Guest Blogging: High school debaters speak out on alternative energy
November 14, 2008
Resolved: The United States federal government should substantially increase alternative energy incentives in the United States.
In high schools across the nation, this year’s national debate topic is alternative energy. CEP has invited some of the best and brightest Kansas high school debate students to weigh in on the topic. Our Energy Debate ‘08 Guest Blog series will feature six debate teams across the state, from Dodge City to Overland Park.
Today’s contributor is Ben Goossen, a senior at Washburn Rural in Topeka. Here’s his answer to the question we posed: What does Kansas’ energy future hold?
Kansas has historically been an energy production state. Until recently, Kansas was a net exporter of both coal and petroleum, but with rising energy demand and an expanding population, Kansas politicians will have to re-evaluate the role our state will play in America’s fight against global warming and fossil fuel dependence. Kansas already leads many states in alternative energy development, and the DOE ranks Kansas wind potential third in the nation. Despite this, renewable energy production comprises just one percent of Kansas electricity.
The problem with renewables is that despite a high profile and increasing public emphasis on “going green,” the technology is difficult to produce on a massive scale. To power an electrical grid entirely on solar or wind energy would require vast tracts of public land and extensive new facilities with relatively inefficient storage capacity.
Another question is how to meet peak demand load, which typically arises at 8:00 am and 6:00 pm, both times with minimal wind or sun exposure. During these times, almost all of Kansas’s electricity must be powered with coal, natural gas, or nuclear.
Even with current measures for alternative energy throughout the United States, experts predict that by 2030, fossil fuels will still power 87% of our nation’s electricity. Taking geometric population and demand growth into account, this will require an additional 72% increase in coal and a 42% increase in oil, meaning that we will be emitting one and a half times as much greenhouse gas, and spending more than twice as much on resource importation.
The solution to this is clearly new breakthroughs and increased reliance on alternative energies. While Kansas has made important strides in alternative energy incentives, such as passing a voluntary Renewable Portfolio Standard (RPS) earlier this year, far more has to be done. Economically feasible short term suggestions would be to mandate the statewide RPS (which requires a certain percentage of companies’ energy to come from renewable sources) and to further develop our state’s wind potential. Without these and even more aggressive measures, Kansas will increasingly rely on imported energy.
CEP Debate ‘08 series coordinated by CEP Director of Outreach, Eileen Horn
Guest Blogging: High school debaters speak out on alternative energy
November 7, 2008
Resolved: The United States federal government should substantially increase alternative energy incentives in the United States.
In high schools across the nation, this year’s national debate topic is alternative energy. CEP has invited some of the best and brightest Kansas high school debate students to weigh in on the topic. Our Energy Debate ‘08 Guest Blog series will feature six debate teams across the state, from Dodge City to Overland Park.
Audrey Ballard is a senior at Manhattan High School, and has been on the debate team for 4 years. Here’s her answer to the question we posed: What does Kansas’ energy future hold?
There is no such thing as free energy. Every type of energy, no matter how “clean” it may seem, always has some negative ramifications. Kansans object to wind power because it kills birds and is ugly to look at. Nuclear energy produces radioactive waste that must be stored. Ethanol uses valuable land and still releases carbon dioxide. People are always looking for the silver bullet. But it is important that we realize no solution will ever be perfect.
We must also recognize that our current energy and environmental problems cannot be fixed in one fell swoop. The longer we wait to start solving the problem, the more permanent it becomes. Though we worry right now about wind turbines killing birds, if we wait until climate change takes its toll, whole species of birds could be wiped out. If we continue in this all-or-nothing mindset, we will be left with nothing.
So when we begin to evaluate alternative energy, we have to look to how much it can benefit the environment, not its minor flaws. We need to take baby steps to reach our goal, and realize we cannot solve this energy crisis overnight.
Audrey Ballard
Manhattan High School
CEP Debate ‘08 series coordinated by CEP Director of Outreach, Eileen Horn
Guest Blogging: High school debaters speak out on alternative energy
October 31, 2008
Resolved: The United States federal government should substantially increase alternative energy incentives in the United States.
In high schools across the nation, this year’s national debate topic is alternative energy. CEP has invited some of the best and brightest Kansas high school debate students to weigh in on the topic. Our Energy Debate ‘08 Guest Blog series will feature six debate teams across the state, from Dodge City to Overland Park.
Today’s contributor is Boya Abudu, a Junior at Field Kindley Memorial High School in Coffeyville. Here’s her answer to the question we posed: What does Kansas’ energy future hold?
Everyone is aware of one of biggest crises that our nation is facing; energy. It seems that no one can agree on that one renewable energy source that will help stop the use of fossil fuels. It may seem silly, but our best solution may be in the heartland of America; wind.
When looking to how today’s economy is run, many see electricity as one of the largest necessities. Without it, many of today’s easiest tasks would become life’s most difficult challenges. But with coal, the main source of electricity facing problems, that outcome may just be around the corner.
But thank goodness for technology! The United States has already moved far in innovation, and the technology for wind is available. With more of a push, it may be able to be used for the entire country. Wind’s electricity generation can provide for many applications, including electric cars, power plants, and simple household appliances. Not only could America slowly stop using fossil fuels, but it would become energy independent, reduce carbon dioxide and air pollution, and eventually it would lead to investment in other renewables. And this could all start with what has surrounded Earth for millenniums, the wind right here in Kansas.
CEP Debate ‘08 series coordinated by CEP Director of Outreach, Eileen Horn.
CEP Conversations: Michael Volker of Midwest Energy, and their award-winning How$mart energy efficiency program
October 21, 2008
Midwest Energy is a rural electric cooperative based in Hays, Kansas. It serves 48,000 electric and 42,000 natural gas customers in central and western Kansas.
Midwest is a particularly progressive rural electric co-op. It serves a part of Kansas that is suffering high rates of rural depopulation – but in a situation where many businesses suffer, Midwest has figured out how to adapt and thrive.
Midwest has invested in renewables. Currently, it serves 49 megawatts (MW) of its load through wind energy purchased from the Smoky Hills Wind Farm, an amount that represents 16% of the co-op’s peak demand.
Economically, Midwest is also an “independent borrower” – meaning, it freed itself from the USDA’s Rural Utilities Service (RUS) borrowing system, and now finances its operations through private equity.
Midwest has also developed an award-winning energy efficiency program – How$martSM, a pay-as-you-save® (PAYS®) financing model that helps customers make cost-effective energy efficiency improvements to their home. The program has received compliments from the Kansas Corporation Commission, as well as earning the Governor’s Award for Energy Efficiency.
Michael Volker, Midwest’s Director of Regulatory and Energy Services, working with Midwest Vice President Pat Parke, developed How$mart(SM). Recently, Volker sat down with CEP’s Maril Hazlett to explain a bit more about the program.
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Maril Hazlett, CEP (MH): Tell me a little bit about how How$mart got started – where did the idea first come from?
Michael Volker, Midwest Energy (MV): Well — in the beginning…
MH: So energy efficiency is part of Genesis, huh?
MV: How$mart got started… well, three things. I happened to be on the Kansas Energy Council, when they were doing an inventory of energy efficiency programs. Also around that time, natural gas prices were spiking.
There is nothing a utility can do to change fuel prices – all we can do is to teach customers to conserve. So, what kind of energy efficiency programs improve or teach energy conservation? We looked at different programs and it stimulated our brain cells.
Now, no utility in Kansas had done a PAYS® program before, or at least not voluntarily. And no one has ever done it like we’re doing it now.
The last thing was that the Hays City Council was receiving a windfall from franchise fees – they charge Midwest a percent of revenue. They wanted to give that money back to the community, to subsidize low-income individuals, and so they asked us for help.
The City Council’s one requirement, before they would give that money to any individual, was an energy audit from Midwest Energy. They’ve long known about our energy auditing. In fact, they require that new homes have an audit from Midwest Energy before they’ll offer a certificate of occupancy.
Safety is a side benefit of the Midwest energy audits. There are probably more dangerous ways to vent the CO from a hot water heater, but it’s a little hard to imagine. Photo credit: Midwest Energy.
MH: Midwest has been doing energy audits for a while?
MV: Since the 1980s. I think we have the longest continuously running energy audit program in the state, compared to other utilities.
MH: Sounds like a great idea.
MV: It was a great idea… but - the first winter, we would do the audit for the customer, and the customer would get the payment. But then we’d come back a year later for the same customer asking for the same thing.
No changes, no improvements. We’d do an audit, and we’d see holes in windows, holes in floors, unsealed, no insulation, equipment that was downright dangerous.
Unless you can fix the building envelope, the shell, energy efficiency is all but impossible to achieve. The most efficient HVAC system in the world isn’t going to matter if your house is uninsulated and leaking like crazy.
Not a lot of people can afford to plug the leaks, let alone put in a new HVAC system. It was frustrating. How do you help these people? How do we get past this barrier? They were living paycheck to paycheck – and/ or, they were renting. They couldn’t make the improvements themselves because it wasn’t their property, it was the landlord’s.
We were doing energy audits and yet, nothing was happening, nothing was changing. Our customers weren’t benefitting. We wanted to make something happen. So we considered the PAYS® idea.
CEP Conversations: Michael Volker of Midwest Energy, on How$mart, Midwest’s award-winning energy efficiency program
October 2, 2008
Midwest Energy is a rural electric cooperative based in Hays, Kansas. It serves 48,000 electric and 42,000 natural gas customers in central and western Kansas.
Midwest is a particularly progressive rural electric co-op. It serves a part of Kansas that is suffering high rates of rural depopulation – but in a situation where many businesses suffer, Midwest has figured out how to adapt and thrive.
Midwest has invested in renewables. Currently, it serves 49 megawatts (MW) of its load through wind energy purchased from the Smoky Hills Wind Farm, an amount that represents 16% of the co-op’s peak demand.
Economically, Midwest is also an “independent borrower” – meaning, it freed itself from the USDA’s Rural Utilities Service (RUS) borrowing system, and now finances its operations through private equity.
Midwest has also developed an award-winning energy efficiency program – How$martSM, a pay-as-you-save® (PAYS®) financing model that helps customers make cost-effective energy efficiency improvements to their home. The program has received compliments from the Kansas Corporation Commission, as well as earning the Governor’s Award for Energy Efficiency.
Michael Volker, Midwest’s Director of Regulatory and Energy Services, working with Midwest Vice President Pat Parke, developed How$mart(SM). Recently, Volker sat down with CEP’s Maril Hazlett to explain a bit more about the program.
(For a .pdf of this CEP Conversation, click here.)
**************************************
Maril Hazlett, CEP (MH): Tell me a little bit about how How$mart got started – where did the idea first come from?
Michael Volker, Midwest Energy (MV): Well — in the beginning…
MH: So energy efficiency is part of Genesis, huh?
MV: How$mart got started… well, three things. I happened to be on the Kansas Energy Council, when they were doing an inventory of energy efficiency programs. Also around that time, natural gas prices were spiking.
There is nothing a utility can do to change fuel prices – all we can do is to teach customers to conserve. So, what kind of energy efficiency programs improve or teach energy conservation? We looked at different programs and it stimulated our brain cells.
Now, no utility in Kansas had done a PAYS® program before, or at least not voluntarily. And no one has ever done it like we’re doing it now.
The last thing was that the Hays City Council was receiving a windfall from franchise fees – they charge Midwest a percent of revenue. They wanted to give that money back to the community, to subsidize low-income individuals, and so they asked us for help.
The City Council’s one requirement, before they would give that money to any individual, was an energy audit from Midwest Energy. They’ve long known about our energy auditing. In fact, they require that new homes have an audit from Midwest Energy before they’ll offer a certificate of occupancy.
Safety is a side benefit of the Midwest energy audits. There are probably more dangerous ways to vent the CO from a hot water heater, but it’s a little hard to imagine. Photo credit: Midwest Energy.
MH: Midwest has been doing energy audits for a while?
MV: Since the 1980s. I think we have the longest continuously running energy audit program in the state, compared to other utilities.
MH: Sounds like a great idea.
MV: It was a great idea… but - the first winter, we would do the audit for the customer, and the customer would get the payment. But then we’d come back a year later for the same customer asking for the same thing.
No changes, no improvements. We’d do an audit, and we’d see holes in windows, holes in floors, unsealed, no insulation, equipment that was downright dangerous.
Unless you can fix the building envelope, the shell, energy efficiency is all but impossible to achieve. The most efficient HVAC system in the world isn’t going to matter if your house is uninsulated and leaking like crazy.
Not a lot of people can afford to plug the leaks, let alone put in a new HVAC system. It was frustrating. How do you help these people? How do we get past this barrier? They were living paycheck to paycheck – and/ or, they were renting. They couldn’t make the improvements themselves because it wasn’t their property, it was the landlord’s.
We were doing energy audits and yet, nothing was happening, nothing was changing. Our customers weren’t benefitting. We wanted to make something happen. So we considered the PAYS® idea.
Les Evans is currently the vice president of power supply for the Kansas Electric Power Cooperative, or KEPCo. KEPCo is a nonprofit generation and transmission (G&T) cooperative. Its membership is made up of nineteen rural electric cooperatives that sell power in predominantly rural areas of eastern and central Kansas. Evans is also a commissioner on KETA, the Kansas Electric Transmission Authority (KETA).
An electrical engineer by training – “I went to K-State! I bleed purple!” – Evans has been in the power utility industry since college. He has a long perspective on how the power industry works.
(For a .pdf copy of this interview, click here)
Photo: Les Evans on his bike outside of the Gray County wind farm
at Montezuma, KS (southwest of Dodge City about 25 miles) - during Bike Across Kansas in 2005
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Nancy Jackson, CEP: Why don’t you start out by telling us a little about yourself, what your background is, and what you have done in the industry over time.
Les Evans (LE): I grew up on a farm in south-central Kansas just north of Wichita – my hometown is Valley Center. I started out with the predecessor to Westar, the old Kansas Gas and Electric Company, KG&E. When I left Westar in 2001 I went to work exclusively in the renewable energy business. Then I had a chance to come back here to my roots and work with KEPCo.
NJ: You’re the vice-president of power supply – could you describe exactly what that means?
LE: It means I have responsibility for providing a reliable and economic power supply for KEPCo’s member cooperatives. Doing that can be a challenge because we don’t own all of our power generation resources. We also buy a significant portion of our power supply through long term purchase power agreements (PPA’s). KEPCo’s nineteen members are all distribution companies that take the power we provide and then provide it to retail customers – or in our case, also our owners.
A rural electric cooperative works differently than an investor-owned utility. We don’t have shareholders versus customers. In a cooperative, they are one and the same.
NJ: What does KEPCo’s power supply mix look like?
LE: It’s very diverse. I like to use an analogy here - different utilities will have different philosophies about how to put a power supply together. It’s just like different people have different preferences, or different risk tolerances, for their own personal investing strategies.
So for power supply, there is no one set of right answers. The power supply mix is also based on your members’ desires, needs, and tolerance for risk. What various aspects do they give significant weight to? So, in the case of KEPCO…
NJ: Sorry to interrupt – but how do you know your members’ tolerance for risk? How do you judge that?
Posting this CEP Conversation during the week of Earth Day seemed like a good fit. All too often, we think of the environment in terms of an immediate, looming crisis.
While environmental concerns are indeed major - and many require action sooner rather than later - sometimes it also helps to take a longer view. This perspective can make it easier to appreciate the larger meaning of the earth, and creation.
Renowned environmental historian Donald Worster recently sat down for an interview with CEP. He spoke of the environmental history of the Great Plains – its volatile weather and climate, history of water use, agricultural development, and the risks of climate change in this unpredictable realm of the natural world.
He also discusses how fossil fuel usage began during the industrialized era, and visions for a future that makes better use of renewable energies.
Dr. Worster is also a Kansan. His parents were from Reno County. They moved to California during the World War II era (which is where he was born) but they soon moved back. Dr. Worster was raised in Reno County and still has family who farms in the area.
For a .pdf download of this interview, please click here.
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Maril Hazlett, CEP: Why don’t you start out by telling us a little about yourself, and how you got involved with environmental history.
Donald Worster: Well, I was raised along the banks of Cow Creek in Reno County. There are a lot of good people out there. I also grew up deeply impressed by the landscape. Some people find it monotonous or uninteresting, but I grew up with a prairie sense of sky, land, climate… the big broad rivers rippling through…
This all mattered a lot to me. All the seasons of Kansas, the wildlife and bird life, the weather patterns and so on. These always were very much part of my awareness.
When I became a historian I got very tired of simply reading about politics, theology, etc… It all seemed like such an urban view of history.
MH: I noticed that, too, when I went to school. Back East is a very urban perspective.
DW: During the late sixties, I was a graduate student at Yale. The rise of the modern environmental movement very much influenced me – writers like Rachel Carson, Aldo Leopold, Barry Commoner, Paul Ehrlich. Earth Day 1970.
I ended up combining my own background with all these new environmental ideas. What emerged for myself, and several others, was a new discipline called environmental history.
Environmental history looks at how human societies, at all scales, are related to the natural world. And we don’t define the “natural world” as the countryside alone. It includes all kinds of things that come under the category of the creation - the world that humans didn’t make - including plants, animals, micro-organisms, weather patterns, climate patterns, etc.
So we have really invented a new field of history. Sometimes it sounds a bit like agriculture, sometimes a bit like geography. It also has a lot of science in it. It studies how people have thought and felt about their relationships to the natural world - what they wanted in the way of living, what they wanted emotionally from the world around them, economically, all of that.
As an historian, I bring humans and nature together by crossing the lines of other academic disciplines. Environmental history can be carried out anywhere on the face of the earth, but to me the best places to study all this is right here at home, on the Great Plains.
MH: What in particular makes you say that?
(Posted in time for Easter - MH)
Thad Holcomb, a native of rural Oklahoma, has run the Ecumenical Christian Ministries (ECM) at the University of Kansas for decades. In 2005, ECM won the Campus Ministry of the Year award for the South Central Region, by the National Campus Ministry Association.
Thad has long been interested in the issue of religion and the environment. He was raised Presbyterian and attended seminary at San Francisco Theological. He holds degrees in biblical studies and social ethics, as well as in clinical psychology and theology.
Maril Hazlett, CEP: Why don’t you start out by telling us a little about yourself, and how you got interested in these issues.
Thad Holcomb: I was brought up in rural Oklahoma - the cross-timber area of north-central Oklahoma. That was a sacred spot in my life. It influenced who I am and what I think and feel, and it moved me, really, into a religious understanding of life. Probably first from a mystical point of view. Then that broadened out into spirituality. That formed into faith, and then my faith turned into identity with a religious tradition.
MH: Was there any major turning point for you?
TH: I had a really profound experience when I was an adolescent, as far as nature and my connection to the larger powers. What was going on in our church at that time gave me a way to understand it - I was attending church in a small Presbyterian church. The pastor was a graduate of Princeton. More than anything, he emphasized the connections between religion and storytelling - narrative. I look back now and I see how he realized that narrative is so important in the biblical tradition. Just by telling a story, people can really identify with the characters and their situations and choices – they make up stories about others, they join in other stories…
That was my really important formulation of who I really was. My peers and I, we knew we were different. We didn’t identify with people in the city.
MH: Well, what is your story?
TH: I was probably fourteen or fifteen. On the ranch I would go out birdwatching a lot, particularly during the fall and spring, to see bird migrations. Sunrise or sunset was best. I’d go out to a farm pond, a large dam pond of ours, with my binoculars. I’d just curl up and watch wildlife.
One evening – it was fall - I was there watching ducks. Right before my eyes just an incredible explosion of wings occurred. I didn’t know what happened. Then I looked over – something was rustling in the shrubs. It was a bobcat. It had a duck by the neck. The bobcat went up to the top of a hill, it sat and it turned around. I thought it was looking right at me. Of course it wasn’t, but… Blood coming was dripping down, a little bit, from the duck. And then the bobcat just faded away, just faded away –
That affected me in a way that I had to… well, I think at any age we have questions about suffering. Watching the bobcat, I think it took away all the romanticism I had about nature. Instead, it put me into nature in a profound and spiritual way. I was no longer an observer. That day I somehow became a participant.
Because I said to myself - that is suffering. The suffering of another species, of the wild.
So that is a question that I took into kind of my faith journey. I was trying to understand that, that question.
CEP Conversations: Kimberly Gencur-Svaty on transmission lines
February 16, 2008
Kimberly Gencur-Svaty has worked in the energy and transmission industries for several years, most recently for International Transmission Company (ITC). CEP interviewed her for our Conversations series because she is very familiar with the transmission picture in Kansas. (If her last name sounds familiar, it might be because she is also the wife of Representative Josh Svaty, Ellsworth.)
ITC currently has a proposal before the Southwest Power Pool (SPP) to build two transmission lines originating out of Spearville, Kansas – one leading north toward Nebraska, and the other heading east.
Maril Hazlett, CEP: Nice view! (Kimberly’s 5th floor office window in downtown Topeka looks directly at the Capitol.)
Kimberly Gencur-Svaty: Thank you! (There is also a little bit of chat about how MH’s father is from Sterling and her grandfather was once the registrar of Sterling College, and discussion of how many of KGS’s in-laws attended Sterling College.)
MH: OK. Let’s start with the basics. Transmission is a key ingredient in getting electricity to markets and eventually to consumers. Please briefly describe how the system works.
KGS: There are basically three portions to the electricity system. First, you’ve got your power plant or generating source. That power plant could be a wind farm, it could be coal, nuclear, natural gas - any generation type.
That generated power then feeds through of series of high voltage transmission lines. It goes to a substation where the voltage is stepped down so it can be fed through the distribution system. The distribution system is basically the shorter or smaller poles that you see basically everywhere. (MH: For additional information on how electricity works, see the CEP website.)
MH: The ones your car runs into when you are in a wreck.
KGS: Exactly. Those could be telephone poles too.
MH: The distribution system usually travels along roadways, or existing right of ways, correct?
KGS: Exactly. That is called the last mile into the home. In some older neighborhoods, you will see the wires actually going into the home. In areas built in the last thirty to thirty-five years, you see the boxes in the middle of someone’s backyard, and then the line runs underground to the home.
Distribution is much lower voltages. When we are talking transmission, we mean the high voltage lines that usually run cross-country.
MH: What is the average voltage of a transmission line?
KGS: Well, that is completely dependent upon where your region is. Interestingly enough, for example, in Kansas we have a lot of 115 kV transmission and 230 kV transmission.
MH: 115 kV - is that low? Do lower voltages typically date from earlier eras?
KGS: Well, when you are looking at the grid itself, we do have a lot of older infrastructure in Kansas. But we are no different in that respect than any other portion of the country.
MH: The electric grid is patchy all over the country, is my understanding.
KGS: Exactly. And …that is kind of a tough question because you have to be diplomatic about it. Basically you do have some vintage -
MH: Vintage. I like that word.
KGS: - vintage material out there. Utilities are in the process of re-energizing those lines, or upgrading them from maybe 69 kV to 115 kV or from 115kV to 230kV. In Kansas, we have primarily 69 kV, 115kV, 230kV, and some 345 kV. The older portions of the grid are often in the more rural areas of the state where you just don’t have the tremendous demand.
CEP Conversations: Dan Nagengast on community wind
January 21, 2008
Welcome to CEP’s new Conversations series, where we interview experts on climate and energy topics.
Dan Nagengast, Kansas Rural Center (KRC) Executive Director and community wind advocate, recently sat down for a chat with Maril Hazlett of the Climate and Energy Project (CEP).
This spring, KRC and CEP will sponsor community wind development workshops for six to eight interested counties in Kansas. For more information, please email info@climateandenergy.org.
Maril Hazlett: Hi, Dan. Why don’t you start out by telling folks little bit about who you are, what you do for a living, and how you came to the issue of community wind.
Dan Nagengast: I have a long history of trying to figure out how to make rural areas more economically viable and trying to find opportunity for young people and existing farmers. I grew up in western Nebraska on a farm 15 miles outside of a town of 300 people and spent all my young years there. I spent many, many years in west Africa working in communities there. Then I came back to Kansas and worked on hunger programs for Church World Service. We raised money through Crop Walks for years and years.
Now I work for the KRC. A little while ago I had the good fortune to visit Minnesota with a group from the Kansas Energy Office and the Governors Rural Life Task Force, which I was chairing. We went to southwestern Minnesota -
MH: Wow. Cool stuff going on there.
DN: Yes, it’s the hot bed of community wind. You can see hundreds of towers out in farmers’ fields - not in grasslands. These towers are owned by farmers, as much as possible, or by municipalities or schools.
And you can just see the prosperity of the countryside. You can see the tax benefits flowing into the school system and into the bridges, into the county commissioner’s office, all those sorts of things.
MH: Why wind? Why right now?
DN: Wind is a form of renewable energy, and it doesn’t emit the greenhouse gases that lead to climate change. It’s a natural resource-based crop.
It used to be – well, there was soil, water, feed, farmers, and we cussed the wind. And now it could be soil, waters, feed, farmers - and oh, we like the wind. If it is structured right, the wind could function as entirely another crop, and its harvest could help firm up rural economies.
