Bill Young '57 says wind power would be more competitive if fossil-fueled utilities had to pay for the pollution they produce. "No one is paying for that now."
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Bill Young '57 says wind power would be more competitive if fossil-fueled utilities had to pay for the pollution they produce. "No one is paying for that now." |
The residents of Fort Collins, Colo., are so committed to clean electricity that they've agreed to a 25 percent increase in their bills to buy the power that William R. Young '57 is generating from the steady winds that blow through Medicine Bow, Wyo., about 120 miles away. "Wind power," Young says, "is completely green. The only pollution is that created in manufacturing the equipment."
An engineering major at Swarthmore, Young began his career in hydropower, another nonpolluting electricity source. Employed by the federal Bureau of Reclamation, he worked on hydropower for nearly 30 years before wind power captured his imagination. "Hydropower was a mature industry; we weren't blazing any new trails," he says. "When the Bureau of Reclamation got interested in wind power during the Carter administration, so did I."
Young became site manager of a federal wind project at Medicine Bow, a remote spot on the southern Wyoming plains where wind speeds average around 20 miles per hour. To test the feasibility of wind power, the bureau built and operated the world's largest wind turbine--a 262-foot-high giant with the generating capacity to power 1,600 homes. But during the Reagan administration, federal funding waned, and the turbine broke down just before the money ran out in 1986.
The federal government may have been finished with wind power, but Young--who has been described in the local press as the Don Quixote of the sagebrush prairie--was definitely not. When the abandoned federal project was put to bid, Young, by now retired from the bureau, bought it himself for $20,000 and set out to repair the gigantic turbine. He had it back up and running from 1992 to 1994, selling millions of kilowatts of electricity to the local power company, before a more serious breakdown put it out of business for good.
Young still was not finished. Now, in the long shadow of the towering wreck, he is operating a refurbished, 1980s-era, 75-foot turbine while he installs two additional Danish-built models that will help generate the electricity for Fort Collins. Young remains sold on wind power.
"I guess 'kooky' environmental people are willing to pay extra for clean power," Young says ironically. "To pay 25 percent more for your electricity--that's substantial. Of course, wind power would be more competitive if fossil-fueled utilities had to pay for the externalities--for the pollution they produce. No one is paying for that now."
--T.K.