Green
Business
Melanie
Warner
Gust of Hope
Can wind power a rural renaissance?
Jon BerGstrom,
a cotton and hay
farmer in Sweetwater, Texas (popula-
tion 10,472), looks outside his window
every day and feels grateful. The giant
white towers spinning on the near
horizon have everything to do with it.
Sweetwater is in Nolan County, which
boasts more wind turbines than any
other U.S. county. Its 1,253 turbines
produce a total of 2,000 megawatts of
electricity per year at peak. (Coal-fired
power plants average 603 megawatts.)
Before clean, renewable wind
energy came to Sweetwater, it was
best known for its rattlesnake round-
up, held every year since 1958 on the
second weekend in March. Rattle-
snakes may have put Sweetwater on
the map, but wind is keeping it there,
giving the town the sort of solid
economic development American
rural communities desperately need.
Sweetwater offers a glimpse of what’s
possible if the United States actually
focuses on becoming a world leader
in alternative-energy technology
and creating a green economy.
Wind power has given landowners
like Bergstrom some juicy annual lease
revenue. The 13 turbines sitting on his
farm earn him at least $52,000 a year,
a figure that he says is scheduled to
go up. Next year, wind companies are
expected to dole out $15 million
to Nolan County property holders.
What really makes Bergstrom
happy, though, is the thought that
his two grandsons, now 3 and 8, may
actually want to stick around. (One of
Bergstrom’s two children left Sweet-
water for greener—and more urban—
pastures in Austin.) “There’s nothing
better than being able to spend time
with those boys,” he says.
The value that wind is bringing
to Nolan County gives his grandkids
more reasons to stay. Wind farms offer
significant property-tax revenue to
counties, which means those boys are
likely to get a much better education
than they would have before. Between
2002 and 2007, wind companies put
$23.7 million in the coffers of the
county’s four school districts, and
each district has either erected a
modern school building or has one
under construction.
There are also good local jobs
available. Because wind turbines are
such massive structures, their manu-
facturing, installation, and service
has to happen locally. That means the
return of some of those all-American
well-paying blue-collar jobs—$12 to
$23 an hour for manufacturing and
$20 to $30 an hour for maintenance—
that have disappeared overseas.
Sweetwater’s unemployment rate is
just 3.5%, and over the past two years,
the county gave residents a 30%
property-tax reduction, making the
area even more livable.
Sweetwater is not an isolated wind
success story. Home prices, down about
20% nationally since their euphoric
high in the summer of 2006, are only
down 5% in the dusty town of Pipe-
stone, Minnesota (population 4,095),
where 450 new jobs have been created
since a turbine-manufacturing facility
and service operation opened in 2007.
Farming families in Lamar, Colorado,
are getting annual checks for more
than $250,000 apiece in lease revenue.
What these small towns have in
common is not just geography—they’re
all in the wind-swept Midwest and
West—but proximity to reasonably
adequate transmission lines. That’s
what’s needed to carry that wind
energy to larger metropolitan areas.
If wind is going to power a rural
renaissance, policy makers in Wash-
ington must put in place a strategy to
fund the building of new electricity
transmission lines that will connect
more rural areas to big population
centers where most energy is con-
sumed. Construction estimates for this
modern clean-energy superhighway?
About $60 billion. If it means new jobs
and middle-class affluence, as well as
carbon-free energy independence, it
may be one of the best investments
that we can make. 1.
> Feedback: warner@fastcompany.com
