WIND ENERGY - CHANGE YOUNG PEOPLE BELIEVE IN (2008 PROJECT SITING WORKSHOP WRAP)

There were a lot of young faces at the American Wind Energy Association (AWEA) Wind Project Siting Workshop February 14 and 15. A lot of bright smiling young faces that beamed brighter and smiled bigger when asked how and why they got into wind energy.

There is something incredibly exciting and inspiring about these young people. It is immediately clear they are serious about the wind energy business AND passionate about the environment, climate change and energy. They are aware of the problems their world faces but they aren’t hanging their heads in despair. In the wind energy industry, they have found a place where they feel, as one told me, “…like we’re making a difference.”

Peter Young is 24. He has been with Wind Capital Group (Madison, Wisconsin) for a year. He comes from a family that spent its vacations in national parks, he considers himself an environmentalist and he studied mathematics and biological science in college. He believes wind energy is an answer to U.S. clean energy needs. He doesn’t like seeing pictures of birds killed by turbines so he is helping his company pick the right sights for turbines and transmission to minimize these problems. This is his 3rd wind energy conference and he says he always sees a lot of his peers. “[The industry] is growing so much. Everybody’s looking for people.”

Krista Gordon is 28. She has been with Iberdrola (USA) for 5 years. She has been passionate about wind energy since she was young. She remembers driving around the rural areas in her home state of Kansas with her parents, seeing the oil wells and thinking “...we can do better.” She got her degree in electrical engineering and did a stint in the Coast Guard. As a veteran she feels the national defense aspect of wind energy is important, the way it frees the nation from dangerous energies like Liquified Natural Gas. She adds that environmental concerns are even more important to her and thinks they probably are the most important draw for others her age. She calls that the “I’m doing something I believe in” aspect. “But I’m a capitalist through and through,” she adds, “which is why I’m an environmentalist.”

The first wind farm installation in the U.S. (left) was built in Northern California in 1981. The people interviewed for this article had not started elementary school. That technology is now outdated by modern, safer, multi-megawatt turbines. (click to enlarge)

Molly McElligott is 25. She’s been an environmental consultant for 3 years (Northern Environmental in Wisconsin). Asked why she was interested in wind energy, she didn’t bat an eye. “It’s our future.” Her company has her doing natural gas pipelines as well as wind transmission studies. She says wind energy is still a new idea where she is in the Midwest and she’s clearly excited about it.

Ryan Adams (Padoma Wind Power, La Jolla, Ca), 25, was talking to Molly. He’s been doing wind resource assessment for 5 years and he thinks his generation is especially suited to do wind project development because it is so computer savvy. The previous generation of wind developers made low-tech, shoe-leather assessments but Adams believes that time is gone. Deciding where to site a project requires the kind of technological sophistication his peers are comfortable with.

Valerie Meyer, 23, just started with Ecology and Environment, a consultant based in Buffalo, NY. Valerie has worked in the Houston office for a month doing fatal flaw analysis on planned projects. She studied biology at Cornell. Her training would allow her to do many kinds of environmental consulting but she is doing nonstop wind right now because there are so many wind projects being planned. And she couldn’t be more pleased. “I think I’m lucky," she said.

Kevin Anderson, 30, is in the cultural/archaeological survey department of Western Land Services in Wyoming. His company does surveys for many industries, including oil and gas. He was assigned some wind farm surveys and immediately decided he wanted to get more into it. “This draws my attention way more,” he said. “It’s new, it’s fresh, it’s clean and our country needs to go more towards that…” This AWEA siting workshop “…wasn’t that big a deal to [my company] and I found out about it and I said ‘oh, you’ve got to send me to that!’”

The first space shuttle launched in 1981. (click to enlarge)

There is an equally excited group of young people working for AWEA, youngsters in their 20s who believe wind energy is the right answer for their world. Asked about wind’s controversial aspects, one young woman said, “Wind does everything possible to avoid those things but it’s not like we look away.” Her co-worker grew up in New Zealand but has been in the U.S. for over a decade. He still remembers a single wind turbine on a hill in Wellington he saw as a child. And he remembers getting really excited when he found out you could build fields of turbines to generate energy to benefit the world. Their San Francisco-raised fellow-worker said he was worried about the future of a whole civilization based on petroleum. He had been “steeping in the peak oil movement” until he found the cause of wind energy to believe in.

Sandra Day O'Connor made the cover of Time Magazine in 1981 as the first woman nominated to the Supreme Court. (click to enlarge)

Given what these hard-working, committed young folks have to say, it is not hard to understand why so many in their age group respond to presidential candidates’ promises of change. Regardless of which candidate or which party comes out of this election year on top, events like this wind energy symposium make it clear that the next generation of energy providers intend to make wind energy change we can all believe in.

AWEA Wind Power Project Siting Workshop
February 14-15, 2008 (NewEnergyNews)

WHO
American Wind Energy Association (AWEA)

WHAT
AWEA Wind Power Project Siting Workshop

WHEN
February 14 – 16, 2008

Today, wind energy is a worldwide phenomenon and the people interviewed for this article see themselves as part of that world. (click to enlarge)

WHERE
Austin, Texas

WHY
AWEA: "Shattering all its previous records, the U.S. wind energy industry installed 5,244 megawatts (MW) in 2007, expanding the nation’s total wind power generating capacity by 45% in a single calendar year and injecting an investment of over $9 billion into the economy...The new wind projects account for about 30% of the entire new power-producing capacity added nationally in 2007 and will power the equivalent of 1.5 million American households annually while strengthening U.S. energy supply with clean, homegrown electric power."

In the U.S., wind energy is growing so fast that this map, created in October 2007, is already way out of date. And the people interviewed for this article intend to make this map much greener. (click to enlarge)

QUOTES
Randall Swisher, Executive Director, AWEA: “This is the third consecutive year of record-setting growth, establishing wind power as one of the largest sources of new electricity supply for the country...This remarkable and accelerating growth is driven by strong demand, favorable economics, and a period of welcome relief from the on-again, off-again, boom-and-bust, cycle of the federal production tax credit (PTC) for wind power.”