While we were out live-blogging the second annual Economic Summit (Mankato Free Press coverage here), the Star Tribune published Windfall for Pipestone, a long business article about Suzlon Rotor, an Indian company that manufactures wind turbines:
As Corey Juhl rounded the corner past Buffalo Ridge, a grove of windmills bloomed from a cornfield and cartwheeled against the sky. They're the Juhl family's wind turbines -- machines that jump-started Pipestone's wind movement and brought Suzlon Rotor Corp. to town from India.
Much has changed since locals first heard the name Suzlon four years ago.
Down the road at the new Suzlon plant last week, hundreds of workers hopped off buses and got to work, cutting silky fiberglass cloth that would soon be resin-treated, heated and molded into gleaming 141-foot-long turbine blades, capable of producing 2.1 megawatts of energy from wind.
Open just 19 months, Suzlon's first U.S. plant has taken off like a gale-force wind. Employment has swelled from 275 to 500. Production jumped from one blade a day to nearly three as businesses and farmers search for alternatives to coal power. Suzlon is now the fifth-largest turbine maker in the world, with about 8 percent of the U.S. market. . . .
. . .Minnesota is now the third- largest wind energy producer in the country, with more than 1,300 MW installed. The state has mandated Xcel, Great River and other power companies to produce 25 to 30 percent of their power from renewable sources by 2025. It's been a nice boost to wind-turbine and component makers such as General Electric, Gamesa, Vesta and LM Glass Fiber in Grand Forks, N.D.
In Pipestone, orders are pouring in from John Deere, farms across the Midwest and a growing number of companies looking to get in on the wind-power market. Suzlon just won its first Great River Energy co-op member. It installed 2.1-megawatt turbines for Nobles Cooperative Electric and Federated Rural Association in March. . . .
The article also looks at some of the growing pains the company and town have experienced: worker shortages, housing shortages, and a since-fixed design problem that caused rotor blades to crack. Whatever the downside, Suzlon's booming business is a net gain for Southwestern Minnesota.
Nonetheless, there's another crack threatening the wind industry: the expiration of the production tax credit, which encourages investment in renewable energy projects.
In today's paper, the editorial board of the Mankato Free Press states in Alternative energy solutions needed:
Oil and gas prices are at record levels. The environmental damage from using fossil fuels is a known fact.
The need to move more quickly to greatly expand alternative energy sources is obvious to all Americans.
Except some in Congress and the White House.
The Senate and President Bush continue to block extension of the renewable energy tax incentives. The tax credits, which will expire later this year, provide incentives for solar, wind, biomass and other clean energy development.
The House last week passed a bill that would provide $18 billion to extend the credits for years to come.
Senate Republicans, for the past year, have blocked several attempts to extend the incentives in major energy bills and the Farm Bill. The president has also threatened to veto legislation.
Some of Senate Republicans’ opposition has been in how the credits are paid for.
The latest House version compromises by not requiring the rollback of tax breaks for major oil and gas companies to fund the renewable credits. Instead, funding would come from a change in policy on deferred compensation for some offshore companies and delayed implementation of new tax rules for multinational companies operating outside of the United States.
It’s time for the Senate and the White House to get on board. Delays have already reduced the investments in clean energy projects and further delays will set back the progress that has been made in the emerging renewables industry.
That would be a blow to a country that is eager to support technologies and development that would help lead to more energy independence and a cleaner environment.
We remind readers that while the Senate Republicans and White House are holding up passage of this legislation, Brian Davis's pals at the NRCC have held it up for ridicule. As we posted several months ago:
We've written before about how out-of-step with the district's support for renewable energy the endorsed GOP candidate is. But we're even more flabbergasted by a Karen Hanretty blog post that Tom Cole, chair of the NRCC, included in a national missive to supportive bloggers this week:
So while Pelosi and the Democrat majority pander to their fat-cat environmentalist patrons by debating the efficiency standard of a light bulb, offering tax credits for wind farms (none of which are to be built in Ted Kennedy's backyard, of course) and pushing for increased reliance on corn-based ethanol (maybe we can grow all the corn in ANWR) precious little has been done to increase the supply of oil in America. Yet, the Democrats are trying to "fool" you into believing they're offering viable options. . .
Hanretty's spleen seems particularly out-of-touch with the First, where farmers and other rural dwellers are racing to put up wind turbines on their land while arguing for keeping and expanding that tax credit. There's a lot of economic interest in ethanol as well, though no absolute allegiance to corn-brewed ethanol, since several of Walz's earmarks go toward researching cellulosic feedstocks for ethanol. And, funny, but a lot of people in the First are concerned with environmentalism, though many might use the word conservation, and they're not fat cats.
The American Wind Energy Association's graphic accompanying this post shows how new wind projects virtually disappear when the production tax credit isn't renewed. Now why would we want to still the bustling industry in Pipestone, and why would voters in one of the top wind energy producing congressional districts in the country want to vote for a candidate who simply doesn't get it?
Representative Tim Walz does and expresses that support not only in Congress but also in the district. Witness last February's summit on renewable energy in Windom. We met Dan Juhl and his sons, featured in the Strib article, at that meeting. These summits are incredible (and free) opportunities to meet and learn from some of the best and most able minds in Southern Minnesota.
Photo: Swiped from the Juhls' web site.
And now, a musical treat, Son Volt singing its lovely alt country tune, "Windfall." We dedicated it to Matthew Wohlman and the rest of Walz's talented staff for bringing people together at the summits and other meetings.
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