This resource from the Kansas Corporation Commission is an Xcel spreadsheet that steps through the ins and outs of community wind in Kansas, including extensive discussion of areas with good potential for community wind development.

Click here to go to the KCC website. 

In this interview with the Climate Energy Project, Dan Nagengast of the Kansas Rural Center talks about community wind opportunities in Kansas.

Click here to read the interview. 

This January 2008 policy brief from the New Rules Project of ILSR highlights how several European countries, and more recently the Canadian province of Ontario, have adopted a simple yet powerful strategy to expand renewable energy and benefit local economies. It is called a feed-in tariff: a mandated, long-term premium price for renewable energy paid by the local electric utility to energy producers. Evidence shows that a feed-in tariff achieves greater results at a lower cost than do other strategies like tax incentives or renewable electricity standards.

Click here to go to the New Rules Project website and download a copy of the report.

There are many resources to help schools interested in learning more about how they can participate in wind energy.

While every situation is different, one of the best things a school interested in wind can do is learn about what other schools have done, especially schools in their area. You can find pre-sorted search of school wind project case studies from our larger project database here.

You can find a pre-sorted list of resources specifically for schools (from our larger resource database) by clicking here, but keep in mind that school wind projects are simply community wind projects so our collection of resources for community wind projects will be helpful as well.

Wind Powering America (a program of the U.S. Dept. of Energy) has a page of resources for schools interested in wind energy at http://www.eere.energy.gov/windandhydro/windpoweringamerica/schools.asp

Resouces on this page include:

The November/December 2007 issue of Rural Cooperatives, a magazine published by USDA Rural Development, features wind energy.

IRS bulletin 2007-45 (skip to page 967) provides a summary of IRS Rev Proc 2007-65 which establishes a safe harbor for the allocation of tax credits for wind projects that use a flip business structure.

This report from Lawrence Berkley National Laboratory was released in September, 2007. The report, titled "Wind Project Financing Structures: A Review & Comparative Analysis," was authored by John Harper (Birch Tree Capital, LLC), Matt Karcher (Deacon Harbor Financial, L.P.), and Mark Bolinger (Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory), and was funded by the U.S. Department of Energy's Office of Energy Efficiency and Renewable Energy, Wind & Hydropower Technologies Program.

This session explores the debt side of community wind energy. Featured topics include: the debt market today – participants and terms; what makes a good wind project from a lender’s perspective; new opportunities in bonding; and how lenders view risk for wind energy projects.

Moderator: Ed Woolsey, Green Prairie Energy

Speakers/Panelists: