Special Report August 14, 2008, 5:00PM EST

Wind: The Power. The Promise. The Business

(page 3 of 3)

Windmills on the high plains have raised the ire of prairie preservationists Bob Stefko

Ferrell, in trying to save his family spread, became an early advocate of wind farming Bob Stefko

Sunflower’'s Watkins has met stiff opposition trying to build two giant coal plants Bob Stefko

Kansas Governor Sibelius has emerged as an vocal proponent of wind energy Chuck France /AP Photo

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wind farms, wind would be cheaper.

In Bazine, a town with a smattering of houses, Ferrell pulls up in front of the Golden Years Senior Center. It's a single-story metal building on the edge of a cornfield. Inside, he helps rough-handed farmers set up folding chairs, and soon most seats are filled. Ferrell gives a primer on wind. Landowners typically get about $2,000 per turbine per year, but he advises them to stick together to gain negotiating strength on price. Also, they should own a piece of the project, not just collect lease royalties. He adds he'd be willing to develop their project or be a consultant.

Meetings like this are happening all over Kansas. More than a dozen projects are on the drawing board, and a slew of wind farm developers are aggressively mapping out the plains and ridgelines looking for the best locations for turbines. In some cases, they attempt to cut secret deals, giving different landowners different prices. That tends to anger the locals and is why the folks in Ness County decided to unite. "There's a wind rush going on out here," says Terry Antenen, who is one of the organizers. "Instead of being picked off, we're going out and picking our developer." He says he trusts Ferrell for advice more than he would an outsider.

On Ferrell's drive home from Bazine, the night sky is lit up with Kansas fireworks—huge lightning strikes. Thanks to the wind farm fees, he says, he has been paying off mortgages on his land. Now he has tied up with Tom Rinehart, a natural gas entrepreneur, to develop wind farms. In time, he hopes to hand off the Ferrell Ranch to his two children, now in college. And if things go really well, he says, he'll set up a foundation dedicated to community development within the Flint Hills.

HELP FROM WASHINGTON

He's sensitive about prairie protection issues. Some former friends in the Flint Hills who oppose putting turbines there don't speak to him anymore. "It's sad what he's doing," says Susan Barnes, owner of the Grand Central Hotel in Cottonwood Falls. "I'm sure wind helped save his ranch, but there are other ways."

The era of the small-time wind developer may already be passing, anyway. Ferrell says it's tough to compete with big outfits with economies of scale and easier access to capital. It costs roughly $225 million to build a 150-megawatt wind plant. Horizon, the big wind developer, has 11,000 megawatts of projects in the works and is hoping to add Ness County to the list. A few days after the meeting in Bazine, Ferrell calls Antenen to say he won't bid on the project. There's a shortage of good transmission lines in the area, and it could take several years to upgrade them.

Even the big players need government help to get major wind projects off the ground. Twenty-five states require their utilities to use a percentage of renewable energy, and in all of them, alternative-energy projects rely on the federal government's production tax credit. That expires at the end of this year, so wind advocates are pressing Congress to renew it. In the past, every time it was allowed to expire, wind development plummeted the following year.

It's morning at the Ferrell Ranch. In the house the family built in 1923, Ferrell's mother, 95-year-old Isabelle, sits in the living room while Pete helps her put on support stockings. A tiny woman with a shock of white hair, she says she likes to look at the wind turbines outlined against the blue sky. Her favorite memories, she says, are of riding the range on horseback in the old days with her late husband, Jack. "He'd say we're just stewards of the land," she says. "It's Pete's feeling and mine. You've got to take care of the land."

Hamm is a senior writer for BusinessWeek in New York and author of the Globespotting blog.

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