Kalin lives in North Branch, represents current House District 17B, and is now probably the leading wind energy advocate in the legislature since the earlier (1990's) pioneering effort by Janet Johnson, also of North Branch, who in earlier districting represented SD 17 and 18, until her death in 1999.
This is mostly a set of links, starting, however with a local MinnPost editorial statement by Rep. Kalin, here, this excerpt:
BP oil disaster is a call to action on clean energy
By Rep. Jeremy Kalin | Tuesday, June 29, 2010
Minnesota may seem a long way away from the epic catastrophe playing out in the Gulf of Mexico. Our summer is proceeding with few complaints — other than a bit too much rain and perhaps some looming mosquito hatches. We don't see the oil, and our fishing and tourism economies are not affected.
But Minnesota is not insulated from this disaster.
In mid-June I joined a bipartisan group of conservation-minded state legislators in Memphis, Tenn., to address the Gulf of Mexico catastrophe, among other issues. We visited with the national Ducks Unlimited director of conservation. He and I spoke at length about the potential impact of oil-filled marshes on the Mississippi flyway. Scaups and other ducks feed in those wetlands over the winter, before heading north to Minnesota and beyond for the summer.
Though our nation responds well in times of crisis, we need to prevent the next looming disasters.
America's energy policy has been too reliant on the single source of oil for too long. Cute slogans like "drill baby drill" have justified billion-dollar bailouts for Big Oil, including the U.S. Energy Policy Act of 2005. That bill was just one of many written by oil lobbyists who successfully gutted environmental safeguards in deepwater drilling.
Shortly after taking over the Minnesota House majority, the DFL-led Legislature passed the nation's strongest Renewable Electricity Standard, requiring more than 25 percent of our electricity be provided from renewable sources like wind turbines and solar panels. That year, we also passed the country's strongest energy conservation standard as well as aggressive cuts to greenhouse gas pollution. Minnesota's developed next-generation biofuels, and we are expanding clean energy jobs manufacturing solar panels and developing electric vehicles.
This summer, the U.S. Senate will debate a comprehensive clean energy bill in response to the BP crisis and our ongoing addiction to oil. Unlike in 2005, today's Minnesota senators stood up to Big Oil's high-paid lobbyists and voted to defeat a special resolution that would have gutted the Clean Air Act. Minnesotans should thank Sens. Amy Klobuchar and Al Franken, and ask them to help Minnesota lead the nation to a brighter, cleaner energy future.
Minnesotans have already helped the Gulf respond to this current disaster. To prevent future calamities, we need to move swiftly to a clean energy economy. We have the technology, we have the capacity, and I believe that Americans have the will.
Contrast that to the extremely short-sighted idiocy of Newt Gringrich, and Michele Bachmann, with their all to memorable "Drill here, Drill now," nonsense.
However, things are needed. The turbines need to be where the wind is and the power needs to be where the usage demand is, and that means effort toward transmission grid upgrades, where the NIMBY feelings of those in any proposed transmission right-of-way escalate to extreme passion.
Also, there are complications. Economies of scale in wind generation have been shown to where a crossover economic status, lack of need for tipping fees, seems near. Yet wind turbines of that scale, taller than a football field is long, etc., are subject to extremes of weather, blowovers, etc., and when you put industrial size generators and gearboxes atop a tower, the cost is not minimal to support such weight together with the most common three rotor-blade mass where the blades are fifty yards long or so, and such a transportation nightmare that the most common solution is to lay up the rotor blades and fabricate the tower modules as near to the turbine erection site as feasible, witness the Suzlon facilities in southwest Minnesota, Pipestone area. It is more economical to ship generator equipment from Siemens or GE existing factory locales to a wind site, along with gearbox modules, but the big structural elements beyond the machinery within a tower-top nacelle are not easily shipped.
Then there is the problem of noise. If you put turbines in places where people have established dwelling or retirement cottages, noise is an issue. Even the New York Times knows that. Representative related stories are here, here, here, here and here.
Photo from here:
The noise problem is recognized in the technical literature.
My favorite of the unanticipated and unintended consequences: bug build up.
Offshore wind power might be an answer. While Minnesota's Lake Superior frontage involves deepwater concerns, offshore wind power suggestions have not been limited to ocean front; with the shallower Lake Erie mentioned frequently.
The Massachusetts offshore project, "Cape Wind," was subject of prior Crabgrass posting, here and here, and most recently it has been in the news because of recent federal permitting as the first US offshore ocean siting. Here and here.
Finally, in terms of offshore wind, VAWT technology, vertical axis wind turbine, is at play as well as HAWT, horizontal axis, the common three blade design pioneered by the Europeans beyond experimental tax-shelter stuff in the States decades ago. This may be puffery without financing, but the "Aerogenerator X" and an earlier design have been reported, here and here for example, as designs is my understanding, and you can believe it when it's implemented. Financed and put into service. But offshore, migratory bird strike problems are lessened and siting would not be where ocean birds roost or feed; and noise is not a problem. Transmission onto land is subject to new insulation technology making high power insulated underwater cable practical, and there is no NIMBY from the fishes.
Going back to the Kalin opening, the BP disaster was not a producing well failing because of hurricane winds, but a new drilling effort where apparently a high pressure gas surge was not handled and safety defects have been alleged. During Katrina offshore oil production was shut down, but damage was minimal when it resumed. How large above sea level turbine farms off shore would fare is as yet an undecided question. The British have set high percentages for future renewable electricity production proportions, as consumption expands, with the northern Scotch island area a focus, and the Germans are looking to off shore production in the Baltic. Whether winter icing will be a concern, causing an off-optimal blade profile and causing weight related structural stresses and strains is an area of engineering concern, but not a deal killer. The bigger size turbines are envisioned as future production options less expensive than environmentally proper coal or nuclear generation. Players such as Siemens and GE have gotten into the market with investments suggestive of it being a mature technology.
The onshore infrastructure to get from offshore production to urban and industrial consumption will be problematic. Finally, some research is directed to using offshore wind power to run large scale electrolysis, and as hydrogen powered vehicles and a "hydrogen economy" are currently being explored and considered, this electrolysis option is not an impractical attention.