Blowing in the Wind: A New Economic Opportunity for Rural CommunitiesBy Patrick Mazza The windmill, much as the farmhouse or barn, is a signature of the traditional rural landscape. Wind was a prime farm energy source before rural electrification and gasoline-powered water pumps. Now the circle has come full turn, and wind is again providing vital support for rural communities, this time as a generator of electricity for sale to energy-hungry cities and industries. From Germany and Denmark to Minnesota and Iowa, and now in the Pacific Northwest, capturing the energy in air blowing above the land is emerging as a new economic enterprise often far more profitable than growing crops on the land. Leasing their land to wind plant developers, landowners are typically earning $1,500-2,000 annually for 30 years per each large-scale wind turbine sited on their land. Depending on the site, a 1,000-acre farm can easily accommodate 10 turbines, while each turbine takes around one-half acre to two acres out of crop production (mostly for access roads). Outside that small footprint, farm operations continue as usual. With earnings on many major farm commodities running $100/acre or under, the attraction of harvesting the wind is obvious. "Corn prices have been so low in recent years that farmers are making maybe $50 an acre," notes David Osterberg, a former Iowa legislator. His 1983 bill requiring that utilities derive a certain amount of energy from clean sources eventually led to the 1999 opening of the world's single largest wind plant, the 193 megawatt (MW) Storm Lake, Iowa facility -- 257 turbines scattered in clusters across more than 100 properties. Each turbine yields around $2,000 annually to landowners. "I talked to a farmer who makes $8,000 from four wind machines on his land," Osterberg says. "It is so much more money compared with anything else he can do with his land." The extra income helps that farmer employ his son full time on the farm, increasingly a rarity in rural America. "We could easily have 10 times the wind energy production we now have in Iowa. That would be another 3,000 of these towers each paying $2,000 apiece." Seeking to reduce fossil fuel pollution, governments across the world are promoting wind through research, mandated development, guaranteed markets and financial support. In the U.S, wind developers can take advantage of a federal tax credit of 1.7 cents per kilowatt-hour generated. Enacted in 1999, it lasts through 2001. But so far in the U.S., the biggest push for wind energy has come from the state level. California tax credits and research to identify wind-farm sites in the 1980s gave the U.S. wind-power industry its modern birth. Even today, long after those tax credits expired, California remains the nation's leading wind producer. But the center of action in recent years moved to the upper Midwest. In both Iowa and Minnesota, states mandate clean energy development targets. Major wind installations came on line in both states in 1999. Now the wind explosion is sweeping the Pacific Northwest. From 20-25 percent of U.S. wind energy growth over the coming three years will take place in the region. Driving the development is customer willingness to pay a small premium for environmentally preferable energy. Mostly Green Power customers are buying wind, since it is the cheapest clean energy source. Oregon's first wind farm, the 25-MW Vansycle Ridge facility near Pendleton, opened in late 1998. Portland General Electric buys the output for sale to the City of Portland, which has opted to use 5 percent clean energy in municipal operations. The 84-MW Foote Creek Rim facility in Wyoming, jointly owned by PacifiCorp and Eugene Water and Electric Board, supplies Pacific's Green Power program. The Bonneville Power Administration (BPA) contracts for 51 of the megawatts generated at the Wyoming site. BPA has a goal of adding 1,000 MW of environmentally preferable power to the Northwest power mix by 2010, 10 percent of its sales. Local Northwest agencies, including Multnomah County, Oregon and the Salem Electric Board, have committed to Green Power purchases. Through its Northwest Clean Energy Challenge, Climate Solutions and 13 partner groups are also engaged in a major campaign to build Green Power markets in the region. As in the Midwest, Northwest agricultural operators are gaining new income from the wind boom. At Foote Creek, cows graze among turbine towers while landowners earn $140,000 in lease payments annually. On Vansycle Ridge, wheat grows right up to the turbine towers, while farmers are earning in the area of $2,000 per turbine. Growing Green Power demand is spurring further Northwest wind plant expansion, so yet more rural communities and landowners stand to benefit. Vansycle developer FPL aims to add 300 MW along the ridge from Umatilla County to the Walla Walla area on the Washington side. Energy Northwest plans a 25-MW turbine farm in the Horse Heaven Hills near Kennewick. San Diego-based SeaWest aims to build 300-500 MW of wind plants in the Northwest. The company is already moving to build a 25-MW plant near Condon in north central Oregon and a 22-MW installation on the Blackfeet Reservation in Northwest Montana. The Blackfeet have one of the richest wind resources in the Northwest. This will be the first utility-scale wind plant on tribal lands anywhere in the U.S. Developers expect all these new Northwest plants will be on line by the end of 2001. Harvesting the wind "is definitely an economic opportunity" for Northwest rural landowners, says George Darr, who manages BPA's program to develop new renewable energy sources. Darr recently attended local public hearings in areas slated for the new projects. "The number-one comment was, 'How do I get one of these turbines on my place?'" Patrick Mazza is staff writer-researcher for Climate Solutions, www.climatesolutions.org. This article is excerpted from an upcoming Climate Solutions Report, Wind: Harvesting Clean Energy for Rural Development, the first in a series on how clean energy can help revitalize rural America. Climate Solutions is organizing the Harvesting Clean Energy for Rural Development conference Jan. 29-30 at the Downtown Spokane Doubletree Inn along with over a dozen co-sponsors. For more information contact Rhys Roth at 360-352-1763 or rhys@climatesolutions.org.
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