PEOPLE SAY THAT IT TAKES A VILLAGE to raise a child. Writing a book is not altogether different. So many people have helped at every stage—ranchers and farmers who warmly welcomed me onto their lands and into their homes, construction workers and factory laborers who let me take a close look at what they do, wind industry leaders and transmission experts who patiently tutored me in their trades, colleagues and friends in the environmental community who responded to my barrage of queries, a superb crew of research assistants, inspiring editorial guides, and a publishing team that has been masterful in every aspect of creating this book.
My agent, Colleen Mohyde at the Doe Coover Agency, reassuringly embraced my proposal and was wonderfully sure-footed in leading me to Beacon Press, a publisher that is dedicated to both the authors they take on and the ideas they are advancing. Alexis Rizzuto, my editor at Beacon, has been brilliant in keeping me focused on what readers really need to know about a subject that gets dangerously technical very fast. She and the book’s entire Beacon team (Tom Hallock, Susan Lumenello, Reshma Melwani, Will Myers, and P. J. Tierney) are superb at what they do.
The pages of this book bear the imprints of several other creative forces. Larry Tye has been the best of role models, contagious in his love of book writing and a supportive friend throughout. Rosemary Ahern has been a gifted writing coach, helping a circumspect lawyer bring his own voice to the fore. My sister, Sally Bliumis-Dunn, brought a poet’s eye and ear to her reading of the manuscript. Joel Segel aided my early search for a way to infuse a technical subject with life and humor.
From his perspective as a wind developer and lifelong environmentalist, Rob Gardiner combed every page for balance and technical accuracy. Seasoned journalist Ira Chinoy was equally vigilant in making sure my writing was well sourced. (I hope he’ll forgive the rumored Napoleon quote that opens chapter 4. I liked it too much to delete it.) Dana Peck, a savvy wind project manager and long-ago coworker on Capitol Hill, scrutinized my writing on transmission issues, as did Seth Kaplan, a recent colleague at the Conservation Law Foundation. Renewable energy analyst Jan Hamrin filled out my understanding of California’s wind energy boom and bust of the 1980s. Eric Lantz, Michael Milligan, and Suzanne Tegen at the National Renewable Energy Laboratory helped me grasp the economics of wind, as did Andrew Mills and Ryan Wiser at Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory and Matt Kaplan of IHS Emerging Energy Research.
Researching this book took me to remote reaches of America and even more distant corners of the world. Horizon Wind Energy’s Tanuj TJ Deora—now director of the Colorado Governor’s Energy Office—accompanied my first visit to Meridian Way, where Michelle Graham educated me about the wind farm and was amazingly resourceful in introducing me to Cloud County landowners, educators, and civic leaders. Horizon CEO Gabriel Alonso and company staff across several states were instrumental in demonstrating what it takes to finance, build, and operate a wind farm.
Among other wind developers, Invenergy’s Mark Leaman, together with Art Fletcher, arranged for me to spend a fascinating few days meeting company staff and neighbors at the Grand Ridge Wind Farm. Don Furman at Iberdrola Renewables was enlightening about everything from his company’s wildlife protection innovations to the challenges of getting wind power onto the grid.
In the manufacturing realm, the Vestas team in Denmark and China showed me extraordinary generosity. Michael Holm lined up informative factory visits in Denmark and responded unfailingly to my multiple follow-up queries. I’m sure he’s as relieved as I am that this book is finally going to press! In China, Andrew Hilton and Tu Trinh Thai made it possible for me to hear from Danish and Chinese managers about the challenges of fusing Western and Eastern workplace norms.
Mary Paul Jesperson and Pernille Florin Elbech at the Danish Embassy shaped my Denmark visit, together with Christian Wedekinck Olesen at the Climate Consortium. Valuable insights on wind energy’s Danish ascent were offered by Parliament members Anne Grete Holmsgaard and Per Ørum Jørgensen, Lars Aagaard at the Danish Energy Association, and Rune Birk Nielsen at the Danish Wind Industry Association. I also want to thank Steen Hartvig Jacobsen for sharing his deep historical knowledge about Danish energy policies.
Armond Cohen at the Clean Air Task Force guided me wisely in preparing my trip to China, and the Natural Resources Defense Council’s China staff provided useful background on Chinese wind manufacturing. Lin Wei and Ming Sung arranged informative meetings, capably interpreted by Houji Zhuzhu. Sebastian Meyer of Azure International shared keen observations and timely data on Chinese wind energy development. Along with all I learned from the entrepreneurs and analysts who appear or are cited in chapter 4, I am grateful for the insights offered by Alfred Zhao at the Chinese Wind Energy Association, Ryan Chen at the China New Energy Chamber of Commerce, Ellen Carberry at the China Greentech Initiative, and Jasmine Zhang at PriceWaterhouseCoopers.
Stateside, Bob Loyd at Clipper Wind was a blessing. He opened the door to some great discussions with his multigenerational crew at the Cedar Rapids assembly plant, and he was a rich resource on the city’s long struggle to hold onto a viable industrial base. Bob Gates, in Clipper’s California headquarters, brought decades of wind energy experience to his reflections on the company’s technology innovations, its financial hurdles, and the damage caused by erratic federal policies.
Other manufacturers who helped me understand the wind trade were Jim Charmley, Hans Landin, and Lorrie Paul Crum at Timken; Daniel McGahn and Jason Fredette at American Superconductor; Bob Paxton at Broadwind; John Grabner at Cardinal Fastener; and Dheeraj Choudhary at Parker Hannifin. Richard Stuebi at the Cleveland Foundation kindly steered me toward several of these fine people.
General Electric eluded my persistent efforts over several months to arrange factory visits and interviews with company officials. This was unfortunate, given GE’s central role in supplying America’s turbines. Nevertheless, Millissa Rocker did provide useful speeches and testimony by Vic Abate, vice president of GE Energy’s renewables division.
A successful wind industry doesn’t just depend on the companies that produce the technology and put up the turbines. I was privileged to meet several economic development boosters who have catalyzed factories and wind farms in their communities: Mayor Charles “Chaz” Allen of Newton, Iowa; Joe Jongewaard and Beth Govoni at the Iowa Department of Economic Development; Dennis Jordan at the Cedar Rapids Chamber of Commerce; CloudCorp’s Kirk Lowell in Concordia, Kansas; Connie Neininger at the White County Economic Development Organization in Indiana; and Matt Sorensen at the McLean County Commission in Illinois. I also was inspired by the educators who are racing to create a well-trained corps of wind technicians: Bruce Graham at Cloud County Community College, Ahmad Hemami at Iowa Lakes Community College, and P. Barry Butler at the University of Iowa’s College of Engineering top the list.
In exploring the energy industry’s wildlife impacts, I was aided by several key people beyond those mentioned in chapter 7. Michelle Carder and Matt Gasner of Western Ecosystems Technology took me into the field to see how they monitor bats at Indiana’s Meadow Lake Wind Farm. Shannon Anderson at the Powder River Basin Resource Council and the Sierra Club’s Brad Mohrmann filled me in on the ecological devastation wrought by Wyoming’s coal, gas, oil, and uranium industries. John Emmerich, executive director of the Wyoming Game and Fish Department, described his agency’s efforts to protect the sage grouse and other wildlife.
Local battles over wind farm siting took me to the Flint Hills of Kansas, the Northern Laramie Range in Wyoming, and Vermont’s Taconic Mountains. The Flint Hills controversy is well covered in the text, but I am especially grateful to Kansas Audubon’s Ron Klataske for introducing me to local ranchers and conservation experts. I also thank ranchers Rose Bacon and Pete Ferrell for sharing their very different perspectives on a hotly divisive issue. John Briggs of the Konza Prairie Biological Station, Rob Manes and Brian Obermeyer of the Nature Conservancy, and Chuck Rice of Kansas State University gave me valued tutorials on tallgrass prairie ecology. Broader insights on wind energy’s importance to Kansas came from Scott Allegrucci of the Great Plains Alliance for Clean Energy; Steve Baccus and Mike Irvin at the Kansas Farm Bureau; Rod Bremby, former secretary of the Kansas Department of Health and Environment; and Nancy Jackson at the Climate and Energy Project.
Securing wind energy’s place in a state as richly endowed with fossil and nuclear fuels as Wyoming is no small undertaking. In probing that state’s policies, I benefited hugely from my conversations with state senate president Jim Anderson; Cheryl Riley and David Picard of the Wyoming Power Producers Coalition; and Aaron Clark, who advised former governor Dave Freudenthal on energy policy. Although the hot debate over wind farm siting in the Northern Laramies didn’t find its way into this book, I learned much about wind energy politics from rancher Rick Grant, Ken Lay of the Northern Laramie Range Alliance, and Ed Werner, chair of the Converse County Commission until wind farm opponents voted him out of office. I also spent an eye-opening day with L. J. and Karen Turner, Campbell County ranchers whose cattle graze on the edge of America’s largest open-pit coal mine. I wish there was enough room in this book to tell every amazing story I encountered.
In Vermont’s Taconic Mountains, concerns about noise and viewshed protection have dominated the debate about wind. Ken Kaliski of the Resource Systems Group was hugely instructive on the science of acoustics, and Dr. Michael Nissenbaum was forthcoming in explaining his own research on noise issues. I am also indebted to Annette Smith of Vermonters for a Clean Environment for her tour of the contested Vermont Community Wind site west of Rutland.
Power transmission is a hugely technical, bureaucratically intertwined realm that several people made it easier to fathom: Brad Beecher of Empire District Electric; Jay Caspary and Carl Monroe of the Southwest Power Pool; Craig Cox at the Interwest Energy Alliance; Loyd Drain at the Wyoming Infrastructure Authority; Steve Gaw of the Wind Coalition; Mark Fagan of the Harvard Kennedy School; Chris Miller and Bri West at the Piedmont Environmental Council; John Nielsen of Western Resources Advocates; Todd Parfitt and Tom Schroeder of Wyoming’s Department of Environmental Quality; Chris Petrie at the Wyoming Public Service Commission; and David Smith at TransWest Express LLC. Jon Wellinghoff, chairman of the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission, brought his powerful vision to our meeting, and Julia Bovey proved herself a true friend in arranging that interview.
The obstacles to getting truly transformative energy policies in place came to light in discussions with U.S. representatives Ed Markey and Henry Waxman. These two mavericks have fought long and hard to give our global climate crisis the priority it deserves. Hopefully, their day will come. David Osterberg of the Iowa Public Policy Project was uplifting in describing what his own state has done to bring renewable energy into the mainstream.
In addition to holding the most informative conferences and workshops in the trade, the American Wind Energy Association has a bright staff of professionals who have been highly responsive to my research needs. My particular thanks go to Rob Gramlich, Kathy Belyeu, Hans Detweiler, Michael Goggin, and Elizabeth Salerno.
Each of my trips yielded new questions and a new crop of interviews to be transcribed. I was lucky to have a spirited and utterly reliable group of research assistants at the ready. Kate Davies uncovered a trove of studies on bird and bat concerns, turned recordings of varying quality into precise transcripts, and offered astute insights on the evolving manuscript. My thanks also go to Kathryn Boucher, Christine Cho, Michael Dorsi, Ari Peskoe, Christina Putz, and Allie Rosene-Mirvis. Vida Margaitis and Diane Sredl, librarians at Harvard University, were ever-resourceful in tracking down valuable government documents. I am grateful as well to my mother, Joan Warburg, for her many phone calls and e-mails alerting me to wind energy coverage in the media.
My wife, Tamar, has been both a tireless editor and an endless source of support and encouragement. Reading numerous drafts of this book, she praised generously, but she also dared to deliver the difficult news of a chapter’s need for fundamental reshaping. I’m sure that she and our daughters, Tali and Maya, have heard more about wind energy than they ever wanted to know.
Speaking of Tali and Maya, this book is dedicated to them. While plenty of work still lies ahead for my generation, theirs will have to carry on the tough work of steering our national and global energy choices onto a saner course. I only hope that we’re all up to the challenge.