This story was published via The Medill News Service on January 16, 2008. It was written for a class while Molly was attending Northwestern’s Medill School of Journalism.

Jatropha curcas isn’t much to look at. It’s a scrubby, shrubby tree generally used as a hedge to protect food crops. It repels animals and if ingested, can make humans sick.

But Archer Daniels Midland Co. sees value in the plant’s seeds, which contain oil that can be converted to biodiesel fuel. The company announced a partnership last week with Bayer CropScience AG and Daimler AG to explore the plant’s potential.

“I think ADM has made a lot of transformations over the last few years. They’ve really taken a lot of steps to invest in ethanol, renewable energy… and they’re trying to answer America’s energy problems,” said Ann Gilpin, equity analyst at Morningstar Inc.

But Gilpin said jatropha is unlikely to significantly impact the biodiesel industry or ADM’s bottom line in the near future.

Perhaps jatropha’s biggest selling point is it can grow in poor soil, so producing the weed would not necessarily take away from other farmland. This could make it easier for farmers to cash in if jatropha were to catch on.

“It’s technically considered a weed in most parts of the world,” said William Manley, chairman and CEO of ALTEN Industries Inc., a Baltimore-based alternative energy development company. “It is a perennial. It grows in crummy conditions in semi-arid regions. It only requires about 600 mm of rainfall to bloom and generate seed. It’s inedible, and it will grow on degraded farmland.”

ALTEN is currently in negotiations for a contract to grow jatropha in Brazil.

European companies, most notably D1 Oils PLC in the U.K., have been growing plantations of jatropha for years. Japanese fighter pilots even used it in World War II when oil for their engines was in low supply.

Proponents of the weed tout its potential positive impacts on the global economy. Jatropha grows year-round and the trees – which can live up to 30 years – are not damaged during oil production.

Manley said ADM’s entrance into the jatropha business makes sense following a similar move by other energy companies. In 2006, BP PLC began a $9.4 million project in India to further explore the plant’s potential.

But some analysts say the weed that is putting down roots in the alternative energy industry might not deliver.

“My prediction is that it’s not going to have really wide-scale success. It’s not really going to catch on in areas that are used to profitable agriculture production,” said Elaine Kub, commodity market analyst for DTN.

“It may have more success in developing countries that can’t afford really to be buying expensive edible oils and using them for biodiesel,” she added.

Jatropha is harvested by hand and requires different treatment than other biofuels.

“It can’t be handled in the same tankers, it’s difficult to clean out, it’s just a different product,” Kub said. “It’s not a perfect substitute for other oils that are usually used for biodiesel now.”

Gilpin also expressed some doubts. “The potential energy here is enormous,” she said. “But, ADM has their hand in just about everything. They’re active in a million projects, and I don’t think this one will affect ADM strongly.”

This story was published via The Medill News Service on January 22, 2008. It was written for a class while Molly was attending Northwestern’s Medill School of Journalism.

Batavia-based Fuel Tech Inc. announced Tuesday a plan to demonstrate and test, in China, a chemical intended to boost efficiency and reduce toxic emissions in coal-fired plants.

The company stated that its technology, called Fuel Chem, uses computerized models to spray a chemical mix into the furnace or boiler of a coal plant as the coal burns. The chemical’s main purpose is to reduce slag formations.

Slag is the key to running an efficient coal plant, analysts say. As coal burns, it produces ash, which settles in the boiler and hardens, reducing the effectiveness of the operation. The company claims the Fuel Chem cocktail also enables plants to burn a broader spectrum of coal, along with reducing toxic emissions.

“This isn’t so much about the pollution control,” John Kearney, a stock analyst at Morningstar Inc., said. “There are some pollution benefits to installing this, but Fuel Chem is more about the efficiency of the plant.”

There are approximately 3,000 to 4,000 coal plants in China, compared with about 1,500 in the U.S. Development and renovation are continuing at such a rapid rate that some experts estimate China is opening two new plants a week.

Richard Hoss, an equity analyst at Roth Capital Partners LLC, said, “This is the initial penetration. It’s symbolic.”

“This is a big deal,” Kearney agreed, “because China generates an estimated 70 percent of their energy from coal. It’s a big opportunity for Fuel Tech to just expand their market and market size.”

But Jesse Herrick, a research analyst at Merriman Curhan Ford & Co., is a dissenting voice. “I am somewhat concerned about patent protection,” he said.
“China is well-known for being able to reverse engineer things and duplicate products. There’s definitely a concern on that front when entering the Chinese market with a new technology.”

Analysts feel Fuel Tech may have a competitive edge because of its partnership with ITOCHU Hong Kong Ltd. – a subsidiary of ITOCHU Corp., a Fortune Global 500 company – which sells products and services to combustion unit customers in China.

“There are some other players out there,” Kearney said, “but Fuel Tech has the most clients at this point. They’re seen as kind of a market leader in this area for the time being.”

Herrick expressed concern about two competitors – GE BETZ, a unit of General Electric Co., and Environmental Energy Services Inc. He said: “From the channel checks that I have done, it appears that you can get this product for about half the price and just as effective. And in addition, less intrusive when dealing with a coal-fired boiler. Those were some of the primary drivers for my downgrade” from buy to sell.

Fuel Tech’s revenues dropped 24 percent to $15.2 million in the quarter ended Sept. 30 from $20.2 million in the prior-year period. The stock is down 35 percent from last year at this time, to $16.36 from $25.51.

This comes after a big year for the company. Fuel Tech was featured on the cover of Fortune Magazine’s July/August issue after its revenue jumped from $53 million in 2005 to $75 million in 2006, a boost of 42 percent. The company’s net income also increased, by 11 percent, to $7.5 million from $6.8 million.

Fuel Tech stock remained steady Tuesday, despite the down market, and closed at $16.36, down 10 cents.

This story was published via The Medill News Service on February 14, 2008. It was written for a class while Molly was attending Northwestern’s Medill School of Journalism.

After a first year burdened by merger costs, Chicago-based Integrys Energy Group Inc. gets good marks from analysts on a solid balance sheet and high synergies of the merger partners.

Next week marks the one-year anniversary of the marriage between WPS Resources Corp. of Green Bay and Peoples Energy Corp. of Chicago to form Integrys Energy. After three quarters of earnings deemed shaky by analysts, they expect a good fourth-quarter earnings report on Tuesday. They estimate $2.56 per diluted share; there’s no comparable year-earlier figure.

“There was dilution, especially the first year, from the merger, but now going forward, it seems the biggest risk is over” and each company should benefit from having merged, said Maurice May, an equity analyst with Power Insights/Soleil Securities Group Inc.

Integrys is a holding company for natural gas and electric utility companies, including North Shore Gas Co. and the Peoples Gas Light & Coke Co. Both serve the Chicago area. Integrys’ subsidiaries have more than 1.8 billion customers in four Midwestern states.

The merger gave Integrys assets of about $10.3 billion. With the stock trading Thursday at $48.36, the current market capitalization is $3.7 billion.

In its 2007 annual report to the SEC, Integrys wrote, “The estimated total cost of accomplishing the merger and achieving synergies and cost savings is approximately $186 million in transaction and integration costs (excluding internal labor costs), most of which will be incurred through 2010.”

On the other hand, the joining of WPS Resources and Peoples Energy was expected to deliver annual synergies of $94 million over a five-year time period.

“They have a very good balance sheet and I would say the financial health of Integrys overall is good,” May said. “They actually have an AA- bond rating at their core utility in Wisconsin. I don’t know if you know anything about bond ratings, but AA- is very good.”

Before the merger, Peoples Energy was struggling with erosion in the gas distribution segment and posted a 2006 loss of $17.6 million, a dramatic drop from a 2005 profit of $78.1 million. The company also had a $107.3 million settlement payoff that included $100 million in customer refunds. Integrys reported at the time that its natural gas utilities, Peoples Gas and North Shore Gas, had not upped its delivery rates in 11 years, despite rising operating costs.

At the same time, WPS Resources was in the black, but profits were meager in 2006, at $155.8 billion, down 1 percent, from $157.4 billion. The company said acquisitions in Michigan and Minnesota were responsible for the decline.

On Thursday, natural gas delivery rates for customers of Peoples Gas and North Shore Gas were raised. This is the first time the base rate has been raised for their Illinois customers since 1995.

“Utilities have two rates, an energy rate and a base rate,” May said. “The base rate is what was at issue with the general rate case. Shareholders only make money on the base rates.”

Analysts say the rate increase is related to lower earnings and a need to update expenses, along with “decoupling” charges.

Decoupling is a company’s act of separating the link between volumes of energy sold and the earnings the company makes. Ordinarily, there is a direct correlation, but decoupling provides a cushion for utility companies, particularly when they explore other forms of energy.

“If we are going to make a serious effort [towards] conservation, you can’t ask that agent of conservation – the utility companies who actually do the conservation – to kill themselves in the process,” May said.

The decoupling process, also known as volume balancing adjustment, is proceeding on a four-year trial basis.

This story was published via The Medill News Service on February 19, 2008. It was written for a class while Molly was attending Northwestern’s Medill School of Journalism.

Two U.S. pipeline companies announced Tuesday their plans to assess the feasibility of constructing an ethanol pipeline through the Midwest.

If built, the pipeline would the first one totally dedicated to transporting ethanol in the U.S.

According to a press release, Oklahoma-based Magellan Midstream Partners LP and Pennsylvania-based Buckeye Partners LP have partnered to explore creating a 1,700-mile pipeline. The line would move ethanol from plants in Illinois, Iowa, Minnesota and South Dakota to major cities like Pittsburgh, Philadelphia and New York City. The project is estimated to cost more than $3 billion.

The American Coalition for Ethanol’s 2007 report lists Illinois as the second largest producer of ethanol in the U.S., at 317 million gallons per year. Corn grown in Illinois is used to produce 40 percent of the ethanol consumed in the U.S., according to the Illinois Corn Growers Association.

Nearly one-third of all gasoline in the U.S. already contains low levels of ethanol – usually between 5.7 percent and 10 percent. The Illinois Corn Growers Association reports that 95 percent of the gasoline sold in the Chicago area contains 10 percent ethanol.

However, high levels of ethanol cannot be piped through existing gasoline lines without damaging them.

“There are hundreds of thousands of miles of pipelines in the United States. Most of the liquid pipelines will run a mix of fuels, they might run jet fuel for awhile, then they’d run gasoline for awhile, then they could run crude oil for awhile,” Ted Huck, vice president of sales and marketing for Pennsylvania-based engineering firm MATCOR Inc. said.

However, once ethanol has been pushed through existing pipelines, they can’t be shared with other refined products.

“In pipelines today, you can ship different materials through with plugs that separate the shipments. But with ethanol, because it absorbs water and that sort of thing, it’s really difficult to use a non-dedicated pipeline,” John Urbanchuk, the director of expert-resources firm LECG LLC, said.

John Cusick, a research analyst at Oppenheimer & Co. emphasized: “It’s a corrosive agent, so it breaks down the pipelines themselves when it mixes in. It can’t physically be put into a pipeline because it would erode the pipeline away.”

Magellan and Buckeye may be years away from construction, simply because not much is known about transporting ethanol through pipelines. Studies on the technical issues and economic impact of creating an ethanol pipeline are ongoing; no ethanol pipelines exist in the U.S., though Brazil is in the process of constructing one.

“With the recent increase in renewable fuel standards, there’s a lot of ethanol and a lot of opportunities for these companies to transport the fuel, so many are looking at this, or at least hint that they are,” Robert White, director of operations for the Omaha, Neb.-based Ethanol Promotion and Information Council, said.

Cusick said Houston-based Kinder Morgan Inc. announced plans to test an ethanol pipeline in Florida this year. “Obviously everybody thinks that there’s going to be more ethanol produced… I think once either Kinder or Magellan or somebody will come up with a pipeline that actually works, you’d see more pipelines being built and that’s how it would work out.”

Changing the way ethanol is transported may have more of an effect on consumer pocketbooks than adopting alternate fuels or even falling oil prices.

“If you looked at something in Illinois or maybe Iowa, sending it to the East Coast by freight is anywhere between 16 and 18 cents a gallon. If you take into consideration a refined product traveling the same distance, it would probably be under a nickel. So if you could get ethanol from Illinois to the East Coast for twelve cents a gallon cheaper than you can today, obviously a lot would change in the world, and the interest in ethanol [would go up],” White said.

Urbanchuk agreed, “The cost of shipping ethanol would be about the same as it is to ship gasoline through a pipeline.”

Ethanol is mostly moved now by rail and trucks, which are costly and time-consuming methods of transportation. While a pipeline should help in the cost of distributing ethanol – and presumably in the cost of consuming it – it could also take away jobs from the rail and trucking industry, particularly in the Midwest.

Shorty Whittington, first vice chairman of the American Trucking Association and owner of Integrity Biofuels, said: “You’re right in that, but it’s a situation where the congestion in the trucking and rail, well, you hate to lose it. But what are we going to do with a third more trucks and that many more trains in the next ten years? The infrastructure that we’re in is pretty tough.”

Most experts admit there’s something of a chicken-and-the-egg effect as companies consider shipping ethanol. The production of ethanol isn’t high enough today to create a desperate need for pipelines, but without a pipeline infrastructure in place, companies are hesitant to produce more ethanol.

One motivator is the Energy Independence and Security Act of 2007, which President Bush signed in December. The law requires that American fuel producers use 36 billion gallons of renewable fuels by 2022, with is more than five times what is currently used.

“That’s going to mean we’re going to have to ship that stuff around,” Urbanchuk said.

But the biggest challenge to Magellan and Buckeye now may not be moving products through an ethanol pipeline, but moving funding through the federal government pipeline.

“They have reached out to Congress and said, ‘Some of this has merit, but we need some support and we need to know how much that support’s going to be, because we need to make business decisions on our end,’” White said. “[This $3 billion project is] a substantial investment that you have to recapitalize somehow.”

The companies’ press release repeatedly stresses the importance of government support, “Congressional support and assistance is necessary for a project of this nature given the changing federal policies associated with renewable fuels.”

“Magellan and Buckeye have to factor in the huge political risk that if we stop subsidizing ethanol as a country, that $3 billion investment could become worthless quickly,” Huck said.

The Energy Act included a provision requiring that the government begin doing its own feasibility studies on ethanol-dedicated pipelines. The studies are to be released around this time next year.

This story was published in The Daily Herald on March 6, 2008. It was written for a class while Molly was attending Northwestern’s Medill School of Journalism.

Fuel Tech Inc. reported Wednesday its earnings ballooned by 259 percent in the quarter ended Dec. 31, beating Wall Street’s expectations on record sales of the company’s air pollution control technology.

However, Fuel Tech’s 2008 revenue estimate came in lower than analysts expected, and its stock fell 58 cents, or about 3 percent, to $18.99 in Nasdaq Stock Market composite trading.

Batavia-based Fuel Tech, the biggest U.S. maker of pollution controls for power plants, logged a record net income of $5.2 million, or 21 cents per diluted share, up from $1.5 million, or 6 cents per diluted share, in the year-earlier period. Analysts estimated 16 cents per diluted share.

Quarterly revenues reached a record $32.6 million, an increase of 80 percent, compared with $18.1 million in the year-earlier period.

“If you want to look for a downside, it has to do with investor expectations,” said Dan Mannes, vice president and senior research analyst at Avondale Partners LLC. “I think this is a company that has a lot of expectations surrounding it because of the sector they’re in and because of the quality of their products.”

Fuel Tech also announced Wednesday $6.7 million of new orders of its technology. Because of its presence in the global market, particularly Mexico, China and India, the company and many analysts expect steady growth.

“We’re operating in about 30 countries,” said President and CEO John Norris in an interview. “The Mexican market is extraordinarily vibrant for us right now.”

Morningstar Inc. equity analyst John Kearney said the company’s increases aren’t enough. “They’ve really got to ratchet this growth up. Ten to 16 percent top line growth is good for a lot of companies, but a company this young with this much growth potential, it’s not going to cut it for investors.”

The company predicted 2008 sales of between $88 million and $93 million. Analysts were expecting $108.2 million.

“I think they were overly conservative with their guidance for next year,” Kearney said. “I think last year they came out a little more optimistic and they had to kind of temper those expectations. I think they’re too low. I think you’re going to see them come out and beat those numbers for the full year.”

This story was published in The Northwest Indiana Times on March 6, 2008. It was written for a class while Molly was attending Northwestern’s Medill School of Journalism.

After examining her late father’s utility bills, Lynda DeLaforgue noticed he had a contract with Houston-based U.S. Energy Savings Corp.

DeLaforgue estimates that the company charged her father — who was living near O’Hare Airport on a pension of $2,300 per month — about $2,000 more in two years than he would have paid under his former utility agreement.

DeLaforgue happens to be the co-director of Citizen Action/Illinois, which on Monday joined with Chicago-based Citizens Utility Board and AARP Illinois to file a complaint against U.S. Energy with the Illinois Commerce Commission. The Northwest Indiana Better Business Bureau has reported receiving more than 250 complaints about the firm.

U.S. Energy, a subsidiary of Energy Savings Income Fund, stated in a release Tuesday that it “denies the allegations raised and will vigorously defend” itself.

The company is an alternative gas supplier. It offers long-term, fixed-rate contracts, which are designed to protect customers from rising costs. U.S. Energy supplies the gas; a regulated utility such as Nicor Inc., Integrys Energy Group Inc. or NiSource Inc. delivers the product and makes money from delivery fees.

This distinction can create problems for customers.

“The bills that you get keep coming on your previous company’s letterhead and then it just says in fine print at the bottom of the bill that you’ve contracted for your supplier to be the U.S. Energy Savings Corp.,” DeLaforgue said.

The amount of gas a household uses is measured in therms. According to the coalition’s complaint, U.S. Energy sales personnel go door-to-door, asking customers to sign four- or five-year contracts with locked-in therm prices. The representatives play on fears of increasing costs of gasoline without clarifying that natural gas is a different product – with very different prices – than gas used in cars.

“It seems like they particularly prey upon seniors and people who don’t speak English,” DeLaforgue said.

U.S. Energy said in its press release that it offers “special protections to seniors and those whose first language is other than Spanish or English.” No one at the company could be reached for clarification on those protections.

This is not the first time the Citizens Utility Board and U.S. Energy have tussled. A 2006 complaint by CUB ended in a settlement, U.S. Energy admitting no wrongdoing, that provided refunds for customers who believe they were misled, and canceled some contracts without charging exit fees.

The 2006 press release quoted U.S. Energy CEO Brennan Mulcahy: “At the beginning of the contract term, the U.S. Energy fixed price is often higher than the floating utility price.” However, he added, “any premium initially paid compared to their local utility price, as of the end of fiscal 2006, substantially all customers who have completed a five year fixed price gas contract with us have saved money.”

Complaints against U.S. Energy increased 125 percent from 2006 to 2007, according to the Better Business Bureau of Chicago and Northern Illinois. Moreover, “the complaints for the first two months of this year versus the first two months of last year are up 250 percent,” said Steve Bernas, BBB’s president and CEO.

The BBB has about 200,000 reports on businesses in Illinois. In December 2005, the BBB listed U.S. Energy as unsatisfactory. About 30 percent of the companies covered have that rating. Companies are demoted because of unresolved customer complaints.

A month ago Illinois Attorney General Lisa Madigan filed a lawsuit against the company, accusing it of deceptive sales tactics.

This story was published in The Windy Citizen on February 27, 2008. It was written for a class while Molly was attending Northwestern’s Medill School of Journalism.

Bill Stoltzman last visited Jarosch Bakery three days ago. He purchased the same thing he’s bought “since Jarosch opened”: sweet, crumbly slices of apricot graham cookies.

Jarosch Bakery Inc., in Elk Grove Village, is a family-owned company with very loyal customers. It will celebrate its 50th anniversary next year and Stoltzman, 73, expects to be there.

Despite the seemingly ever-increasing presence of chain bakeries, owner Ken Jarosch says his small business is stable. “Our revenues are in the vicinity of $2.5 million,” he said, “The same as last year.”

“We’re a pretty well-established business, making the stuff that we make, and people like to come in and get exactly that, because they’ve been getting it for years. That’s what they want,” Jarosch said.

Case in point: “We have five grown children, four of whom live out of town,” Stoltzman said. “The first place the four from out of town stop is Jarosch. They all have their favorites.”

Jarosch Bakery is known mostly for its custom-made, decorated cakes. “One of the more unique ones that I can remember, because I ended up making it, was a cake for a nurse,” Ken Jarosch said. “They wanted a severed arm. And so we made a severed arm and put a band-aid on it and everything.”

The business frequently gets requests for cakes for bachelor and bachelorette parties. Jarosch said he’ll fill some of those orders, but “generally what people are really wanting is what I would consider a pornographic cake.”

Jarosch’s prices range from pocket change to weekend splurge. A small Easter egg cake costs $1.55, while an eight-inch Boston cream pie costs $6.25. A decadent amaretto whipped cream torte comes in at $20.75.

Jarosch regularly employs about 50 people. “We’ve got 25 people in the back and roughly 25 people in the front. A good majority of those 25 in the front are either high-school kids or college kids going to a local school,” Jarosch said.

Though the bakery relies on part-time help, particularly during the Christmas rush, a number of employees have worked there more than a decade.

One woman “has been here not quite since we opened, but pretty darn close. She’s over 45 years at this point,” Jarosch said. “One of our managers in the back with coffee cakes is about 30 years. One other guy working on sweet rolls has been with us over 25… The ones who haven’t been here 30 years have been here eight to 12 years, which I think is a good thing.”

Marianne Domino, head decorator in the cake department, has been employed by Jarosch for more than 27 years. When asked what convinced her to stick around, she said cake decorating satisfies her creative side.

“I just really, really enjoy it,” she said.

Jarosch is large enough that the tasks for a single product are done by separate bakers, assembly-line style, particularly with the large, tiered cakes.

“There’s somebody down there who will take the layers and put it together,” Domino said, “then it goes to another person who will ice it, and then I just strictly decorate them.”

The amount of time it takes to make and decorate a wedding cake depends on the size and complexity of design, but Domino estimates it generally takes a couple of hours.

The bakery is able to match icing colors to fabric swatches, a critical issue for any bride.

“Sometimes they’ll bring in the lace of their wedding dress and they’ll want the lace done onto the wedding cake… and that can be very detailed, with all the beading and things like that.”

Decorated cakes start at $18.25, while the wedding cakes range from $84 to about $700.

Head Baker Raul Farfan has been with Jarosch for 26 years. “Originally it was just a summer job,” he laughed.

Jarosch estimates that he goes through about 3,000 pounds of flour and 2,000 pounds of sugar each week. “It definitely goes up in December,” he said, “because that is by far our highest production run throughout the year. It probably goes up by about 25 percent, possibly a little more.”

But Jarosch not only feeds its customers – it feeds the community, too.

“We live in Elk Grove Village, we work in Elk Grove Village, our kids went to Elk Grove Village schools,” Jarosch said. The bakery gives gift certificates for raffles and auctions to local theater groups, churches and scouting organizations. It hires frequently from Elk Grove High School and has what Jarosch calls “an excellent relationship” with the school and the community in general. “We try to help the local organizations or the local chapters because those are our customers,” he said.

Jarosch Bakery gets shortening products from Illinois-based companies. Its cherries come from Wisconsin. The blueberries, Michigan. The wheat used for the flour is usually milled in Minnesota. “A lot of our suppliers are local,” Jarosch said. And it’s the commitment to being a presence in the community that makes Jarosch Bakery special.

Farfan said the quality is what makes Jarosch distinctive. “We use the finest ingredients. It’s in our reputation, you can tell. When I bring stuff home people say, ‘Oh, I’ve been there, I know that.’”

Stoltzman agreed that the “quality and variety” separate Jarosch from other bakeries.

The bakery expanded in 1993, absorbing an adjacent dry-cleaning business. The move doubled the size of the retail store and also increased production area. “We stayed basically in the same spot, we just got a little bit wider,” Jarosch said. “The business, that is.”

Though he acknowledges more space is needed at Easter, Christmas and during graduations, he’s not thinking of opening a second location.

“Our business relies heavily on the artistic ability of our employees and the supervising of that talent,” he said, “And the fact that we’re here watching over things and making sure things are getting done is the way we want it.”

This story was published in The Windy Citizen on March 12, 2008. It was written for a class while Molly was attending Northwestern’s Medill School of Journalism.

Some Midwestern schools think the answer to higher electricity bills is blowing in the wind.

K-12s, colleges and universities have been putting wind turbines on their campuses since 1993, mainly to combat rising energy prices. But they’re also a learning experience, and those in Illinois are helping meet the state’s renewable-energy goal.

There are between 400 and 500 wind-energy turbines operating in Illinois. They produce between 350 and 699 megawatts of electric power annually, depending, of course, on how the wind blows. More turbines are built each year, but they have yet to provide more than 1 percent of Illinois’ energy needs.

Gabriela Martin, program officer for renewable energy at Chicago-based Illinois Clean Energy Community Foundation (ICECF), said, “If you have 699 megawatts, that’s pretty good. That’s like a coal plant.”

There are no official figures for how many Illinois schools have turbines. However, the success of three schools in Illinois, two in Iowa and one in Michigan, demonstrate that wind energy is both educational and an economic benefit. At one high school, over half its electricity needs are produced by its own turbine. At least two other schools are in the process of exploring turbines.

“The wind market is really crazy right now. It’s like the housing market two-three years ago,” Martin said.

The ICECF has awarded 25 wind feasibility study grants, generally used to determine if sites are windy enough. The majority of these grants – 20 of the 25 – have gone to schools, for a total of $507,000.

Three colleges in the state were awarded turbine installation grants, totaling $1.9 million; three schools were awarded grants that came to $2.5 million.

Turbines have turned heads in the Illinois legislature. Roger Brown, program manager of the Illinois Institute for Rural Affairs at Western Illinois University, noted a new law: “The Renewable Portfolio Standard requires that a percentage of Illinois’ power or electricity must be generated from renewable energy, that is, 25 percent by 2025. I believe 75 percent of that renewable [energy] must be from wind. There’s an incentive there. It starts out at 2 percent this year. that’s a fairly aggressive situation.”

Though federal and state governments, recognizing that wind power isn’t yet a profitable business, have been working sporadically to make windfarms economically viable – mainly through tax credits – school administrators said the uncertain government policies and lack of commercial viability don’t concern them, since they aren’t commercial operations.

Terry Gutshall is the superintendent of Bureau Valley Community Unit School District, based in Manlius, Ill., 130 miles southwest of Chicago. It’s the first Illinois K-12 school to get a turbine.

“We can see the volatility in the world market,” he said. “We can see what the impact of energy consumption is, and we’re trying to do our part to help our taxpayers out and help renewable energy.”

Bureau Valley’s turbine has been turning since 2005. It can produce 660 kilowatts per year, making it one of the larger residential-scale models. It is 220 feet from the base to the top, with blades 76 feet in length. (When Admiral Richard Byrd made the world’s first flight over the South Pole in 1929, his airplane had a wingspan equal to just one of Bureau Valley’s blades.)

The $1 million turbine provides “well over half, if not two-thirds” of the electricity consumed at Bureau Valley High School, Gutshall said.

“Our net savings are around $20,000. You know, that’s almost a teacher,” he said. “The gross savings were $100,000 and we’re looking at. for sure between $70,000 and $100,000 as far as net savings.”

Spirit Lake Community School District, in Spirit Lake, Iowa, installed its first turbine in 1993. A second followed shortly thereafter. The school board authorized looking at a third last year.

The first turbine cost $239,500. The 250-kw, 140-foot high structure paid for itself in five years. Turbines produced 100 percent of the school’s energy in 2001, but due to construction projects, they supply only about 60 percent of the current need.

The combination of schools and wind turbines is teaching young children about renewable energy, and big kids don’t want to be left behind.

“The students are starting to push the university’s administrators,” said Phil Gatton, the director of plant and service operations at Southern Illinois University – Carbondale.

SIUC is in the feasibility-study stage, deciding if having a turbine makes financial sense.

“We’re in a marginal wind zone here at Southern Illinois, and our hope is that if we can prove that it works here, it’ll pretty well be able to work anywhere in the state,” Gatton said.

The university’s 2,000 acres of farmland on the western part of its campus will be the turbine site, if it’s built. The model being evaluated has a 2.5 megawatt capacity – similar to the large machines used on commercial windfarms – and would rest on a tower 300 feet high.

“We’d be looking at [spending] six and a quarter million dollars,” said SIUC electrical engineer Justin Harell.

SIUC students will vote in April on whether to establish a per-credit-hour fee of up to $10 a semester to be used exclusively for sustainability projects like the wind turbine.

“I think everybody could agree that our reliance on fossil fuels and foreign oil is not a good thing for the country,” Gatton said. “I think investment in renewables, especially when you can prove that they’re cost effective [is] something the university should take a leadership role in.”

Several Illinois K-12 schools are also in the process of getting turbines. At Erie Community Unit School District, a neighbor of Bureau Valley, Superintendent Michael Ryan began examining wind power in 2005.

“I was very concerned about deregulation in January of 2007, and I wanted to be energy independent by that date. So that was really my big motivator and the deregulated market really scared me and I wanted to see if I had an alternative to that and wind energy could be that.”

The school hopes to complete the turbine by June.

“When the pieces of the turbine started arriving last year, I’d bring the students out to the turbine so they could really see the pieces on the ground, because when they get in the air you don’t get that perspective of how big they are. So I went over and had them touch the pieces. Each one of our blades weighs 4,000 pounds and laid out there, it really is something for them to see. I wanted them to get a sense of what the turbine really is and not just something up in the air making electricity,” Ryan said.

The turbines have been successful. “They pretty much run themselves,” Spirit Lake’s facility director, Jim Tirevold, said. However, schools might balk once they get wind of increasing prices and wait times.

“They just can’t make blades fast enough, they can’t build gearboxes fast enough; it’s just amazing,” Martin said. “That has driven the prices up significantly. the economics have been affected adversely for wind just because there’s such a huge demand worldwide, from India to China to the U.S. to Europe. You just can’t get enough wind turbines.”