11/2/2007 Bridging Urban & Rural Interests

Bridging Urban & Rural Interests. I'm Greg Martin as Line On Agriculture presents the Harvest Clean Energy Report. In this day of urban sprawl, how does the rural community fit in? It is quickly becoming a major piece of the energy puzzle as renewable energy projects are popping up in rural communities. The communities are benefiting and so do cities since many are buying power from the local projects. Scott Thompsen is the Media Relations Manager for Seattle City Light. THOMPSEN: You have the opportunity for a dual use here where the land can be put into place for generating electricity but the turbines don't get in the way of them using the land to grow crops and that's kind of a win-win situation for some of the farmers over there and on our end of things it certainly adds to our ability to add new renewable resources into our energy portfolio. Seattle City Light buys about half of the power being generated by the Stateline Wind Project southwest of Walla Walla, Washington. THOMPSEN: Stateline is actually owned by Florida Power and Light in conjunction with I believe it's a Scottish company that did the development to put it into place but we are contracting for half of the power generated by the windfarm. According to Thompsen they are starting to see a number of the multi-national, multi company projects going up around the world. THOMPSEN: Worldwide there are a lot of companies getting involved in the development of new renewable energy and wind power is one of those that has taken off. A lot of companies in Europe are being very aggressive at developing wind farms, even off shore. Right now in Denmark they've put very large turbines up out in the ocean. So there is a lot of creativity that is taking place around the globe to find new sources for energy that aren't putting pollution into the air. The big benefit comes to rural locations that are the site for these renewable projects. What these once declining areas are seeing is a sudden creation of several new revenue streams including the creation of jobs. THOMPSEN: Certainly when you are looking for a wind farm  to site one of those, you are having to go with a steady wind source, looking for a place where you can use up a lot of ground and hopefully do it in a way that doesn't interfere with other activities. Stateline and other wind farms have been able to go into rural area where folks have been able to continue farming the land underneath it and so you get that dual use taking place. The Stateline project pays $1.4 million annually in property taxes and has brought about 30 full-time jobs to the local economy. For additional information on clean energy, visit harvestcleanenergy.org. That's today's Line On Agriculture. I'm Greg Martin on the Northwest Ag Information Network. www.harvestcleanenergy.org