Climate and energy

Dan Nagengast of the Kansas Rural Center has been facilitating wind forums across KS during this spring and summer. Looks like more are coming, too - see below, Dan’s summary on the Meade event August 12.

Sponsors: Kansas Rural Center, Climate & Energy Project, Energy Foundation, Meade County Commissioners, Fowler State Bank, Meade State Bank, The Plains State Bank, Farm Bureau Association, Farm Bureau Financial Services, Meade County Historical Society, Sunflower RC&D, NetWork Kansas and Meade Economic Development

Attendance: There were 130 in attendance (capacity), including a county commissioner, state legislators, economic development directors from nearby counties, etc. Long discussion with the city of Liberal’s Economic Development Director Colleen Towns about organizing a similar three-county event for Morton, Stevens and Seward Counties.

Program:

10:00 AM Welcome / Introduction (Rodger DeGarmo)
10:10 AM Mike Irvin (Land Leasing Issues, State-wide perspective)
11:00 AM Steve Errebo (Lincoln Co. Commissioner, Local issues)
11:30 AM John Cyr (Finance Options)
12:15 AM Lunch
1:00 PM Terry Cordes (Local Land Leasing issues)
1:30 PM Dan Nagengast (State policy issues)
2:30 PM Q/A
3:00 PM Adjourn

Tone and Tenor of the Day: Virtually every speaker emphasized the need for wind development benefiting local and regional economies. Irvin, Errebo, Cyr, and my presentations all were updated since the previous summit, but all seem to more strongly emphasize the local economic aspect more than in the past. I also emphasized the flow of federal grant and loan dollars for buy down on projects to other states with more developed wind policies than Kansas.

A new speaker, Terry Cordes is a local attorney with an extensive oil and gas lease practice. He works with 35 landowners who are cooperating to present a united front in negotiating with land or wind developers. He went into great detail about problems with leases he had seen, and how he would counsel his clients against signing them.

He also has been working toward compensation packages that include a combination of minimum lease payment plus royalty payments on gross revenues. He calculated gross revenues in the $300,000 range per turbine for the region. Revenues to wind tower owners have climbed rapidly lately as customer fuel charges from utilities have hovered above 5¢ per Kwh. He also spoke about the benefits to landowners of their arranging cooperative negotiations using an attorney.

Materials: The Kansas Energy Office provided copies of all our 1-page handouts as well as CD-ROMs of those materials (with embedded hotlinks) and other materials KRC has developed. In addition, we distributed materials for the KEO about the upcoming Wind and Renewable Energy Conference featuring NASA climate scientist Dr. James Hansen.

— Maril Hazlett, www.climateandenergy.org