Deschutes County May Let More Wind Power Bloom
Keisha Burns – KTVZ.COM – October 7, 2009

Another issue discussed, which has hit a roadblock before, was whether to allow taller wind-energy turbines in the area. Current county restrictions prevent structures over 30 feet in most zoning districts, but that could change as soon as next year.

Planning Director Nick Lelack said many residents are for the idea, but adding wind turbines has its pros and cons.

“Generally we hear that people support them,” he said. “The key issue is when they are proposed on their neighbor’s property, and maybe between the neighbor’s property and view of the mountains, something of that nature.”

Luke said they won’t move forward with an ordinance until they hear from the public about any concerns, starting the public process with the county planning commission.

“That’s the process that I would favor, so the citizens would have the opportunity to comment on it,” he said.

After a proposal is drafted and debated before planning commissioners, commissioners will take up the issue again, to see if the public favors the idea, before moving forward.

The wind-power issues could be part of the ongoing update of the county’s overall land use plan – the first total rewrite in some 30 years – or it could be handled separately, Luke said.

State lawmakers target energy tax credit costs
Benefit to large wind-power projects is likely to be reduced
By Nick Budnick – The Bulletin – September 3, 2009

Lawmakers and state regulators plan to put new restrictions on a state tax credit that has helped Central Oregon’s renewable energy businesses.

Lawmakers for the Senate and House revenue committees met last week in Salem to discuss the state’s budget picture, including the business energy tax credit, or BETC, which encourages investment in alternative energy, recycling and energy conservation measures.

Lawmakers were told that the tax credit is estimated to cost the state $168 million over the next two years. That’s a jump of $24 million over the previous estimate, and about $100 million more than it cost the state in the last two-year budget cycle.

Earlier this year, lawmakers had tried to curb the tax credit, shaving about $20 million by limiting the benefit provided to large wind-power projects.

But that legislation, House Bill 2472, was vetoed by Gov. Ted Kulongoski.

Now, however, legislative observers think lawmakers will muster the two-thirds supermajority necessary to override Kulongoski’s veto when they return to Salem for an expected special session in February.

Also last week, Kulongoski directed the Oregon Department of Energy to tighten its rules on the program.

Mark Long, the department’s director, said companies will be asked to provide data on other tax breaks they are receiving as well as information that will allow the state to estimate profit margins. He said safeguards also will be put in place to ensure companies are obeying state laws, and also that projects deliver on promises made to the state.

“We’re thinking of this as a contract between our department and the person who wants the tax credit,” he said.

He said the new rules will help tax credit applicants by providing better timeliness, predictability and consistency.

“The rules right now leave a lot of open-ended questions” for businesses, he said.

The rules will be finalized by Oct. 1.

Meanwhile, the Legislature could take an even bigger bite out of the program.

HB 2472 was aimed largely at large wind-power projects that some lawmakers felt were abusing the state’s program.

The Senate Revenue Committee chairwoman, Sen. Ginny Burdick, D-Portland, said that not only is a veto override in the works, but lawmakers also will explore other tweaks to save the state money.

The program will be targeted for even more dramatic reductions if voters reject the personal and income tax hikes that are expected to be on a January ballot, according to Burdick.

“We don’t have very many places to go for cuts,” she said.

Sen. Chris Telfer, R-Bend, a member of Burdick’s committee, thinks major cuts or elimination of the BETC program would hurt Central Oregon in particular. That’s because she thinks the renewable energy industry has a lot of gains to make in the region.

Depending on what lawmakers do, she said, “I think it could have a major impact” on the region’s future development. “This is a prime area, there’s really some potential there.”

Mike Costanti, principal of Western Community Energy, a wind power company, said the tax credit was a big reason for his company’s decision to relocate from Montana to Bend last year. And any major changes could cause it to rethink that decision.

“It is the BETC that is making renewable energy in Oregon work,” he said. “If you take the BETC away, it would be very difficult for our company to be not only in Bend, but in Oregon.”

Area solar activity heats up
Energy companies eye sites near Christmas Valley
By Keith Chu – The Bulletin – August 28, 2009

While government bureaucracy continues to hold up a proposed solar facility at a former military radar base in Christmas Valley, the proposal has attracted two developers to try and cash in on the solar power potential on other sites just south of the Deschutes County line, according to state and local officials.

About seven companies are interested in the radar site, state officials have said. But those companies, which the state won’t name, have been waiting for more than a year for the military land to become available for development.

So this May, a California company filed an application with the Department of State Lands to build a solar energy farm on a separate parcel — 640 acres of state land on the northern border of Lake County. Additionally, a Portland investment firm has received land use approval to develop 80 acres for solar energy on private land nearby.

The proposal to develop renewable energy at the former radar site put Christmas Valley, located about 95 miles southeast of Bend, on developers’ maps, said Lake County Commissioner Brad Winters.

“I think a lot of it began because of the backscatter (radar) site and all the media from it, but we’re starting to see quite a bit of interest in the renewable energy side,” Winters said.

Infrastructure

GreenWing Energy America Corp., based in Morgan, Calif., proposed building a “utility-scale solar energy farm” of between 50 megawatts and 104 megawatts, on the state land in northern Lake County, according to its application.

The plant would use “photovoltaic solar panels mounted on tracking mechanisms which follow the path of the sun throughout the day,” the application says. “The site location was chosen based on solar exposure, proximity to an existing large transmission line and compatible land use.”

The transmission lines are what first drew the attention of U.S. Rep. Greg Walden, R-Hood River, and Lake County and state officials to the former military base. Those lines can transmit up to 200 megawatts of energy at a time, according to the Bureau of Land Management.

The 2,622-acre site once held an Air Force radar complex designed to watch for threats across the Pacific Ocean. But the radar was shuttered in 1990, only a few months after it was finished. Since the Air Force announced it would close the radar station in 2005, the military, BLM and the state have envisioned developing the site for solar or wind power.

Now that the radar site has been decommissioned, the federal General Services Administration is in the process of transferring ownership to the state. The state is eying a portion of the site for National Guard training, and another as a possible camp for people displaced in a natural disaster.

Problems negotiating the details of the land transfer have held up the renewable energy development there, said Winter, who is a co-chairman of the joint county-state team working on the project.

That hasn’t stopped development from going ahead nearby.

In the works

GreenWing is the first company to apply for solar development rights on state lands, said Nancy Pustis, eastern region manager for the Department of State Lands.

GreenWing officials couldn’t be reached for comment Thursday.

The company needs to submit a more detailed proposal before the state can process the application, Pustis said.

GreenWing also has purchased 6,000 acres of easements for wind energy development in the county, Winters said.

A second firm, Portland’s Obsidian Finance Group LLC., received a conditional-use permit for solar development on an 80-acre parcel in the Christmas Valley area, Winters said. A copy of the permit was not immediately available from the Lake County Planning Department.

The Christmas Valley radar site once sported 216 antennae that varied in height from 35 to 135 feet, according to earlier reports in The Bulletin. Several empty buildings and a lot of empty space are all that remain.

In 2007, Gov. Ted Kulongoski designated the property as an Oregon Solutions project, which brings together state and local officials on economic development issues.

Central Oregon News Digest • Summer 2009
Compiled by The Garner Group – August 24, 2009

ENERGY

Hydro plants in the pipeline, literally and figuratively

Federal stimulus grants to two Central Oregon irrigation districts, directed at water conservation, will fund canal piping and construction of small-scale generating plants. The Swalley Irrigation District will receive $2 million to complete enclosing 5.1 miles of its main canal north of Bend, including an 0.75-mW hydro plant near Highway 97. Three Sisters Irrigation District was awarded $1.3 million to initiate a pipeline project that will increase stream flows in Whychus Creek. This project eventually will include a 1.5-mW hydro plant. Both generating plants are “in-conduit” designs that utilize water flow within the pipeline.

County approves wind farm, with conditions

The Crook County planning commission has approved the West Butte Wind Power Project, proposed for a 20-acre site near Millican. Conditions include formation of a technical advisory committee to address wildlife concerns. Access will require a right-of-way permit from the Bureau of Land Management, in turn requiring an environmental impact study. Work on the $220 million project, which will involve from 32 to 54 turbines, is expected to start in spring 2010. The 104-mW project falls below the threshold that would require approval beyond the county level.

La Pine may yet see a biomass power plant

While one company’s plans to build a biomass-fueled power plant in La Pine are on hold, another has moved into the arena. Biogreen Sustainable Energy Co. of St. Helens, Ore., will buy a 10-acre parcel in the La Pine Industrial Park and build a $55-$60 million, 19-mW electricity generating plant fueled by thinnings from private and public forests nearby. The project will support 100 construction jobs and employ 20 people directly upon completion, plus another 80-90 indirect jobs in forestry and transportation. Silvan Power Co. has an option to buy 28 acres in La Pine for a biomass power plant but plans apparently have stalled over fuel availability issues.

The OBP News article on urban wind turbines on August 14 (see article on this blog) triggered sufficient interest that Think Outloud decided to do a segment on the topic. They assembled an excellent panel of guests and recieved a fairly large number of comments posted to the Think Outloud Urban Turbines web page.

While conservation is the most effective way to approach energy our growing energy demands,  Distributed Generation, which urban wind turbines would be considered part of, is a proven key component in future energy production.

The comment that really explored the concept of urban wind turbines was the one from guest Alex Wilson of Building Green.  He provided a link to an article on the Building Green website entitled “The Folly of Building-Integrated Wind” that makes for excellent reading on this subject.

While producing energy from urban wind turbines feels like a good idea the reality of the situation is that unless there is some amazing breakthrough it’s a non-starter.

# # #

Urban Turbines
Think Outloud – OPB News – August 20, 2009

Portlanders may have noticed a new addition to the downtown skyline this week when four wind turbines were added to the roof of developer Gerding Edlen’s new Twelve West Building on southwest 12th Avenue. These small-scale turbines (45 feet tall compared to the massive 400-foot turbines in the Columbia River Gorge) will only produce about one percent of the building’s total energy usage. However, the development company also hopes their presence will help promote renewable energy and help Portland stand out in the field. Portland isn’t the only city to try rooftop wind turbines. Boston, New York and Hampton, New Hampshire have all taken an interest in small scale wind power. Some green building experts have raised concerns about the economic and energy efficiency of urban turbines. Zoning laws would still have to change in Portland before people could install turbines on the roofs of their homes.

While the issues with integrating small-scale wind power into an urban landscape center mainly around questions of engineering and structural integrity, large-scale wind farms are still struggling with integrating their turbines with wildlife. And while urban and rural wind may still be an intermittent power source, the Bonneville Power Administration reported wind power generation was at an all time high earlier this month.

Have you considered putting a wind turbine on your home or business? What factors did you weigh in making your decision? Do you live near a rural wind farm? How has that impacted your life?

GUESTS:

Damin Tarlow: Development manager for Gerdling Edlen Development 
Alex Wilson: Founder and executive editor of Building Green 
Andy Kruse: Senior VP of Business Development and Cofounder of Southwest Wind Power
Brent Fenty: Executive Director of Oregon Natural Desert Association
Chris Crowley: President of Columbia Energy Partners

There are so many challenges that confront urban wind turbines it’s sometimes difficult to understand why so much money and energy is put into the concept.  Early efforts using standard “propeller prop” wind turbines failed miserably not because the didn’t produce electricity but rather because they were incredibly noisy and transfered vibrations through the buildings that they were attached to. The noise and vibrations drove the occupants nuts.  Efforts at helix-design wind turnbines do show some potential but many questions remain.

It will be fascinating to follow the efforts of Portland and those of San Francisco’s Urban Wind Task Force.

# # #

Urban Turbines Rise Above Portland
By Rob Manning - OPB News - August 14, 2009

A team of Portland architects, engineers, and builders has now erected what’s believed to be the first production-scale set of urban wind turbines in the country.

They won’t supply a whole lot of electricity. But as Rob Manning reports, the turbines’ significance lies in we can learn from them.

The project at Southwest 12th and Washington is certainly a new approach to wind energy.

Yes, companies have been putting big turbines up all over the western countryside for years. But putting the big metal masts on buildings is new territory.

John Breshears is a principal with Zimmer Gunsul Frasca – ZGF – architects.

John Breshears: “It’s sort of comical, the little diagram that they send for how you raise your mast once it’s in place – you put a little sort of a pole that’s called a ‘gin pole’ that’s vertical to the mast. You attach a cable to the bumper of your pickup truck, and you drive away, and raise the mast up, right? We just couldn’t figure out how to get the pickup on the roof here.”

The solution for the Portland rooftop wound up being decidedly low-tech: a guy in an orange vest and hard hat winds a handcrank, and slowly pulls the turbine from flat on the ground to straight up in the air.

John Breshears: “And yeah, it’s just a manual winch.”

But architects and developers behind the project insist that years of research by some of the smartest people in renewable energy have guided this project.

A Dutch wind expert advised the architects on where exactly to position the turbines. Another architect with ZGF, Craig Briscoe, says his firm also heard from Tom Zambrano – one of the leading designers of a human-powered airplane that crossed the English Channel.

Craig Briscoe: “We sort of fell out of our chairs at who we were talking to. We said ‘yes, please talk to us – tell us what you know.’ And Tom and his colleague, Tyler MacCready came up and proposed this wind tunnel study.”

Backers say that a great deal of research went into the rooftop turbines, and a lot of useful data is expected to come out of them. That notion helped snare state tax credits to fund the project.

ZBF architect, John Breshears says wind energy advocates from New York to California are keen to learn from Portland.

John Breshears: “We’ve been talking with the director of the urban wind task force for the city of San Francisco who’s very interested in creating a micro-scale wind resource map for every building corner, every street corner and intersection, and every building top for the entire city of San Francisco. So you could go into very precise detail and locate the absolute best building location for your wind turbine.”

Advocates say it’s a coup for Portland, as well, to have the first set of these urban wind turbines.

Damin Tarlow with the renewable developer, Gerding Edlen, says they’ll become a symbol of Portland’s green ethic.

Damin Tarlow: “It will be a striking scene, both from the rooftop deck, here, and really from any vantage point here in Portland. And yes, I do believe the Blazers will make the Finals, and yes, I do believe they will show a picture of this when it happens.”

Seeking green power solutions for hazy days
Bend Bulletin – August 2, 2009

Portland General Electric got a lesson in one of the shortcomings of renewable energy last week.

With temperatures above 100 degrees in Portland, the company broke its all-time record for summer power consumption Monday, then again Tuesday, and also on Wednesday.

All the while, the company’s Bigelow Canyon Wind Farm 140 miles east of Portland was producing next to no power. The winds that usually suck cool air up the Columbia River and keep summers mild had ceased, baking Portland and idling the turbines at Bigelow Canyon — just when they were most needed.

If wind and solar are going to play a bigger part in meeting the country’s electrical demand, utilities will need to get faster at reacting every time the wind dies down or a cloud moves in front of the sun. Bend’s PV Powered is working on solving a part of the problem.

The federal government recently awarded the company $3 million to get to work building the machines needed to create a future network of thousands or even millions of small-scale solar generating systems.

The Solar Energy Grid Integration System is an initiative of the Department of Energy that seeks to make solar power cost-competitive with other forms of power generation by 2015. Right now, solar power makes up only a tiny fraction of the total energy consumed in the United States, but that could change quickly if current treends continue.

According to a 2007 Energy Department report, 5 to 10 percent of electricity customers could be using some form of solar power within 10 years if homeowners continue adding solar panels to their homes at the current rate.

In 2007, the Oregon Legislature passed a law requiring the state’s largest utilities to generate 25 percent of their power from renewable sources by 2025. Several other states have adopted similar goals.

Steve Hummel, vice president of engineering for PV Powered, said the goals are attainable, but only with a coordinated effort involving the government, the American people, the utility industry and companies like his.

“Obama has said we need a man-on-the-moon type of effort to do it, and I believe he’s right,” Hummel said.

Moving from large hydroelectric dams and coal- or gas-fired power plants toward rooftop arrays of solar panels or small stands of wind turbines has potential advantages for the individual consumer, but for the utility industry, it’s a potential headache.

Distributed generation, as it’s known, would allow a homeowner with a home solar system to use the power from a utility at night, and sell excess solar power back to the utility during the day, effectively running the electric meter in reverse.

For the utilities, renewable energy means uncertainty — a sluggish wind turbine can’t be turned up, and a solar panel can’t be quickly moved out of the shade. It’s estimated that if such sources are used for as little as 5 to 10 percent of the total power supply, brownouts and blackouts could occur when they inevitably stop producing electricity from time to time. When the generation is distributed across a large area and is subject to different weather patterns — rather than concentrated at a single plant — predicting the spikes and drops in the current and reacting accordingly becomes even more difficult for utilities.

The problem, Hummel said, will likely be solved by building a better inverter, the device produced by PV Powered. If the company succeeds in building that better inverter over the next year, it’s likely to receive another $3 million from the Department of Energy in 2010 to help bring it to market.

Improving today’s technology

An inverter’s primary purpose in a home solar generating system is to convert direct current electricity into alternating current, the type that runs lights and washing machines and consumer electronics. The inverter also manages the two-way flow of power, sending electricity into the grid when the home system produces a surplus, and drawing electricity from the grid when the home system is generating too little.

Current inverter technology is adequate for providing supplemental solar power to a home, Hummel said, but is ill-suited for coordinating hundreds or thousands of home solar generating systems to help power the grid as a whole. When an inverter detects fluctuations outside a narrow range in the current flowing in from the grid, it shuts off automatically to protect the system, much like a circuit breaker or a power strip. If, for instance, a high level of power usage creates a voltage drop within the grid, all of the solar generating systems connected to that grid could be shut down, further reducing the available power and increasing the risk of brownouts or blackouts.

“It’s very crude. If (the current) is outside of the acceptable voltage and frequency range, it goes down,” Hummel said.

Erick Petersen, the vice president of sales and marketing for PV Powered, said the government’s willingness to fund exploration of how to solve this problem is encouraging for people in his industry.

“It’s one thing to say we want to put renewable energy out there — it’s another to sit down and go, ‘If we do it, what happens?” Petersen said. “So all of this money is going to address some of the fundamental challenges, and create new technology that doesn’t exist today to go with this mass deployment.”

The goal for PV Powered, Hummel said, is to create an inverter that can “talk” to the grid more effectively, and better react to the needs of both the generator or the building it serves, and the grid as a whole.

With a smarter inverter, a home with a solar generating system could maintain constant communication with the utility company, monitoring the price of electricity for sale or purchase in communities where prices fluctuate to reflect demand, as well as weather forecasts, and past patterns of power usage in the building it serves. This information could allow the inverter to independently decide when to sell, buy or store power, while the utility company would be able to better predict how much power it can draw from the distributed solar generation system.

Making the transition

Hummel said it’s likely improved inverters will first be used by utility companies, improving the efficiency of converting solar energy into usable electricity at solar farms, and helping to better manage power generated at wind or solar farms. When a cloud moves over a solar farm, a more sophisticated inverter could detect the drop in power generation immediately, cueing a coal, gas or hydropower generator elsewhere to step up production.

PGE spokesman Steve Corson said that while the Portland utility is pursuing renewable energy sources, even though technical limitations and their unpredictably prevent them from providing a significantly larger share of power production today. The utility is a partner with PV Powered in its grant-funded research and will be helping test whatever products the company develops in a yet-to-be-determined Oregon community next year.

“I think there’s a little bit of a misperception out there among many in the public that this is a simple trade-off — you can get rid of some of these older fossil fuel resources and simply bring on new renewables and energy efficiency, and you’re good to go,” he said. “And the reality is, while there are certainly advantages to these resources, there are also significant challenges in how we manage those resources, and sometimes they simply are not going to produce.”

Downturn hasn’t put damper on green jobs in Central Oregon
A boom is expected in the near future, and not just in fields that you’d expect
By Kate Ramsayer – The Bulletin – July 27, 2009

There’s only so many windy patches of Earth — and even fewer patches close to transmission lines.

So for the next five to 10 years, the wind power industry is going to be running full steam ahead, said Mike Costanti, principal with Western Community Energy.

“This industry is growing very quickly — and we feel our company will grow quickly as well,” Costanti said.

He anticipates quadrupling the size of his Bend-based company’s development staff over the next couple of years, with jobs for turbine operators, lawyers, permit writers, electrical engineers, structural engineers, construction workers and more.

“We have a lot of room for growth,” Costanti said.

A study released last month by the Oregon Employment Department found that Oregon had more than 51,000 “green jobs” in 2008. Even with the economic downturn, environmentally friendly jobs were projected to increase about 14 percent by 2010. And in Central Oregon, green employers predict that the area could need people working in a variety of jobs that require a range of skills — from energy auditors to organic farmers to solar electricians.

Wind
There are six different stages to develop a wind farm, Costanti said. And each stage needs people with a different skill set.

“You’ll have the lawyers who need to put the contracts together,” he starts off.

And then permitting specialists to get the necessary OKs, he said. Wind businesses could also use engineers, financing specialists, construction workers and turbine operators.

Western Community Energy currently has seven people its development department, Costanti said, and he could see that number increasing to 30 over the next several years. And there’s plenty of potential employees to choose from — the company gets about 20 résumés per week.

“It’s lit a fire under us to get to work and get as many people to work as we can,” he said.

And once it gets going, wind can create secondary jobs as well — for people who sell goods or provide services to the industry.

“The people who made money in the gold rush in California and Alaska weren’t the gold miners,” he said. “It was the people who were selling the shovels.”

Solar
PV Powered, a Bend solar equipment manufacturer, has hired 10 to 12 people in the past several months, and could add another 40 or so employees by late 2010 as the solar market grows, said Erick Petersen, vice president of sales and marketing with the company.

“We’d love in 10 years to have PV Powered the largest employer in Bend,” he said, though “it could take awhile.”

The company needs engineers and technology professionals, he said, as well as people familiar with the manufacturing business and how to find ways to build things efficiently and without waste. There’s some overlap with the high-tech industry as well, he said.

But applicants need more than a necessary skill set, he said. People need to have a passion for the field, he said, and a desire to help build the industry.

“We see lots of smart, well-paid, talented people sending us résumés, but it takes a little more than that,” Petersen said. “You’ve got to see renewable energy as more than your next great job opportunity.”

Many appear to be seeing the opportunities in installing solar panels, however, said Mike Hewitt, the owner and president of E2 Powered, a Bend solar contractor.

“Every single program that offers any kind of training in solar, it seems like it’s just swamped,” he said.

It takes a lot of work before people can climb up on a roof and hook up solar panels — people have to earn an electrical or solar license, and spend a minimum of 4,000 hours training on the job.

“You can’t hire somebody who may have technical skills off the street,” Hewitt said.

GreenSavers, a Bend company that conducts energy surveys of buildings to diagnose areas where energy is wasted, is planning to hire a person with energy auditing certification from the Building Performance Institute, said Kendra Van Note of Green- Savers.

But that person will have even more training from the Oregon Department of Energy and the Energy Trust of Oregon.

“It’s a pretty intensive program, and they need to be able to complete a certain number of hours in the field as well,” Van Note said.

The energy auditing field will keep growing, she said — but only if customers continue to keep energy efficiency in mind.

“We just don’t want it to be some trend,” Van Note said. “It’s really important that customers are educated about what they can do to make their homes more energy efficient, and that they’re requesting these types of services. Then, the industry will be sustainable.”

Water and soil
Green jobs aren’t just in the renewable energy and energy- efficiency fields — people can have environmentally friendly jobs in watershed or ecosystem management as well, working on efforts to restore damaged environments.

There’s an increasing need for ecosystem management, said Ryan Houston, the executive director of the Upper Deschutes Watershed Council. And funding for projects is on the rise, even if it doesn’t always match the need, he said.

“We really have seen an uptick in the last couple of years, and where that goes in the future is hard to see,” he said.

People interested in watershed management need to have skills in a range of areas, Houston said — from biology and hydrology, to land use planning and economics.

“We look for people who really have the ability to be literate in a variety of disciplines,” he said.

For example, the watershed council is working on a project to restore Whychus Creek as it flows through Sisters — and for that, employees need to understand flooding and erosion aspects, as well as how the state manages floodplains, private property rights and city planning regulations.

“Those folks who are most creative about crossing disciplines are the ones who are going to lead us out of these real tough challenges,” Houston said.

When it comes to green jobs, one growing field, literally, is sustainable agriculture and organic farms.

“Local food is becoming incredibly popular all over the world as a sustainable pursuit,” said Gigi Meyer, owner of Windflower Farm in Bend.

Meyer grows vegetables, herbs, flowers and fruits on a 10-acre farm, and has a waiting list for her weekly Community Supported Agriculture food baskets.

Because organic farmers can’t simply spray chemicals, weeding and other tasks make an organic operation a labor-intensive one, she said. And part of organic farming is not only to respect the land, she said, but to respect employees — she pays her farm crew of four more than minimum wage.

“Given that I grow on such a small area, it actually employs a lot of people,” she said.

And more small, sustainable farms could be on the way in the area, she said, whether it’s vegetable farms or sustainable dairies.

“There’s just so many opportunities that people are just beginning to explore in what our area can support in terms of agriculture,” she said.

Green and on top
By Andrew Moore - The Bulletin – June 14, 2009

Solar. Wind. Water. Geothermal, biomass and even garbage. With all these opportunities, it’s no wonder Oregon leads the nation in clean energy. And based on the number of alternative energy firms sprouting up in Central Oregon, it seems only natural that growth in green jobs has far outpaced the national average.

Rod Page, who lives just north of Bend, is concerned about the nation’s energy consumption. Accordingly, he drives a biodiesel-fueled car and later this week will have solar panels installed on his roof to help power his home.

He’s wanted to install them for more than two years, but found it cost-prohibitive. Now, thanks to state and federal tax credits, the cost has come down enough to make economic sense for Page.

But this isn’t really a story about solar power. It’s about the demand created by folks like Page who are helping to fuel rising employment in the clean-energy sector.

In other words, green jobs.

According to a report released Wednesday by The Pew Charitable Trusts, a Philadelphia-based nonprofit, jobs in the country’s clean-energy sector grew at a rate of 9.1 percent between 1998 and 2007, compared with total job growth of only 3.7 percent in the same period.

In Oregon, the number is greater. According to the report, jobs in Oregon’s clean-energy sector grew at a rate of 50.7 percent between 1998 and 2007, compared with total job growth of 7.5 percent in the same period. That means Oregon, with upwards of 1,600 clean-energy companies, has more green jobs than any other state.

The report doesn’t break out data below the state level, but based on the number of clean- or renewable-energy companies that have set up shop in the region in the last decade, the number of jobs created in Central Oregon has been significant.

Solar growth

Sunlight Solar Energy Inc., a Bend company which designs and installs solar power systems, and which will install a system at Page’s house this week, has grown from three employees in January 2008 to nine currently, said spokesman Chance Currington. That’s 200 percent employee growth in 1½ years.

That doesn’t count the 25 people the company employs at its installation office in Milford, Conn., that opened in 2004 or the six people that work out of the company’s Newton, Mass., office that opened in January.

Currington said Sunlight, though founded and based in Bend, opened offices in the Northeast because of surging demand there for solar power systems, partly because of generous government incentives but also because electricity costs are much higher in New England.

Locally, Currington said, Sunlight is booked through August. That’s noteworthy because in the three years he’s been with the company, the longest it had been booked out was three weeks. He attributes the growth in demand to various factors, including falling prices for materials and rising costs for electricity.

Also key to the growth in demand was the extension of the federal solar investment tax credit by Congress late last year. Rather than an incremental one- or two-year extension, the credit was extended for eight years and a $2,000 cap on the credit was eliminated.

It allows purchasers of solar energy systems to recover 30 percent of the system’s cost in the form of a one-time tax credit that reduces their income tax liability. For example, a $10,000 solar system would yield a $3,000 federal tax credit.

“The extension of the tax credit, it added stability, and that stability has been huge for us,” Currington said.

For customers of Pacific Power, Sunlight can now install residential solar systems for roughly $14,000, Currington said. But thanks to a $4,000 cash incentive from Energy Trust of Oregon, the out-of-pocket expense drops to $10,000. Add the federal tax credit and a four-year Oregon tax credit of $1,500 annually, and the eventual cost is less than $1,000.

“Once they could come down and put in a reasonable system for under $10,000, it made sense for me,” Page said. “With the incentives they have out now, it just kind of makes some sense and hopefully we’ll be able to save some money over the long run and the house’s value will go up. It’s a long-term investment for me.”

Page said he expects to make up the system’s remaining costs in energy savings after five years.

Other growth

Central Oregon is home to a number of renewable-energy companies that weren’t here a decade ago.

Bend’s PV Powered, which manufactures solar power equipment and employs roughly 55 workers, recently announced a major investment that will allow the company to hire more workers to help manage its expected growth.

The company’s CEO, Gregg Patterson, said in a previous interview with The Bulletin that he expects the company to double or triple its employees by the end of next year and that it’s his ambition to eventually be Bend’s largest employer.

Also in Bend is InEnTec LLC, a waste-to-energy company that recently announced a joint venture with Houston-based Waste Management, a Fortune 500 company with more than $13 billion in revenues. Their venture, S4 Energy Solutions LLC, will be based in Houston, but its Bend-based CEO, Jeff Surma, anticipates hiring up to 20 engineers to staff its Bend office in the next few years.

Western Community Energy, a wind power company, recently relocated to Bend from Montana and announced plans to hire more workers.

There’s also Vulcan Power Co., a Bend-based developer of geothermal energy projects.

According to the Pew report, there were more than 1,600 clean-energy companies operating in Oregon in 2007, providing more than 19,000 jobs — or more than 1 percent of the jobs in the state. While that number may seem slight, it still means Oregon has more jobs in its clean-energy sector than any other state, said Kil Huh, a Pew spokesman.

In addition, the report named Oregon among the top three states, along with Colorado and Tennessee, with the fastest clean-energy job growth in the nation.

And in the three years between 2006 and 2008, clean-energy companies in Oregon attracted $70 million in venture capital investment.

What explains the growth?

Part of the reason has to do with Oregon’s geography and a basket of different natural resources that can be tapped for energy, including solar, wind, tidal, geothermal and biomass, said Bruce Laird, with the Oregon Economic and Community Development Department and the state’s top business development officer for renewable energy.

There’s also a history and culture of environmental stewardship — evident in laws regarding land use, recycling and emissions — rooted in the state and on the West Coast, Laird said.

Add government policies that encourage the adoption of green technology, and it’s the equivalent of hanging out a flashing welcome sign, said Laird, noting that 70 percent of the business leads the department receives regarding companies expressing interest in relocating to Oregon are from renewable-energy companies.

“These renewable technologies and policy-support positions are West Coast movements, so many of these companies are naturally gravitating toward the West Coast,” Laird said. “You gotta be lucky every once in a while, and I think we might qualify in that category, because we do have good natural resources.

“But our best resource has been the commitment of the population to green solutions and environmental sustainability, and that’s why I think it’s given us a good foundation and a great opportunity. … We’re leveraging our values into jobs, and that should be no great surprise.”

Adding “micro wind” to the portfolio of renewable energy companies located in Central Oregon is a positive step forward for the region.  However, like all renewable energy sources, wind has its challenges. A few of them are addressed in “The Blowback” by Eric Flowers that follows the main article.

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The Wind Cries Money
Finding profits and positive vibes in micro wind farms 
Written by Daniel Pearson – the Source – April 15, 2009

Mike Costanti smiles as he cycles through digital images of Nome, Alaska’s Banner Wind Project, completed in December 2008 by his company Western Community Energy. It’s the largest wind farm in Alaska and one that will help lessen Nome’s annual dependence on diesel fuel by 200,000 gallons, and Costanti is proud WCE led the development efforts.

“I didn’t approach this business wearing tie-dye and corduroy saying, ‘Hey man, this is cool,’” Costanti said. “I was in Seattle in the late 1990s when the tech sector was growing and it was palpable – you could feel it growing, and the same thing is happening in renewable energy right now. We’re on the cusp of a new economy.”

Western Community Energy is one of a dozen so-called “green energy” companies headquartered here in Bend. Costanti founded WCE in October 2007 in Boseman, Mont. but moved the company to Bend last year to take advantage of the focus on the renewable-energy economy that continues to evolve in Central Oregon.

“When the wind energy industry was experiencing major corporate consolidation and seemed to be focusing only on massive wind farms capable of generating hundreds of megawatts of electricity, I recognized a niche,” he said. “WCE’s focus is to install wind turbines on property owned by private farmers, schools, cities, counties or other landowners — work that allows the property owner to reap 50 percent of the profits from all electricity sold.”

WCE confirmed $1.4 million in wind energy projects for 2008, and another $8.2 million in January. The company is also partnering with seven Oregon schools to erect smallerturbines as part of a project intended to teach communities about the benefits of wind energy.

Revenue like that proves green energy is no longer an underground movement spearheaded by the likes of Willie Nelson and his biodiesel tour bus, or actor Ed Begley and his bicycle. Costanti and his eight employees seem positioned to become major players in the Pacific Northwest renewable energy sector during the next couple of years, and several reports back up the viability of wind energy as a major contributor to the total supply of electricity to U.S. households and industry.

The U.S. Department of Energy set a goal of cutting greenhouse-gas emissions by 15 percent during the next 11 years, and a whopping 80 percent by the year 2050. A study published last month by the Seattle-based Northwest Energy Coalition finds that more than three times the amount of existing renewable energy resources required to meet those goals exist in our region of the country, and cites wind energy in particular as having the greatest potential to play a major role in the realization of those ambitions. One portion of the study in particular highlights Central Oregon as a location that possesses enough open space, as well as the preferred weather conditions, for a single wind farm to produce enough energy to meet Oregon’s goal of having 25 percent renewable energy on the grid by 2025.

Additionally, research funded by the U.S. Department of Energy’s Wind Energy Technologies Program – conducted at the NREL – has led to the development of multi-megawatt wind turbines that are able to generate enough electricity, and at rates competitive with conventional energy sources, to immediately make wind energy a viable source of competition in the marketplace.

Of course, meeting future increases in demand for electricity, largely spurred on by the continued growth of the U.S. population, requires investment, and investment in wind energy, as well as overall energy efficiency, will lead to the creation of new jobs while drastically reducing, if not eliminating, the need to import fuel from overseas, according to the Northwest Energy Coalition report.

Roger Lee, executive director of Economic Development for Central Oregon, said Costanti’s approach to community investment provides substantial opportunities to create new sources of income for individuals, municipalities, schools, tribes, and utility districts in Central Oregon – all plus factors in the current stagnant economy.

“The company has a model unique in the industry,” Lee said. “We like that WCE partners with landowners in equity arrangements, allowing local communities to keep more of the income generated (through wind energy). By focusing on small- to mid-sized community projects, we believe WCE will continue to find substantial opportunities for growth.”

Costanti is also sitting on a potential windfall for his company in the form of tax credits. The $787 billion American Recovery and Investment Act uncapped the small wind turbine Investment Tax Credit, allowing developers to receive a 30 percent credit on profits but get back the 30 percent in cash rather than as a deduction. The grants will be administered through a federal program led by the U.S. Treasury Department. According to a study completed by New Energy Finance, a New York-based renewable energy analyst company, the tax credits will pave the way for large tax-equity investors, that before were only comfortable backing large-scale wind farms, to begin investing in smaller, community-based projects.

“There are overseas tax credits available too, but that’s not who we are and what we believe in,” Costanti said. “We want to add to the economic value of Central Oregon and our state. We’re going to be hiring 11 people in the coming weeks and we want them all to be locals. And we are working with community banks to help finance new projects that will put revenue into the hands of local people and the local economy by developing small-scale wind farms on private land, and partnering with those land owners in the sale of the electricity generated on their property.”

The Blowback
by Eric Flowers – The Source Weekly

Despite, or maybe because of, its spectacular growth in recent years, many people are taking a more critical look at large scale wind farms. In addition to visual impacts, neighbors have cited concerns about round the clock noise from turbines and one researcher has coined a new term to describe ailments associated with exposure to it, “wind turbine syndrome,” according to a recent story in the Oregonian. Meanwhile environmentalists are urging regulators to take a closer look at where they allow new wind farms to be sited because of concerns about impact on wildlife, including birds that are threatened by turbine blades and criss-crossing networks of transmission lines. Habitat fragmentation can also impact large game animals that don’t do well with industrial complexes.

One wind power project has already gone by the wayside in Oregon, at least temporarily, because of concerns about environmental impacts. Backers of a large-scale wind farm project adjacent to the Steens national monument in Harney County withdrew their application for the project earlier this year in the face of opposition from environmental groups including the Audubon Society.

However opponents say they expect the project to be resubmitted after Harney County finishes updating its applicable planning rules, presumably in favor of the applicant.