The Green Bike Tour 2004

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Iowa Contact: Mike Owen, Iowa Policy Project, (319) 643-3628, ipp@Lcom.net
Minnesota Contact: Cathy Kennedy (952) 944-6559, cathy@cathrynkennedy.com

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE, THURSDAY, SEPT. 16, 2004
 

Day 4: Making Money from Wind Power

DODGE CENTER, Minnesota (Sept. 16, 2004) - A Minnesota farmer is showing the way for other Midwestern farmers to prosper through development of wind power.

A team of bicyclists touring the Midwest to promote renewable energy started their day at the Garwin McNeilus farm near Dodge Center. McNeilus generates about 50 MW of power from several dozen turbines set up at two locations.

"There are a lot of entrepreneurs who want to do exactly what Garwin is doing," said David Osterberg, executive director of the Iowa Policy Project, which is co-sponsoring the Green Bike Tour 2004 with the Minnesota-based League of Rural Voters.

The fourth leg of the six-day Green Bike Tour 2004 also Thursday took the riders to a clean-energy candidate forum at Northfield, Ill., following a 50-mile ride. Three of the bicycles are equipped with solar panels to demonstrate another application of renewable energy.

"This is the first specifically energy forum that we've had for candidates in our area," said Bruce Anderson of St. Olaf University. "It will be as much as anything to raise their awareness of the issues."

Osterberg said there were lessons to be drawn from the morning visit to the McNeilus wind operation.

"He's worried about concentration," said Osterberg, noting that without small generators having a role in the development of wind energy, a small number of large companies could wind up owning all of the wind-power capacity - "just like a small number of companies now produce our electricity."

"He sells to a number of different suppliers," Osterberg said. "The lessons for Iowa are that the reason Iowa has fallen back (in wind production vs. other states) is because people like Garwin who are up in Minnesota are still building turbines when we've stopped in Iowa."

Osterberg recalled a visit the day before with Paul Nepple, whose Iowa wind turbine the group visited near Estherville.

The key, Osterberg said, is requiring utilities to buy renewable energy - not necessarily from small producers. "They'll find the cheapest supplier, and that's the way the market's supposed to work."

"What we learned from Garwin is that people like Paul would like to do this," Osterberg said. "They have to have a market. The way we have electricity, we don't have a number of people you can sell to. That's why you have to demand that utilities demand a bigger share of their pwoer from renewable energy."

Osterberg is supporting a 20 percent goal by 2020, which he noted is "much less ambitious than the Europeans," whose European Union has set a 22 percent goal by 2010. "Denmark is already there," said Osterberg, who two years ago toured European renewable energy sites by bicycle.

The tour began Monday in South Dakota and Minnesota, moving to Iowa on Tuesday with stops in both Iowa and Minnesota on Wednesday. By Saturday, the riders wind up in Wisconsin, having seen several more examples of renewable-energy development in the Midwest.

Friday's tour is scheduled for stops in Northfield and Red Wing in Minnesota and conclude at LaCrosse, Wisconsin.

The public can keep track of the Green Bikers during the tour through stories and photos that will be updated daily on a website, www.greenbike.org <http://www.greenbike.org>.

 

Scheduled riders:
 

Thursday: David Osterberg and Tom Cook from the University of Iowa; environmental entrepreneur Ed Woolsey of Martensdale, Iowa; Bruce Anderson of St. Olaf University in Northfield, Minn., and Christopher Childs of the Sierra Club in St. Paul.

 

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Editors, News Directors Note: We will provide updates on the web at http://www.greenbike.org.