CONCEPTION — The winds that blow through the rolling hills of northwest Missouri can stand the hair on one's head.

It's that type of energy that has helped create utility-scale wind power facilities in neighboring counties and is the key ingredient that will turn nature's flurry into electricity in Nodaway County.

Tom Carnahan is the president of Wind Capital Group, which is in the process of building wind farms in Gentry and Atchison counties. It's his vision that's helped produce towering turbines across the landscape.

And it's his ingenuity that has led to the development of a third wind farm in the region — this time near Conception.

"It really started out as a curiosity," Carnahan said last week. "I was looking on the Internet and was interested in wind energy, and what I saw was that almost every state that bordered Missouri had a commercial utility-scale wind farm in it.

"It kind of rubbed me the wrong way, like when KU beat Mizzou when I was going to school there."

The son of the late governor, Mel Carnahan, Tom Carnahan grew up near Rolla, where the family has a cattle farm. He still spends most weekends there, helping with the 100-head black Angus cow-calf operation.

A lawyer by trade — he earned his bachelor's degree at William Jewel College in Liberty and his juris doctorate from the University of Missouri — he practiced in St. Louis before creating Wind Capital Group.

"One of the areas I was practicing in was real estate development," Carnahan said. "I got married last year, and my wife and I talked one night, and I said I wanted to do something different.

"I didn't know what I was going to do, but this opportunity arose. It ended up being a great decision."

Eric Chamberlain of Rock Port has seen the positives, so it's easy for him to tout the benefits of wind as a valuable source to generate electricity. Northwest Missouri, after all, is in Chamberlain's back yard.

"I think wind energy will offset the natural gas-produced energy that we've become so dependent on," Chamberlain said. "Natural gas is a beast, and we've all felt the impact of the price increase that comes about."

Even though consumers are paying for electricity, the cost of producing electricity by means of natural gas has gone up, and consumers are seeing that in charges on their bills. The long-standing alternative to natural gas has been coal-produced electricity, and the fuel bills that come with transportation of coal from mines to the power plants are also being passed along to consumers.

"Fuel costs are definitely a factor," Chamberlain said, "and that all makes wind energy more competitive."

And that's just one benefit.

"There are really a lot of good reasons to pursue wind-energy projects," Carnahan said. "It's clean and renewable. I was really interested that this was a way we could increase rural economic development while at the same time being less dependent on foreign sources of power.

"I like the idea that we could make life better in our rural communities."

Carnahan's group will be working with Missouri's rural electric cooperatives in transferring power generated from the turbines. Wind Capital Group had already worked out a deal with the Association of Electric Cooperatives to sell the energy from its operations in Gentry and Atchison counties, so the transition to the Nodaway County wind farm was rather smooth.

Source:
http://www.maryvilledailyforum.com/articles/2006/10/22/news/news1.txt