Oxford Energy

BEN MOORE

10/30/2012

SECTION A

INDIVIDUAL ASSIGNMENT 1:

OXFORD ENERGY

Target Audience: Philip Rettger, VP of The Oxford Energy

While you must be prepared for misleading and emotionally-based questions, the main strategy is to focus on your talking points and deflect questions showing that you have done your due diligence. While certain Derry residents may resist the introduction of Oxford’s new renewable energy project, most of the population will understand the significant benefits of such a plant. Three key impacts must be highlighted in order to persuade the Derry residents: environmental, aesthetic, and economic.

Oxford’s primary point of address is the environmental impact of renewable energy. Because the environmental concerns are largely the most emotional, addressing environmental facts should be the crux of your speech. First, Derry has already approved the Power Recovery Systems (PRS) plant that utilizes trash as an energy source. Comparing the two plants’ projected emissions, Oxford’s facility will produce less sulfur emissions than the PRS facility (Fig. 3). Further, a thousand homes emit more particulates, carbon monoxide, and hydrocarbons than the Oxford plant, while emitting a comparable level of sulfur and nitrogen compounds (Fig. 2). Oxford emissions have less of a negative impact environmentally than expanding the town by one thousand homes. By wording the impact in this way, the residents have a figure that is more readily understandable and directly comparable to other entities. Mentioning that all the necessary organizations at both the state and national level have cleared the project will strengthen the environmental argument as well. In fact, the benefits of Oxford’s plant abound in the ability to reuse all the parts and byproducts of a tire, from the gypsum used in drywall and concrete to the steel belts melted and reprocessed, even fly ash is reused to produce fertilizer and paint. Tying all these facts together is the...