Blogs

A wind expert WHO?

Who can answer any question! At least that's what people are hoping when they call the Windustry Information Hotline. “Through member supported outreach, education and advocacy we work to remove the barriers to broad community ownership of wind energy,” goes our mission. One way we pursue that mission is to advise people new to wind energy, landowners hoping for a new harvest of renewable energy, and citizens who want to make a difference in their communities by advocating for Community Wind projects.

Sometimes we see Community Wind as policies that provide incentives for local ownership of wind farms. In the wind industry Community Wind is often seen as wind turbine technology with a capacity between 100 kW and 1 MW. Driving through states like Texas and Iowa, one sees vast expanses of wind turbines and wonders if the ranchers and farmers have a stake in those wind farms that can benefit their agricultural communities.

A National Renewable Electricity Standard (RES) of 25 percent by 2025 could create 274,000 new renewable energy industry jobs, according to the report “Job Impacts of a National Renewable Electricity Standard” from RES Alliance for Jobs prepared by Navigant Consulting. The RES Alliance for Jobs is a coalition of businesses and organizations that support Congressional enactment of a strong federal RES. Thirty-six countries, including China, already have a RES, while in the U.S. legislation is pending.

“South Dakota and Minnesota have robust wind resources to harness, particularly in the area where the power plant was proposed.”
—Lisa Daniels, Windustry

Big Stone II was originally slated to be a cost-effective, clean-coal project to be up and running as early as 2011 near Milbank, South Dakota, supplying new energy for the Midwest and even to Eastern states. Now that the project has been cancelled, many are wondering what went wrong and what will replace the power capacity that it would have supplied to the CapX2020 transmission lines planned for Minnesota.