Ground Level Category Archive: Green energy

Alfalfa power returns to co-op's sights

Posted at 9:14 AM on August 9, 2010 by Dave Peters (0 Comments)
Filed under: Green energy

The 140 alfalfa growers in western Minnesota who remain in a 16-year-old cooperative are trying again to get into the biofuel business. They say they could have a fuel-producing plant up in three months.

The Minnesota Valley Alfalfa Producers (MnVAP) crashed and burned in the 1990s, failing to make work an ambitious plan to generate 75 megawatts of electricity for then-Northern States Power by burning a product made from alfalfa stems in a plant near Granite Falls.

The original membership of more than 300 farmers has dwindled, although the Priam-based organization has stayed in the relatively low-revenue business of pelletizing alfalfa to create a transportable animal feed.

But now, says co-op member and project manager Keith Poier, "We're looking at getting back into the biofuels business but a little smarter this time."

The plans are less ambitious, but Poier said MnVAP is working on a plant that will grind and dry alfalfa simultaneously. The plant would still produce feed from leaves but would also process alfalfa stems into pellets in a way that would allow the pellets to leave less ash and other byproducts when burned than has been possible so far.

The group received $1 million from Xcel Energy's Renewable Development Fund in 2007 to develop the idea.

The likeliest first use would be simply to burn the fuel in a boiler to generate steam, but Poier said down the road it would be possible to generate a dry powder that could be used to create natural gas and even to use alfalfa as a source for ethanol.

That, says University of Minnesota plant scientist Hans Jung, would require getting past the obstacles standing in front of any of the cellulosic sources for ethanol. Jung thinks alfalfa has promise as biofuel. The U has developed a different kind of alfalfa that stands taller, producing more stem material and requiring cutting less often.

And Jung thinks there's potential for alfalfa as a fuel crop grown in rotation with corn, instead of the more typical corn-soybean rotation. Using alfalfa puts nitrogen back in the soil, yields vegetable protein in its leaves and offers better carbon sequestration than soybeans.

But as a potential ethanol source, it hasn't gotten a lot of attention, Jung said. "We've been fighting this battle to get alfalfa on the radar screen for years."

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Minnesota's renewable energy snapshot: Growth and barriers

Posted at 12:32 PM on June 14, 2010 by Dave Peters (0 Comments)
Filed under: Green energy

As President Obama is making plans to head back to the Gulf of Mexico to deal with the oil spill, more than 100 people from around Minnesota are at the Minnesota History Center today trying to figure out where the future lies for renewable energy in the state.

"The oil spill has changed the conversation dramatically," Rep. Jeremy Kalin told the group gathered by Minnesota Renewable Energy Marketplace. Kalin sits on a White House task force of state legislators pulled together to look at renewable energy.

Kalin said Minnesota has done good work on renewable energy, conservation and carbon emission but is still waiting for substantial economic development benefits to result. And while a lot of the action in wind, solar, biofuels, bio mass and other renewable sources is at the state and even community level, Kalin urged people to watch the Clean Energy jobs and American Power Act that is expected to see Senate debate as soon as August.

It will include standards for renewable energy and efficiency and expectations for oil, nuclear and coal energy, but the key to debate will be the carbon pricing mechanism Senators will debate, Kalin predicted.

So what does Minnesota need to do to take further advantage of what everyone agrees is a rapidly evolving industry?

One key thing - tie state energy policy to the state's economic development policy, said Rich Overmoyer, of GSP Consulting in Pittsburgh, hired by Minnesota Renewable Energy Marketplace to provide a snapshot of the renewable energy situation. Only Washington state does that today, Overmoyer said.

Key trends in the industry that Overmoyer identified:

--Federal and state policy will continue to drive the market.

--45 percent to 65 percent of new energy production in coming years will be from renewable sources.

--A recent short-term slowdown in renewable energy production is turning around.

--Internaitonal investment in wind, solar and biomass will continue to grow.

--The chain of supply of equipment and the market in general will continue to shake out and develop.

Wind energy has the greatest job creation potential, Overmoyer said. Minnesota has significant untapped capacity and the state's existing requirements for utilities to use renewable energy make it a leader in the nation and will continue to drive use of wind energy. The big challenge clearly is the issue of transmission lines and connection to the existing power grid.

Overmoyer identified several barriers to growth in the industry, including the lack of capital availability and inconsistency in public policy - tax credits that come and go, for example.

Aside from a unified state strategy for energy and economic development, Overmoyer said a critical need is for a renewable energy clearinghouse.

This could be "a dating service for people in the renewable energy sector," offering resources, toolkits, a website and the unknown benefits of forming relationships among people who otherwise wouldn't talk to each other.

That reminded me of one of the principles to come out of the small towns conference in Morris last week, namely the value of making connections among people on the ground, the people who are creating the "new normal" for the economy and quality of life in Minnesota.

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Stearns County lets wind energy proceed

Posted at 12:40 PM on June 8, 2010 by Dave Peters (0 Comments)
Filed under: Green energy

Stearns County commissioners this morning decided not to approve the moratorium on large wind energy operations that a number of residents had requested.

In turning down the effort to slow wind energy production, commissioners in one of Minnesota's largest counties also decided to reactivate a committee to watch over the issue and specifically requested that people opposed to wind projects be appointed to help.

That struck me as significant for a couple reasons, especially after I noted in a blog post here last week that I wasn't convinced Stearns County residents had learned much since the 1970s power line war in terms of talking to themselves about energy issues. And there are proposed wind projects all over the map of the 150,000-resident county in central Minnesota.

The immediate point of contention for wind energy in Stearns County is a 95-megawatt Geronimo Wind Energy project proposed for some 15,000 acres north of Paynesville, and board chair Mark Sakry said it was the most divisive issue he'd seen in 22 years on the board.

"These are very divisive issues," Sakry said. "It sometimes pits neighbor against neighbor, sometimes family member against family member."

The list of wind energy issues that residents brought to the board was a long one: turbine noise, flickering shadows, concern about emergency helicopters landing, distance of turbines from nearby houses, potential bird deaths, wear and tear on roads, emergency communications interference and property values.

But the board essentially determined that those are or can be taken into account by the existing state permit process. And clearly renewable energy sources are appealing more than ever these days.

"The disaster in the Gulf is further proof we have to find alternative sources. It's going to help our country's national security," Sakry said.

Gary Reeck would tell you he knows that. He's a dairy farmer north of Paynesville whose family has been farming there for 135 years. He lives in the footprint of the Geronimo project and, in fact, at one point several years ago was exploring the idea of putting a wind turbine on his property.

But while he has neighbors who stand to gain $10,000 to $15,000 a year for playing host to a 400-foot turbine, he hasn't signed on and has been vocal in his opposition to the project. He considers it trading the kind of pollution we get from oil and coal for visual pollution that threatens to wreck the countryside.

He understands the green appeal of wind energy but worries about the corporate approach of Genonimo. He also sees the division in the community.

"There's big bad blood. It's turned into people flicking each other off, turning their backs. It makes me sick," he told me on the phone today.

"It's changed our community forever."

Which brings me back to the county board's decision to solicit members among wind opponents for the wind energy committee it plans to reconstitute. Geronimo has three other projects on the drawing board in Stearns County, and the board also today gave approval for a smaller community-based wind project near Sauk Centre to proceed. Like other so-called C-BED projects (for Community-Based Energy Development), it has more local ownership stake than the Geronimo projects.

So the wind will be blowing quite a while in central Minnesota. The more opportunities there are for residents to sit across a table from each other, the better, it seems to me.

By the way, I could track the Stearns County commissioners conversation this morning thanks to their webcast from St. Cloud. You can find a thorough treatment of the topic, including maps, in the commissioners' agenda at their website.

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Paynesville wind: Green energy meets community resistance

Posted at 3:19 PM on June 2, 2010 by Dave Peters (3 Comments)
Filed under: Green energy

It's not the biggest wind energy project on the drawing boards in Minnesota, but keep an eye on the plan to put up 40 to 60 turbines on 15,000 acres north of Paynesville in central Minnesota if you want to see how green energy is starting to run into community objections.

The developer, Geronimo Wind Energy, is holding a couple of open houses Thursday (noon and 6 p.m. at the Paynesville Middle School gym) to answer residents' questions about the project as the 95-megawatt plan wends through the state permitting process. Geronimo would like to start construction next year.

The company touts the benefits -- $22 million in production payments to local governments and landowners over 20 years and enough U.S.-produced clean energy to power 19,000 homes.

But nearby residents have brought up a flurry of questions: intrusion into the countryside, flickering shadows of turning blades, wildlife protection, values of nearby property, where the profits go, health, noise, effect on pets, TV reception and more. Some have pushed for a Stearns County moratorium on large wind generation, a move that county commissioners will consider Tuesday in St. Cloud. Whether that would stop the project is unclear, something the state Public Utilities Commission would likely determine.

But there are five more wind projects planned in Stearns County, some by Geronimo, some by other developers. Backers say concerns are misplaced and overstated or can be dealt with. And with an oil mess in the Gulf of Mexico and carbon dioxide spewing from coal plants, they have a strong case when viewed from 30,000 feet.

But on the ground, from Cape Cod to Hawaii, people nonetheless are getting hackles up over the prospects of green energy. It seems worth sorting out how communities can determine the principles that should guide local energy questions.

If there's no other reason to focus on the Paynesville plan, consider that 32 years ago landowners and others were protesting fiercely in some of these same fields and getting arrested by phalanxes of state troopers Gov. Rudy Perpich assigned to protect utility surveyors. They were fighting the long-distance direct-current transmission line that stands today, its towers marching across Pope, Stearns and other counties, bringing electricity from North Dakota coal plants to the Twin Cities.

(Among those who watched closely was Carleton College professor Paul Wellstone, who later wrote a book about the process and moved on to larger public policy arenas.)

I was also among those who watched closely, as a reporter for the St. Cloud Times. And what I remember well is the level of frustration that built up on all sides. Ultimately, despite scores of public hearings and meetings, there was a sense of complete mistrust among all parties -- landowners, utilities, media, law enforcement, energy officials.

Protesters fought big-energy then, and similar issues are being raised again, similar delays requested. There are differences of course -- landowners directly affected stand to gain, clean energy has a national imperative.

And the state's process for examining wind energy requests in the past year or two has added more requirements for developers to address the environmental concerns raised by community residents.

But it's not clear the community's ability to talk to itself has changed.

A brief exchange between a state official and a resident at a public meeting April 19 in Lake Henry captured the failure of dialog for me: When the state official promised that written comments arriving after a deadline would still be taken into account, the resident offered this:

I know, but I don't believe a lot of that stuff anymore.

Mistrust lives.

This Ground Level project is looking for places in Minnesota where people as communities are addressing issues that concern them. Energy questions are among the thorniest because project benefits are spread widely and consequences are focused. Are there examples of communities that have succeeded? Even if not, what are the principles that can help evaluate a project at the community level? Size? Whether benefits are kept in the community?

You can find all the plans and proceedings of the Public Utilities Commission for the Paynesville project here.

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