Kansas Aims to Cash in On Wind Power

TOPEKA -- Renewable energy boosters said Wednesday that this year's significant expansion of wind energy production in Kansas could be just a starting point.

Speakers at this year's Kansas Wind & Renewable Energy Conference in Topeka envisioned a future in which wind power becomes a major export for the state.

Lt. Gov. Mark Parkinson said that while wind power can help meet Kansas' own power needs, there's even more potential for providing electricity to other states.

As a result, Parkinson said that with the right amount of help, wind power could transform into a major economic force in the state.

"I don't think it's a matter of if it's going to happen," Parkinson said, "but a matter of when it's going to happen."

Parkinson compared the situation with wind energy in Kansas right now to being in Oklahoma when oil was discovered or being in Silicon Valley as the technology boom ramped up.

But he and other wind energy experts also said it may take congressional action, including an extension of federal tax breaks for wind energy, to help make new wind projects cheaper than coal-fired power.

Legislation extending the wind energy production tax credit, which helps make wind power more competitive with coal and other traditional power sources, easily passed the Senate on Tuesday. But the $17 billion tax-break bill for renewable energy still must clear the House.

Parkinson said the state's wind industry also could benefit from a carbon tax or a cap-and-trade system to reduce the greenhouse gas emissions causing climate change. Such limits could help increase the demand for the state's wind resources to meet power needs.

Kansas also would be an "enormous winner" if Congress passed national standard requiring utilities to produce a certain amount of their power from renewable sources, he said.

Parkinson said supporters of renewable energy should educate and lobby Congress, including the state's own delegation, to support such a move.

But experts said the state also needs an expansion of high-voltage electric transmission lines, such as the V-plan that two utilities are competing to build in southwest and south-central Kansas.

In the meantime, wind energy production, some of which already is exported, is undergoing a significant expansion in the state. By the end of the year, the state's wind farms could be producing 1,013 megawatts of electricity, up from the 364 megawatts being churned out at the beginning of the year.

Gov. Kathleen Sebelius' administration has trumpeted the fact that Kansas would be the first state to top the 1,000-megawatt mark without writing mandates in state law requiring utilities to use renewable energy.

But estimates suggest the state's overall wind energy potential isn't close to being met. Michael Eckhart, president of the American Council on Renewable Energy, said the state's maximum wind potential is 120,000 megawatts, or 12 times bigger than the state's peak load.

He notes that both wind and solar energy, which western Kansas also has great potential to produce, would seem to be a good fit with the state's farming culture.

In the right direction?

Some scenarios suggest that Kansas could be capable of producing as much as 8,000 to 10,000 megawatts of wind power in the coming decades, The Wind Coalition of Austin, Texas, said in a news release.

The state could use up to 3,000 megawatts for itself and the rest could be used to help meet a national goal of providing 20 percent of electricity through wind power by 2030, the group said.

"Kansas has a far greater wind resource than it can use, so there is a tremendous opportunity to build out more wind energy to export to other markets," said Paul Sadler, the group's executive director.

Touting wind energy as a possible export comes at the some time that Parkinson and other critics have opposed a coal-plant project in southwest Kansas.

More than 80 percent of the electricity from Sunflower Electric Power Corp.'s proposed $3.6 billion expansion would have gone to nearby states. The plant expansion was blocked by the Sebelius' administration.

Critics of the project said the plants would have left the state with all of the project's pollution but little of the power.

Proponents countered that the plants would be the state's most efficient and that exporting power would be beneficial to the state by providing jobs and economic development. They also argued wind was too intermittent to be widely depended on as a power source.

But Eckhart said he believed that the benefits of renewable energy production exceed those of coal power because so much money would leave the Kansas to pay for a fuel source being mined outside the state. Growth in the state's wind industry could put the state in line to gain the wind-industry manufacturing jobs that have eluded it thus far, a manager at a company that designs, manufactures and install turbines said.

Christopher Mone, business development manager at Vestas-American Wind Development, said Kansas is well-position to gain those jobs, which have presently clustered in other states, including Colorado.

Eckhart said that during the past six years, Kansas has shed about 6 percent of its manufacturing work force, but new wind farms could help bring those jobs back by the thousands.

Parkinson said the state's lack of renewable energy mandates and a perception that Kansas policymakers might not be friendly to wind has initially hindered the state's efforts to land manufacturers.

But the state is now positioned to begin landing some of those jobs as its production of wind power expands, he said.

"There is really no reason why Kansas shouldn't be the No. 1 state in the country in terms of renewable energy and we'll continue to head in that direction," Parkinson said.