Schweitzer also wants to reserve $1 billion to create a new Montana Institute of Technology and Energy, or MITE (pronounced “mighty”), to research all forms of energy – from clean coal to wind, solar and biomass, to oil and gas, to batteries and fusion.

The money would pay for endowments for professors and graduate students to conduct research. Montana could keep the engineers, scientists and mathematicians graduating from colleges here instead of seeing them leave the state for higher paying jobs elsewhere.

“The research corridor between Bozeman and Butte would be the equivalent to the corridor between Berkeley and Stanford (in California),” he predicted. “It would be a research institute that would create tens of thousands of jobs.”

Schweitzer said the research institute would have to be “technology neutral” and not favor one kind of energy over another.

“The most important thing we can do is break our addiction to petro-dictators around the world,” he said.

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It may seem like a pipe dream at this point, but Schweitzer said he wants to have a conversation with legislators and other Montanans about the idea.