Winds may bring a windfall

SPANISH FORK — A potential source of clean, renewable energy in Spanish Fork also may be a source of cold, hard cash for Utah County, a study conducted by Utah State University researchers has concluded.

A proposed wind farm in Spanish Fork Canyon, which would be the first commercial wind farm in the state, would contribute at least $4.2 million to the local economy during construction and an additional $244,000 per year after, the report found.

The report also said it would create as many as 46 full-time jobs during construction and five full-time jobs during operation once complete.

Those figures were based on a seven-turbine, 14.7-megawatt wind farm like the one originally proposed for Spanish Fork, although the study also examined the impact of 5-, 10-, 20- and 25-megawatt plants.

Since the study began, however, the Spanish Fork farm has been relocated and increased to a nine-turbine, 18.9-megawatt wind farm, so the project's actual economic impact could be even larger than stated in the study. The projection for a 20-megawatt plant included a $4.8 million impact during the project's construction and $337,000 in annual impact once completed.

The study was done by Utah State marketing professors Edwin R. Stafford and Cathy L. Hartman, along with recent USU graduate Nikhil Mongha, for the U.S. Department of Energy.

"We're hoping that the decisionmakers at the County Commission level, and hopefully the state Legislature level, will look at diversifying Utah's energy resources," Stafford said.

The study cites the 2005 Utah Geological Survey, which found that Utah, which derives 95 percent of its electricity from coal, has enough coal reserves to last another 12 to 15 years.

Hartman said the study shows a wind park can have a more sizable overall impact on the local economy than traditional energy sources.

"When you have a corporation developing energy, the corporation and its shareholders will share in the profits, but the local community may not share in the same degree that you'll see with a wind park," she said.

The USU team projected the impact of the Spanish Fork wind park using the Jobs and Economic Development Impact (JEDI) Model devised by the National Renewable Energy Laboratory in Golden, Colo.

The JEDI model allows researchers to plug in local variables, such as supply, labor and land costs, and project the impact of a proposed wind farm in a given location.

The model provides a broad projection that not only considers the direct effects of a plant, such as wages paid to construction workers and plant supervisors, but also the indirect effects, such as money paid in property taxes and money spent by its workers in the local economy.