Native wind energy efforts display vision
Posted: August 25, 2005
by: Editors Report / Indian Country Today
Welcome and resounding goods news from the Great Plains: NativeEnergy is now Native-owned, giving strong evidence that the effort to capture prairie winds to produce affordable, safe and clean energy is well under way.
This is the recent message from Bob Gough, secretary of the nonprofit Intertribal Council On Utility Policy, the group that has spearheaded the most intriguing and potentially impactful energy project in Indian country. For one thing, it has united over a dozen Great Plains tribes, as Gough described it, in the ''historic effort to power America with Native wind and fight global warming.''
Intertribal COUP is a nonprofit council of federally recognized Indian tribes from North Dakota (Mandan, Arikara and Hidatsa, and part of Standing Rock and Sisseton-Wahpeton), and South Dakota (Cheyenne River, Flandreau Santee, Lower Brule, Oglala, Rosebud, Sisseton-Wahpeton Oyate, Spirit Lake Tribe and Standing Rock), and the Omaha Nation of Nebraska and Iowa. Chartered and headquartered on the Rosebud Sioux Reservation, it has operated since 1994 to provide a tribal forum for policy issues in energy utility operations and services and telecommunications.
NativeEnergy has been a leading national marketer of Renewable Energy Credits and greenhouse gas offsets. It has worked to help tribal and rural communities develop their own sustainable economies based on the generation of clean, renewable energy. Now, on behalf of its member tribes, COUP has closed the ownership circle by purchasing a majority interest in the energy marketing company.
The new, Native-owned business marks a milestone in the movement that COUP has led, providing direct access to the retail market for the energy the inter-tribal council will ultimately produce. A major initial strategic goal of the purchase is to help develop an 80-megawatt distributed-wind project, hosted in 10 MW (10,000 kilowatt hours) ''clusters'' at eight different COUP reservations. The wind farms will provide clean energy to fuel more than 23,000 homes and also create jobs. The sale of electricity and Renewable Energy Credits will generate additional revenues for the tribes.
Renewable Energy Certificates are a type of ''currency'' established by the Renewable Energy (Electricity) Act of 2001. They come in the form of electronic certificates and reside on a publicly available Internet database. Each REC represents 1 MW of electricity that is generated from a renewable energy source. This is either by a power station or 1 MW of electricity displaced by a solar water heater. RECs can be used to demonstrate compliance with the requirements of the government's mandatory renewable energy target.
One heartening aspect of the Intertribal COUP project is the strong assertion of concern for the wider issues of global warming and industrial pollution. ''Wind turbines generate electricity that would otherwise have to come from polluting power facilities on the regional grid, preventing carbon dioxide, a leading cause of global warming, from entering the air,'' according to Gough. The renewable energy credits, also called ''green tags,'' offer individuals and organizations a way to compensate for their global warming pollution by committing to powering their homes and businesses with renewable energy.
Said COUP President Patrick Spears, a member of the Lower Brule Sioux Tribe: ''Living in harmony with our Mother Earth is not only good for the environment, it is also good business.'' Spears also pointed out the excellent strategic fit between the two outfits, which stems from the mutually recognized integrity of purpose and method. It is always encouraging to hear such language from Indian country leaders of tribal economic ventures.
The earlier success of the Rosebud Sioux Tribe wind project was also directly tied to its partnering with NativeEnergy, from which it received the benefit of that company's wide range of customers. Also run on a commercial level, the Rosebud initiative was the first such 100 percent American Indian-owned and operated wind facility. The new venture intends to continue expanding by supporting ''off-reservation,'' renewable projects in partnership with the COUP tribes, according to President and CEO Tom Boucher.
Intertribal COUP constantly sponsors and participates in briefings, conferences, workshops and forums on telecommunications and energy issues. In June, 1996, it co-sponsored the Telecom/Utilities 2000 Summit (the first tribal utility conference) with the RST Utility Commission, BIA, Federal Communications Commission, Commerce, Agriculture and Energy departments. Since 1997, it has provided Indian representation on the FCC's Local and State Government Advisory Committee for Telecommunications. It has worked on Restructuring, Renewables and Reservations - Tribal Energy gatherings with the Department of Energy and the National Labs, helping as part of a three-year plan for sustainable economic development.
The work of Intertribal COUP is highly commendable - an ethical, practical, useful and profitable organization. The group is right on the button when it comes to perceiving and adapting the trends of current-day American life to the potentials of tribes based on their actual geography and potentials for environmentally friendly energy development.
The wind corridors of the northern Plains offer a promising solution. Spears pointed out the ''all-time record low water levels behind the dams on the Missouri River have resulted in diminished hydropower generation, lost revenue from the lack of surplus power sales, reductions in hydropower allocations to preference customers, [and] increased costs ...'' It also forces the Western Area Power Association to fuel 80 percent of its capacity with conventional fossil (non-renewable and polluting) fuels. Again, Spears: ''The tribes in the northern Plains have a huge wind resource. Wind energy from tribal lands alone can meet at least one-third of the nation's energy needs. Wind energy has the greatest potential to restore our economies. With more than half of our population under the age of 20, wind energy development can provide skilled technical employment for our youth.''
This is good thinking for Indian country and, therefore, for America.
For more information, visit www.nativeenergy.com/Rosebud_Turbine.htm. Contact Tom Stoddard, NativeEnergy, at (802) 425-3419 or tom.stoddard@nativeenergy.com; or Patrick Spears, Intertribal COUP, at (605) 945-1908 or pnspears2@aol.com.
indiancountry.com |
