“South Dakota and Minnesota have robust wind resources to harness, particularly in the area where the power plant was proposed.”
—Lisa Daniels, Windustry

Big Stone II was originally slated to be a cost-effective, clean-coal project to be up and running as early as 2011 near Milbank, South Dakota, supplying new energy for the Midwest and even to Eastern states. Now that the project has been cancelled, many are wondering what went wrong and what will replace the power capacity that it would have supplied to the CapX2020 transmission lines planned for Minnesota.

As the state of Minnesota seeks to generate 25 percent of its power from renewable sources by 2025, communities are finding both that they can be part of that solution and that solution can be part of the future of their community.

"Get small and get in!" is the new message from the federal government, according to Denis Thoet, who manages Long Meadow Farm in West Gardiner, Maine.

While South Dakota currently only has 288 megawatts of wind power capacity installed, the state is experiencing the benefits of the wind industry, explains South Dakota Wind Energy Association Executive Director Steve Wegman in a interview by the National Association of Farm Broadcasting News Service.

Jim Boyd coordinates a wind working group in Grand Marais, Minnesota on the North Shore of Lake Superior. Windustry has been working with the group for over the past year to explore the possibility of a Community Wind project there.

Melissa Peterson, program analyst at Windustry, was quoted in the article "Lawyers, non-profits shed light on wind industry" in The Journal [New Ulm] after speaking to farmers, landowners, city and county officials at the Springfield Community Center.

"We've seen these documents range from the good, bad, and ugly," Peterson said.

"It's inevitable, as the money really starts to flow into infrastructure programs, particularly green projects, there will be job growth here over the next year," says John Challenger, chief executive officer of Challenger, Gray & Christmas, a global outplacement company based in Chicago, in an article on "Now Hiring: Green-Collar Workers" in

The State of Minnesota has a legislative mandate that utilities purchase or generate 25 percent of their electric power from renewable resources by 2025; and in the case of Xcel Energy, 30 percent by 2020. The majority of this new renewable energy is expected to come from wind energy, and a new study by Minnesota 2020 Fellow Nathan Paine outlines what some of the benefits of this expansion of wind power would mean for the state.

Each year, the Interstate Renewable Energy Council recognizes individuals and organizations that have implemented innovative projects during the past year that promote and accelerate the adoption of renewable energy technologies.

This year, IREC will present awards in the following six categories:

June 15, 2009 is Global Wind Day, an event designed to raise worldwide awareness of wind energy. The campaign builds on the success of the European Wind Day 2007 and 2008, in which over 20 countries participated with hundreds of public events.