty positions among existing researchers at the lab. The faculty expansion, in turn, is expected to attract up to 400 new graduate students.

UT can claim another boost through its research contracts and grants that were worth $179 million. That is a 104 percent increase over the previous year.

And the university's seven-year goal of $1 billion in its fundraising campaign is well along. Currently, in its fifth year, the total is $963 million, and university officials are optimistic the school will reach its goal well before the December 2011 deadline.

In recent years, thanks in part to the Tennessee Lottery, the quality of the university's entering freshmen has been steadily improving, both in their grade-point averages from high school and in their standardized test scores. That positive trend will need to continue.

In a similar vein, UT is working to improve its graduation rate, currently at 60.6 percent. Simek said the graduation rates need to move to 80 percent, not an easy feat in a time of tight budgets.

In fact, the likelihood of dwindling state appropriations could be the biggest obstacle to UT's achieving top 25 status. The UT system is facing a $100 million shortfall in 2012 when the federal stimulus money runs out. UT's weathering that storm might depend on the extent to which other universities in other states are faced with the same budget shortfalls.

UT Knoxville Chancellor Jimmy Cheek said the university is developing a comprehensive plan for reaching the top 25, and that should be in place in the fall.

If the goal is attainable in a given timetable, UT's primary task - especially for a new president - will be to keep the program on course and realize how much it will benefit not merely the university but the region and the state as well.

Enrollment at East Tennessee State University is up by more than five percent from a year ago.

The school announced recently its preliminary numbers report on showed enrollment for the 2010 spring semester was 13,796 students. That is an increase of 672 students over spring 2009.

“The enrollment increases that we have been seeing over the past few years are encouraging, as more of our citizens choose to pursue higher education,” said ETSU President Dr. Paul E. Stanton Jr. “I appreciate the efforts of our faculty and staff in attracting new students to our campus and in creating an environment that will help those students succeed.”

The 13,796 figure includes 10,868 undergraduates - an increase of 612 students from spring 2009 - and 2,126 graduate and doctoral students. Also included were 295 students at the College of Pharmacy and 507 medical students and resident physicians at the College of Medicine.

ETSU’s student population has increased every semester for the past few years.

The school offers more than 100 undergraduate, graduate and doctoral programs in the arts and sciences, health sciences, business and technology and education.

Bert C. Bach, ETSU provost and vice president for academic affairs, said a big drawing point for students is the schools accredited and affordable programs.

The bar keeps rising for MTSU enrollment, with official tallies showing the overall spring count setting a new record.

A total of 23,653 students have enrolled in MTSU for spring semester, 5 percent more than the previous spring record set last year at 22,511.

Fall 2009 saw a new overall record of 25,188.

Sherian Huddleston, associate vice provost for enrollment services, explained that fall enrollment is typically higher than spring enrollment, partly because of graduation in December.

Some students do not return for other reasons, she said.

"It could be financial reasons, family situations or illness," she said.

Job relocation for parents or students could also impact a student's decision to enroll. "A lot of students are employed," she said. "If jobs get relocated or transferred, they might not return."

While Huddleston said economic reasons (lack or loss of jobs for example) are a contributing factor for more people enrolling in school there are other reasons.

"MTSU has good program to offer, and good value for the money," she said. "Our location is right here in the middle of the state."

But MTSU officials must balance more students with a looming shortfall of at least $19.3 million by July 2011.

MTSU President Sidney McPhee said Monday that the university has experienced a significant demand of student interest for the last several years.

"We have tried to manage that enrollment down because of constrained resources," he said. "We are still seeing the kind of growth that represents the kind of outstanding programs we have at MTSU."

MTSU raised admissions standards twice in the past seven years. Next to the University of Tennessee, MTSU has one of the highest admission standards for a public institution, he said.

McPhee credits the jump in spring enrollment in part to campus staff and faculty doing a better job of retaining students from fall to spring semester.

"The numbers reflect (some) new students. But normally, new students come in significant numbers in the fall," he said.

Other students have re-enrolled in college after several semesters out of school, he said.

"We are really taking a hard look at our capacity with the new focus on graduation rates," he said. "We are taking a hard look at how much this university can grow with the economic constraints and resources."

The state legislature recently voted to use graduation rates of colleges and universities as a measure of funding, instead of simply looking at the enrollment of institutions of higher education.

Dr. Marilyn C. Beck, president of Calhoun Community College, has announced that the college's 2010 spring semester enrollment has reached a new record for spring semester at the college, with a total of 10,896 students enrolled to date, an increase of 17.74% over last spring's numbers.

Of the students taking classes at Calhoun this spring, 5135 are enrolled in day and evening classes at the Decatur campus and 4356 are taking day, evening and weekend classes at the college's Huntsville/Cummings Research Park campus. The Distance Education program currently has 848 students taking classes on-line. Enrollment numbers for the college's Dual Enrollment students currently stand at 232, however the College's Admissions office is not yet finished processing enrollment applications.

The program at Limestone Correctional Facility's has an enrollment of 325 students.

Commenting on the increase, Beck, said, "We are extremely excited about reaching a new spring semester enrollment record for Calhoun. As the largest of Alabama's two-year colleges, Calhoun continues to offer quality instruction and training opportunities at an affordable cost and in various schedules and formats, which is indicated through our continued enrollment increases," added Beck.

"We are wrapping up final enrollment for our Dual Enrollment students and anticipate at least 220 students to be added, so we will definitely surpass the 11,000 mark for our spring semester," Beck said.

"We have a number of classes that begin the first of March, so we will see our final enrollment number for spring semester increase again once these students are added," said Dr. Rob Steinmetz, associate dean for enrollment management.

Registration for the second-short term of spring semester runs February 10 through March 8. Classes begin March 8. For more information or a schedule of classes, contact the Calhoun Admissions Office at 256-306-2593 or see the schedule of classes online at Calhoun's website (www.calhoun.edu).

Choosing the right college can be an expensive decision.

But recent rankings placing two area universities among the best values in the nation might make the choice easier for some prospective students.

UNC Asheville was recently recognized as a best value among 100 public universities nationwide by Kiplinger's Personal Finance and among the top 50 by Princeton Review.

Appalachian State University in Boone was also named a best value by Kiplinger's.

“I have spoken with parents and students who are very impressed with the affordability of UNC Asheville,” said Jane Fernandes, university provost and vice chancellor for academic affairs. “(UNCA also) offers a high-quality education; that's very important to families, especially in these tough economic times.”

Kiplinger's ranked ASU at No. 22 and UNCA at No. 44 in its annual survey, published online and in the magazine's February print edition. The publication ranks four-year institutions that combine outstanding education and economic value.

UNCA was the only school in Western North Carolina named on Princeton Review's annual list, which was prepared in conjunction with USA TODAY.

That list weighs undergraduate academics, costs and financial aid.

U.S. News and World Report has long released annual rankings of the best colleges in the nation, but a host of other media and educational outlets have joined it over the years in rating schools based on academics, cost and other metrics.

Many institutions have made special efforts to improve their grade in the annual assessments, though some college officials have eschewed them, complaining they fail to accurately portray educational quality.

Davidson College, a selective liberal arts college near Charlotte, made Princeton Review's recent best value list, but it isn't advertising that fact.

Davidson in 2007 signed onto a letter by several college presidents across the nation vowing not to mention rankings in their publications, “since such lists mislead the public into thinking that the complexities of American higher education can be reduced to one number.”

“Choosing a college is a nuanced process and trying to quantify it from 1 to 10 and say this is the best list for everyone, we don't think that's the best way for students to choose a college,” said Stacey Schmeidel, Davidson's director of communications.

Rankings may not tell the full story of the educational value students get at a college, but they do represent the best measure available for the public to compare the costs and qualities of different institutions, said Stan Aeschleman, provost and executive vice chancellor at ASU.

“I think they're reasonably valid,” Aeschleman said. “How many students of high quality want to go there? Are they retained? (Do they) graduate? Alumni giving, endowment — all these things are measures of quality.”

Several other UNC system universities, including N.C. State University, UNC Chapel Hill and UNC Wilmington, have made recent best value lists.

Aeschleman said this is the result of the state's efforts to support its universities by keeping in-state tuition relatively low and offering strong financial aid.

“It's always nice to be recognized for providing high value for a reasonable cost, especially in these tough economic times when colleges and universities seem to be under increasing scrutiny over the rising costs of tuition,” he said.

Undergraduate tuition is currently $2,341 at ASU, and $2,389 at UNCA.

The General Assembly has mandated a tuition increase of 8 percent or $200, whichever is less, in 2010-11, though university officials have proposed alternative plans.

The new Kingsport Center for Higher Education has topped 1,000 students in its second semester of operation.

So the 13-classroom, 54,000-square-foot building that opened in August is already using what KCHE Director Kathy Thacker called creative scheduling.

That means shifting classes around to best utilize space and at peak times adding a few tables, chairs and or computers to some classrooms. The largest classroom is supposed to seat 33 but has grown to 34 for one class.

“We have a great challenge. We’re excited about the challenge. We embrace the challenge,” said Thacker, who manages the KCHE for Northeast State Community College.

Kingsport built the KCHE. Mayor Dennis Phillips said long-term plans include a possible second building.

“There is privately owned land that you could place another building. I don’t think there would be any time in the near future we would ask the taxpayers of Kingsport to shoulder 100 percent of the cost of another building,” Phillips said. “Our job is to jump-start and then the public and private sector take over.”

Not counting University of Tennessee students in online classes, Thacker said the center has 894 Northeast State students enrolled for the winter of 2010 compared to 711 in the fall of 2009, with another 135 enrolled at King College and 98 at Lincoln Memorial University.

Including the rest of the Academic Village, she said 1,560 students are enrolled in higher education downtown, with more expected possibly this spring.

The city spent $11.85 million of the $13.8 million cost of the KCHE plus reimbursed Northeast State about $350,000 for equipment at the facility because it is used by the city.

“The good news is we’re having space problems already,” City Manager John Campbell said. “But the bad news is we did not plan for the city to build another building.”

Campbell said two or three additional building sites are identified, but with no promise or plan of city funding.

The city has spent $18.57 million on the Academic Village, which includes $2.34 million in land purchases. Accounting for all funding sources, the Academic Village represents about $25 million worth of projects.

Other buildings in the village are the Regional Center for Applied Technology, Regional Center for Health Professions and the Regional Center for Advanced Manufacturing.

The fifth building in the village is to be the Pal Barger School of Automotive Technology, slated to open late this year. It will transform the Free Service Tire and Auto Center on Center Street into a facility housing Northeast State’s automotive services program. Barger, owner of Pal’s Sudden Service, has agreed to donate $400,000 to Northeast State to purchase the Free Service building.

Northeast State operates the KCHE and offers associate degrees or the first two years of a four-year degree. Students can finish select four-year degrees.

The schools also offer select master’s and doctoral degrees on site. Participating schools are King College, Lincoln Memorial University and Carson-Newman College, with UT offering online classes.

Carson-Newman so far hasn’t had any students in class at the center, but it has space for at least four classes in the center set to start later this year. Thacker said C-N soon plans an announcement.

“It takes a lot of creativity in scheduling all of the classes we have in this building with the colleges we have with 13 classrooms,” Thacker said of the center, which opened in August 2009.

The center is open 7:30 a.m. to 10 p.m. Monday through Thursday, 8 a.m. to 4:30 p.m. Friday and 7 a.m. to 3 p.m. Saturday.

However, she said the busiest times for classes to start are from 9 a.m. to 10:30 a.m. Monday through Thursday, with Friday so far interactive television (ITV) classes.

She said the schools work well together as a team, and so far students, faculty and staff haven’t complained about being crowded.

“We’re pleased that there’s been so much interest,” Campbell said, adding that he believes the Academic Village campus as it exists could handle another 700 to 1,100 students with flexible scheduling.

Campbell said adding Friday-Saturday classes to the schedule might be an option, as would using two rooms set aside for labs but not developed.

Off-peak classes, using the two tiered classrooms more, and using space in the RCHP and RCAM are other options. The RCAT is being used for Northeast State student assessment but soon may be subleased for class use by King College.

UT has at least 30 online students enrolled in this area, said Gloria Gammell, UT’s program manager at the center, but she said the school doesn’t have an exact head count because online students are not counted that way, at least not yet. However, she said among the at least 30 are four Northeast State nursing faculty members seeking doctoral degrees.

In addition, UT later this year is launching an Ed.D. program, a doctoral program in learning and leadership. The course, expected to draw educators and business and industry managers, is a “Kingsport cohort,” meaning that students in it will meet as a group at the center from time to time.

The Academic Village and the Educate and Grow scholarship program were among reasons cited for Kingsport last year winning an innovations award from Harvard University.