Wisconsin bus tour
Tour to highlight wind farms, solar technology, biofuels
Jan Shepel
Associate Editor
MADISON
The groups and government agencies who organized a Homegrown Renewable Energy tour in northwest Wisconsin earlier this year will now do the same in southwest Wisconsin Nov. 13 highlighting a wind farm, a new solar technology business and the use of biofuels at a cheese plant.
The Homegrown Renewable Energy Campaign partners are hosting the second bus tour to point out the benefits of renewable energy policies promoted by the campaign and opportunities for clean energy jobs in Wisconsin.
The bus tour will begin at 9 a.m. at the Montfort Wind Farm, 254 Highway 18, outside Montfort.
The partners in the Homegrown Renewable Energy Campaign are Wisconsin Farmers Union, Michael Fields Agricultural Institute, Clean Wisconsin and RENEW Wisconsin. The Department of Agriculture Trade and Consumer Protection and the Office of Energy Independence are co-sponsors of the event.
Margaret Krome of Michael Fields Agricultural Institute said she’s excited about the opportunities Wisconsin has to forge ahead in renewable energy. “Not all states are positioned as well as Wisconsin. We don’t have a fossil fuel economic base like coal mining. We do one thing and we do it very well – we grow biomass – and because of that I think Wisconsin will be in the vanguard,” she said.
This campaign has focused on areas that could be most helpful to rural Wisconsin and to agriculture. Krome said those include biomass energy crop reserve, renewable fuels for schools and communities, a renewable energy buyback program which would guarantee a price for any power generated by renewable energy systems and low-carbon fuel standards.
Krome said the first initiative would reward farmers for keeping their land in a perennial cover crop, like switchgrass, so it would be available as biomass for energy production.
It’s often a chicken-and-egg proposition. Utilities won’t begin using biomass until they know there is enough out there to sustain their needs and farmers don’t want to devote their land to growing it until they know there is a market for it. A crop like switchgrass may take up to three years to mature to the point where it can be harvested.
That’s where a bioenergy crop reserve program could come into play, offering farmers payments like the Conservation Reserve Program to keep their land in a bioenergy crop; but in this program they could harvest it and sell it.
As the campaign partners are promoting this idea today, it would be targeted at marginal land and land that is coming out of CRP, said Bridget Holcomb, associate policy director at Michael Fields. Such a program could help Wisconsin become a leader in homegrown biofuels.
Mike Stranz, who works for Wisconsin Farmers Union in Madison, said the Meister Cheese plant in Muscoda will be the second stop on the tour, highlighting the use of woody biomass for energy. The cheese plant burns 27 tons of woody byproducts each day and 75 percent of it comes from sawmills right in the area, Stranz said.
They began using the alternative energy system in 2004 and it is similar to those that the campaign is promoting for use in rural schools. During this stop on the tour, speakers will highlight the Fuels for Schools and Communities Program and the Biomass Crop Reserve Program. Research from the University of Wisconsin on the prospects for Wisconsin farmers to grow biomass crops will be covered at Muscoda.
Another stop on the tour is Cardinal Glass, which just opened a new 180,000 square-foot facility in Mazomanie to make the specialized glass used in photo-voltaic cells. Krome said the company has been making energy-efficient window glass for 30 years and has now expanded into the solar technology area.
“They have 54 workers now and once they get into full production they anticipate they will have 120 workers,” she said. “We wanted to point out the many ways that green technology can also be ways of job creation.
“Our state has a manufacturing tradition; so why shouldn’t we be at the forefront in a new major economic thrust forward. It’s important to talk about jobs,” she said.
A fourth stop on the tour will focus on renewable energy buyback rates during a visit to a home in Ridgeway that uses solar panels to create electricity, some of which is fed back into the grid. Ed Blume of RENEW Wisconsin said dependable payments for this kind of power are needed to encourage private installation of renewable energy facilities.
If the state moved to create renewable energy buyback rates for electricity produced by things like windmills, solar cells and manure digesters, it would encourage the creation of small renewable energy systems, he said.
“We are looking for policy direction from the legislature,” said Blume. He predicted there will be sponsors for a bill creating this policy, adding that most of the renewable energy legislation has been bipartisan.
The bus will return to the Montfort Wind Farm at 5 p.m.
To register for the Homegrown Renewable Energy Campaign Bus Tour, contact Stranz by Nov. 9 at 608-256-6661 or e-mail: mstranz@wisconsinfarmersunion.com. A $10 registration fee, payable by cash or check the day of the event, covers the cost of the tour, lunch and snacks.
