AT THE CENTER OF THE BOOM IN WIND

At The Center Of The Boom In Wind
Herman K. Trabish, July 7, 2008 (Exclusive to NewEnergyNews)


Wondering what it’s like working in the booming wind energy industry, NewEnergyNews had a talk with Iberdrola’s Krista Gordon June 19th.

Gordon is a Business Developer and Project Manager in Kansas. Under the extraordinary leadership of Governor Kathleen Sebelius (see Saturday Video: Kansas Fights Back), Kansas is building wind fast and has become a point of focus in the fight against global climate change and the fight to subdue dirty energies like coal with clean New Energy, especially wind (see KANSAS REJECTS EMISSIONS).

Gordon gave an enthusiastic endorsement of Kansas’ political leaders, saying she is “grateful” for the leadership coming from Governor Kathleen Sebelius and Lieutenant Governor Mark Parkinson.

She also pointed out an interesting thing about the Kansas wind boom: The state doesn’t have a Renewable Electricity Standard (RES) yet it is building wind as fast as it can, driven not by mandates but by voluntary goals set by Governor Sebelius. “The Kansas utilities have been very good about meeting the governor’s goals for renewable energy voluntarily,” Gordon said. “And I hope they will continue what they’ve been doing.”

The implication is powerful: An abundant resource (Kansas wind) and aggressive, inspiring political leadership and a cost competitive New Energy technology add up to big business.

Gordon makes a point to the Ellis County Planning Commission. (Photo from the Hays Daily - click to enlarge)

First question: Is this a boom?

“On average,” Gordon answered, “ I get one or two calls a week from ranchers or economic development people or county officials saying ‘Come out to such-and-such county or to my ranch and build a wind project please…’”

That's not surprising. The world added more than a quarter of its total installed wind energy in 2007 alone and is nearing 100 gigawatts of total capacity. The U.S. nearly doubled its 2006 growth in 2007 and is likely to do the same again in 2008. Kansas finished 2007 with 364 megawatts of installed wind capacity but is on track to more than double that this year.

Gordon is currently wrapped up in the development of the 200-megawatt Hays Wind Project in western Kansas’ Ellis County. She is also overseeing the Conestoga, Saline and Chetolah Crossing Wind Projects.

The Hays project was proposed in 2003 and has been a source of wide public discussion for the last year and a half.

Krista spends much of her time and energy interacting with the people who will be living with the Hays project. She finds most of them receptive. She says Kansans tend to be more concerned with keeping their air and water clean than with global climate change and she described most of what she hears as “extremely supportive.” They like the idea of the economic development Iberdrola and wind energy are bringing to western Kansas.

Gordon delights in seeing others see the elegance she does in the huge pinwheels. To that end, she has put hesitant people into her car and driven them to wind projects. She has even, to win the favor of one community, organized a bus tour of a wind installation. (The community came around and the project was developed.)

Is there opposition?

“Way less than a percent of the population,” Gordon said.

Wind is comin' up all over - Kansas. (click to enlarge)

With most wind developments, she works with local groups to make sure wildlife habitat is sensitively addressed. And there are always some aesthetic objections. “In places there are cases where you have people who don’t want to look at wind turbines and they’re not thrilled at their new neighbors.”

The Hays project has been controversial with some locals. “We do have some neighbor-based opposition. Classic NIMBY-ism.”

Will it stop the project?

She hesitated. “I hope not…It is ‘I don’t want to look at it” and there’s a little bit of ‘I’m afraid it’s going to lower my property values’ mixed in.”

Property value is one of the many issues Gordon is more than happy to talk about. There is ample data that wind projects are not detrimental to a property’s value and in fact sometimes tend to increase value.

“Probably the most compelling information is from the Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory,” Gordon said, referring to Do Wind Facilities Affect Local Property Values? by Ryan Wiser and Ben Hoen of the Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory.

No harm to property values. (click to enlarge)

Shown the data, Gordon said, most people come around. Even more convincing is when reluctant adopters stand amid wind turbines. “The most compelling thing is when people go see wind projects and stand in the midst of turbines and they say ‘oh, OK, they’re kind of cool looking, they’re not this monstrosity…’”

Some resistance always remains. Though less than a percent of the community, it can be vociferous and troublesome and sometimes worse. The Hays project is currently stymied by resistance. There have been criminal incidents of harassment of locals and developers by anonymous angry locals unable to rally political support.

Gordon, protected by her ferocious terrier, is undaunted. She repeatedly remarked on the highly receptive atmosphere of most western Kansas communities.

Gordon has been working in the wind business for 5 years. Before that she earned an electrical engineering degree from Wichita State University after 4 years as a Coast Guard cadet. Her first projects were in New England’s Berkshire Mountains and North Dakota and Eritrea. Though only in her late 20s, she has a wide enough experience to see something special is happening.

What else says "boom" in the wind business?

“I was acquired twice,” Gordon said, revealing the personal side of the industry-wide consolidation phenomenon.

Larger companies – many European – are buying up smaller U.S. companies. Distributed Generation, Gordon’s first employer in the wind business, was acquired by Competitive Power Ventures (CPV). CPV was acquired by the multinational energy giant Iberdrola.

Indicator: 5 years ago, wind was 1% of new power generation. Last year it was 30%. (From the American Wind Energy Association - click to enlarge)

“[Another] of the signs we’re growing is demand is so much greater for turbines now…” She paused. “And frankly I think the stop and start nature of the PTC feeds directly into that turbine shortage. Personally, I advocate a longer term political regulatory framework.”

She was referring to the production tax credit (PTC) which has been intermittently available to wind energy installation builders over the last decade. Meant to incentivize the development of emissions-free energy, it allows a tax credit of 2 cents per kilowatt-hour of electricity produced by wind.

“I don’t know if I can speak for Iberdrola in this but personally I would prefer no PTC rather than a stop and start PTC…”

When Congresses supportive of New Energy have enacted the PTC for wind producers, development has expanded. When recalcitrant Congresses have refused to extend the PTC, production has fallen off drastically. The result is a series of boom and bust cycles that Gordon believes are even more destructive to the industry than no PTC at all.

“We’d know exactly what the regulatory structure would be in 5 years whereas today we do not…I think we should get rid of all tax incentives to all forms of power generation – PTC included – but oil and gas and coal and nuclear included, too. Wind would be very competitive.”

Her point:

While Congress has stopped and started and stopped and started and is now threatening to again stop the PTC (as well as investment tax credits that incentivize the development of solar energy), the oil, gas, coal and nuclear industries rely on regularly renewed, uninterrupted federal programs in making business plans.

Congressional Democrats want to pay for the New Energy incentives by shifting funds from incentives for the now-flush fossil fuels industries. Congressional Republicans find it outrageous that anybody would even think of altering the fossil fuel incentives. Yet the Republicans are perfectly willing to let New Energy incentives wax and wane with the political winds.

What Gordon was saying, though it might sound apocryphal to energy industry traditionalists and New Energy producers alike, was that it would be fine to take EVERYBODY’S incentives off the table and it would be fine to give EVERYBODY reliable long term incentives but it is NOT FINE to give some industries one and other industries the other.

Wind boomed last year - but if Congress cuts off the PTC, the boom could be stopped cold. (click to enlarge)

Any other indication of wind’s newer, larger status in the U.S. energy picture?

“It has become a topic of living room discussion the last couple years,” Gordon said, “that we need to decrease our dependence on foreign fuels and also decrease our dependence on dirty fuels…and convert to something that does not pollute our air and does not consume our water and is not something we have to go and ask other countries to sell to us.”

What’s next on Gordon’s agenda?

When the final go-ahead comes for the Hays Project, it will take at least six months to get to the point where the turbines are ready start going up. And that would be “breakneck speed.” A more likely time frame is a year.

The turbines Gordon’s Iberdrola projects in Kansas will use are likely to be 1.5 to 2.4 megawatt machines manufactured by GE Energy in California, New York or South Carolina. Or by Gamesa in Pennsylvania or Spain. Blades may come from Brazil or Germany. A turbine’s 8,000 parts arrive as part of the tower, blade or nacelle or in another package. When all the pieces arrive at the installation site, erection crews put them together “like great big Legos.”

Will there be a manufacturing plant in western Kansas?

“As specific regions get an increase in the number of projects, as they get a critical mass, as we’ve seen in Iowa, as we saw in California, as we’re seeing in Texas, there’s increased interest in locating manufacturing facilities nearby…It’s more economically attractive.”

Gordon herself is not involved in the assembly process. Her job is getting from the raw land to the installation. A construction management team and/or contractors take over from there. But Gordon, who started as an engineer, sounded just a little nostalgic when she was describing the assembly process. Asked if she ever got the urge to get “hands on” with the installation experience her answer was an enthusiastic “You bet!”

Artists rendering of what Gordon's Hays project will look like. (click to enlarge)

All in all, though, she says she’s pretty happy doing what she’s doing now, putting projects together, getting involved in land acquisition, winning the public over, seeing to permitting and a variety of details. “We’ve got a whole bunch of projects in our pipeline. Iberdrola has committed to doing several thousand more megawatts of wind in the United States in the next couple of years so we’re going to see a whole bunch more…It means a lot of travel in Kansas…I’m Kansas…It’s the place where I’ve wanted to work for a long time.”

In a reversal of Dorothy's "Wizard of Oz" experience, this IS Kansas - and like much of the rest of the world - it is over the rainbow for wind energy.

WHO
Krista Gordon, Business Developer and Project Manager, Iberdrola Renewable Energies USA

WHAT
Gordon shared her experience of project development in the booming wind energy industry.

WHEN
Gordon has been working in the wind industry since 2003. She has been with Iberdrola since 2007.

WHERE
Gordon does wind project development in western Kansas.

WHY
The wind energy industry is literally developing projects as fast as it can get them approved and building installations as fast as it can get the turbines. Gordon shared with NewEnergyNews details and insights from the Main Street of the booming industry.

QUOTES
- Krista Gordon, Business Developer/Project Manager, Iberdrola Renewables North America: “It has become a topic of living room discussion the last couple years that we need to decrease our dependence on foreign fuels and also decrease our dependence on dirty fuels…and convert to something that does not pollute our air and does not consume our water and is not something we have to go and ask other countries to sell to us.”
- Krista Gordon, Business Developer/Project Manager, Iberdrola Renewables North America, on how best to convince reluctant locals to favor wind developments: “The most compelling thing is when people go see wind projects and stand in the midst of turbines…”