Farmers on the Cutting Edge of Energy

Aug. 12, 2008— -- TRIMONT, Minn. -- One would hardly know it driving down Main Street, but this tiny prairie town surrounded by corn and soybean fields is at the forefront of America's fight to wean itself off oil.

Long before gas topped $4 a gallon or Texas oilman T. Boone Pickens embraced renewable energy, a group of farmers here banded together to build a massive wind farm.

Today their vision is paying off.

At the edge of town, 67 giant turbines -- each taller than the Statue of Liberty -- rise above the landscape, producing enough electricity to power 29,000 homes throughout the state and providing the farmers and local government with roughly $2 million a year. And it's just the beginning. Soon, a second phase of the project will be online -- doubling the number of towers -- and a third phase is already being planned.

So how did this town of only 754 residents, where the local radio station includes the price of cattle and corn in its news updates, land on the forefront of the nation's energy solutions?

It was part geography, part luck and part foresight by a few local farmers.

Trimont sits at the southern end of Minnesota, a few miles north of Iowa. The flat land spreads out in every direction, broken occasionally by a farmhouse or grain elevator.

Strong winds pass easily across the prairie, making it an ideal location for commercial-scale, wind-power generation. But strong winds aren't enough.

"Some of the biggest tree-huggers are against it. I don't see why anyone would be against wind power," Von Ohlen said. "Some people, point blank, don't like the looks of the turbine. My wife and I love the look."

Wind is also bringing jobs.

The industry employs about 50,000 Americans, adding 10,000 jobs in 2007 alone, according to the American Wind Energy Association, a trade and lobbying group. By 2030 -- if wind reaches its full potential -- the industry could employ as many as 500,000 people.

Jake Hansen grew up on a farm in the tiny community of Morgan, Minn., about 50 miles north of Trimont. Roughly 70 percent of the residents there graduate from high school but less than 10 percent hold bachelor's degrees. The typical resident made $16,454 in 1999, according to Census data.

Hansen was home-schooled and "had no idea" what he was going to do until he heard a radio ad for a wind technician program at an area community college.

"I thought it sounded interesting," Hansen said. "Farming or driving a truck are the only jobs around."

But with wind, he said, "there's so much future in it."

The college even has its own working turbine. It's not just used for instruction but actually generates power that is sold to the local community, providing about $150,000 a year to the school.

For the farmers of Trimont, the perfect opportunity presented itself in the spring of 2003. Great River Energy, a regional power cooperative, was looking for somebody to generate renewable energy for its customers.

Scholl managed to organize 50 different farmers to join the project; and submitted a bid to the power company. They were one of 65 proposals but ultimately won because of the site's location and the local involvement. (Scholl has since died in a small-plane crash.)

"At first, the idea was, hey, this is going to be the largest land-owner wind farm in the country. Until you know the facts, it's easy to dream big," Von Ohlen said.

So they decided to bring in a large company to operate the facility. But because the farmers had won the right to sell the renewable energy, they held all the cards when negotiating.

"We had a lot of negotiating power in the first proposal," Von Ohlen said. "We could have brought in anybody."

The group eventually choose PPM Energy, which has since become part of Iberdrola Renewables, a Spanish company that is the world's largest provider of wind power.

As part of its deal with the energy company, the farmers got a noncompetitive clause. Neither group could develop a wind farm in the area without the other. Today they are preparing to go online with their second joint venture adjacent to the first project. And like the first one, the farmers will also get a share of the profits.

While there are 50 landowners in the first group, only 43 have turbines on their property. They can still plant crops right up to the base of the tower.

In November 2005, the project started delivering energy.

Some projects have lease payments of $9,000 per tower, but at Trimont, the farmers get just $3,000 to $5,000. In most other projects, the payments end there. Here, there are additional land payments of $10 to $25 an acre, which are a share of the energy profits. Those payments help put the Trimont farmers ahead of other projects.

"We came up with a plan where everybody benefits regardless if you get a turbine or not," Von Ohlen said. "It tends to make everybody happy."