‘Green’ energy comes of age: Big initiatives are proposed in MN, WI

http://www.businessnorth.com/exclusives.asp?RID=1709

Delore Zimmerman heads an economic development strategies think tank in Grand Forks, ND, and he doesn’t have to look far for the economic payoff in the developing alternative energy sector.

Just six years ago, Danish firm LM Glasfiber opened a plant in Grand Forks to make rotor blades for the expanding global wind turbine market. The operation has grown to 300 employees, and helped turn Grand Forks into one of the nation’s fastest-growing manufacturing centers in the United States. In the 1990s, Grand Forks’ manufacturing sector grew 21 percent as the nation’s manufacturing base was shrinking by 9 percent, according to recent study commissioned by Zimmerman’s firm, CEO Praxis.

Several forces are boosting the long-term prospects for renewable forms of energy, including wind, biofuels and hydro. Among them:

• The indisputable link between global warming and rising levels of atmospheric carbon dioxide and other “greenhouse gases,” at least partly resulting from burning fossil fuels like coal and oil to produce energy.

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