Georgia Energy Trust Fund —Dr. Sidney Smith 2012 02 17

After the ribbon cutting for a new solar installation in Bryan County, Dr. Sidney Smith talked about a distributed commodity market in solar power, plus large private investment utility-scale solar plants, and then he told LAKE about the Georgia Energy Trust Fund.

Here's the video:

Georgia Energy Trust Fund —Dr. Sidney Smith 2012 02 17
South Eastern Pathology Associates,
Selling Power, Lower Rates for Customers LLC (LRCLLC),
Richmond Hill, Bryan County, Georgia, 17 February 2012.
Videos by Gretchen Quarterman for LAKE, the Lowndes Area Knowledge Exchange.

We donate 1.5% of the money we make to this trust fund for the county.... Now we invest that money in Georgia bonds for the county. And then the county only gets half of the interest So the funds we donate for these counties will grow forever as a result of what we're doing with the trust fund...

It's invested in us, roads, airplanes, deep water, stuff like that.

And that's the key actually.

No civilization before ours, before we did this.... All civilizations use up all their attributes and assets and eventually, like Easter Island, they all die. They use up all their coal, and it's over.

But what we'd like to do is we'd like to invest a very small portion, 1.5%, of what we generate as gross, and we invest it in the county. And the the counties eventually over time, we can calculate when they'll be financially independent. They don't need any state taxes, federal taxes, they don't even need any operating taxes, or even sales taxes. They'll be financially solvent.

That would be great for a county like Ben Hill instead of a coal plant, or a county like Lowndes that's always struggling to make ends meet.

-jsq