Wednesday, August 6, 2008
Wind Electricity and Rural Opportunity
Christian McNeil
Wind turbines
(page 1 of 2)
There’s a lot of good news about the new economic opportunities that rural areas are enjoying thanks to renewable energy development – especially wind power. Unfortunately, most of the news articles I link to below come from out West. But soon enough, Maine will have more stories like these of its own.
First up: an article in Monday’s New York Times profiles Ainsworth, Nebraska, a town with a population 1,800 that describes itself as “The Middle of Nowhere.” In 2005, three dozen new wind turbines went up near the town – Nebraska’s first wind energy project. Those turbines now provide about 1% of the state’s energy needs – and because Nebraska gets most of its power from coal plants, the turbines have had a direct effect on reducing coal consumption and pollution.
This article doesn’t address it directly, but it’s clear that the turbines have a big effect on the local economy as well. The Ainsworth project brought an intense burst of construction activity to the small town, and ever since, the turbines have provided solid middle-class salaries for six full-time technicians.
In such a small town, the addition of six new jobs that pay good wages is extremely significant. And all over rural America, places that had considered themselves “The Middle of Nowhere” are now finding themselves in the middle of the renewable-energy revolution.
An AP report that ran in the Maine Sunday Telegram this past weekend described the wind industry’s rapid employment growth in rural areas (that report is available online here). This report details the incredible success that rural community colleges have had in new “wind technician” training programs. One community college in Iowa began in 2004 with one instructor and 15 students. Today, the program has a staff of five and anticipates as many as 90 students in the fall.
In New Mexico, General Electric, desperate for trained employees, helped launch a new wind technician program at Mesalands Community College by agreeing to hire every graduate of the new program for three years. The college, which has a student body of about 1200, is now building a new training facility that includes a 1.5 megawatt wind turbine and lab space.
Maine has decent wind resources of its own, and the possibilities of new jobs and economic activity from new wind farms, especially in rural areas, are significant.
Posted on Wednesday, August 6, 2008 in Permalink
