Home > News Releases

April 1, 2005

When Carleton College started building its new power plant last fall in a Minnesota cornfield, people came by the dozens to watch. The physics department studied the plant, the subject of at least one senior thesis. And the third-floor window of the physics building framed it perfectly, towering over the corn.

The 360-foot-tall, 1.65-megawatt wind turbine "kind of takes your breath away," said Sarah Maxwell, who works in the campus media office of the small liberal arts college in Northfield, Minn.

Across town, rival Saint Olaf College was watching, and now has a turbine of its own in the works. The University of Minnesota, not to be outdone, built a plant in Morris with a giant "M" emblazoned on it. The turbine is due to start producing power on Earth Day, April 22.

For institutions of higher learning, putting up 40 stories of steel and fiberglass-without a single blackboard or dorm lounge in the plan-is starting to look like a pretty smart idea. Advocates of so-called green power say the choice is nonpolluting, local and sometimes even cheaper than traditional fossil fuels.

In Minnesota, "wind power is really here," said Jeff Hawes of the state's Department of Commerce, which regulates power production.

Deregulation of energy markets, better known for the excesses of Enron's infamous energy trading in California, has helped clear the way for these micro-producers. Under deregulation, utilities were required to purchase the power made by small producers at a fair price, and to offer green power to consumers.

For students across the United States who have for a generation been driven to shrink their schools' environmental footprints, buying green power is a straightforward option. It's flashier than acquiring a more efficient boiler, and it's cool to imagine the stereo is running on wind power.

Kate Zaidan, national coordinator of the Student Environmental Action Coalition, said the group has seen a rush of interest in buying green. "Of all the student movements out there," she said, "the clean energy movement is probably one of the biggest." For the cost of a dinner date tacked onto their yearly student fees, students can know a portion of their power comes free of environmental cost.

Colleges and universities are climbing up the Environmental Protection Agency's list of the top 25 green power consumers. At No.13, ahead of FedEx Kinko's, the U.S. Navy and the City of Santa Monica, is the University of Pennsylvania, which bought 40,000 megawatt hours of wind power last year.

Penn State is No. 23. The two universities had some "really nice" numbers, said Matt Clouse, an EPA spokesman. "Purchases like that have the ability to start new wind farms.

"Everyone wants to be out in the lead," Clouse added. "That's one dynamic we'd like to take advantage of."

Meanwhile, Harvard's Kennedy School of Government already buys all its power from wind, and undergraduate students voted in December for an optional $10 fee to go part green. The Yale School of Forestry boasts 20 percent wind power, and in Ithaca, N.Y., Cornell is studying conditions for a wind farm.

Carleton's not-so-quixotic dream started, said facilities director Richard Strong, with some "noodleing." Students wanted their classrooms and dorm fridges powered from a nonpolluting plant, but when the school looked for green power, it found that getting just 10 percent of its power from wind would have cost an extra $30,000.

So the Minnesota college became an energy producer. The turbine, which is a mile from campus, sends power straight into the electric grid. Carleton also sells to the local power company, which offers the energy to consumers willing to pay a premium.

Although the current federal subsidy for wind power comes in the form of a tax credit, which doesn't cover nonprofit entities, a Minnesota incentive helps schools and small towns by paying 1.5 cents per kilowatt-hour produced.

Strong said the turbine, which cost $1.8 million, will more than pay for itself over its 25-year lifespan-and reduce emissions of carbon dioxide by 1.5 million tons. And if a similar federal incentive were renewed, Carleton could earn an extra 1.8 cents per kilowatt-hour.

The University of Minnesota took a different approach. Its College of Agricultural, Food and Environmental Science installed the turbine at a branch campus and laid cables directly to the University of Minnesota-Morris. The Morris campus will pay almost 25 percent less per kilowatt-hour by using power from the turbine, which is expected to cover more than half of its energy needs, according to Greg Cuomo, director of the college's branch campus.

Cuomo said the idea of putting up a turbine came to him while he was sitting in his office watching the snow blowing sideways.

At St. Olaf, the college missed the state incentive, which expired for new projects in 2003, but won a grant from Excel Energy. The energy company has a state mandate to fund renewable energy. Other liberal arts colleges in the state are following suit. Gustavus Adolphus and Macalester are looking into getting their own turbines, according to Carleton's Strong.

Strong is glad his college was first. When St. Olaf called, he was quick with advice. "I told them all the good wind would be taken by the time they put their turbine up," he said with a laugh.

What's more, Carleton's turbine became the highest structure in the county, eclipsing St. Olaf's dorm for the title. "You know," Strong quipped, "nobody remembers who comes in second."

Stefan Milkowski is a master's candidate at Columbia University Graduate School of Journalism.