Expanding NMI’s horizon

The bloated economic gangrene has turned into a painful and serious threat to life among the simple folks in the villages. The pile of increases only make the cost of living even harder to deal with. It need not be this way. Let’s look beyond our fatal comfort zones for better answers.

Risking redundancy on alternative energy, it remains the perfect door to slam open opportunities for anchor investments. It’s the only chance to rein in proven alternative energy technology to tame the high cost of utilities Marianas-wide. The utility agency could only do maintenance work to keep the old power plant working. The issue of change to something more constructive and positive requires decisive political answer.

There are two beneficiaries when this is done: 1). Affordable and reliable power generation for the folks in the villages. 2). Private industries would revive business expansion and investments. Most importantly, it sets the CNMI on the sturdy road to economic recovery and stability.

There are ways to domesticating the beast. A story on wind power printed in the Dallas Business Journal offers an interesting insight into the work of an entrepreneur to harness wind for power generation.

John Billingsley Jr. spent his youth picking cotton in fields just south of Lubbock, where West Texas winds of up to 20 or 30 mph would slap at his face like an open hand.

“Growing up out there, driving a tractor many, many years right in the middle of that wind, it was a big headache,” the 74-year-old Billingsley said. But six decades later, he hopes that the wind will make it all up to him.

The chairman and CEO of Tri Global Energy, a Dallas-based wind-farm company, Billingsley’s on the verge of harnessing wind power and bringing it to North Texas under an untested model.

Tri Global has leased more than 640,000 acres throughout the Texas Panhandle, with plans to build 16 wind farms totaling 6,600 megawatts over the next decade. That’s enough to power 1.9 million homes annually. Just one of those projects, the 122,000-acre Hale Community Energy Wind Farm, is already poised to become the world’s largest, which will produce 1,100 megawatts once completed.

When he calls his wind farms community-based projects, he really means community-based. For example, 340 local landowners, mostly farmers, have bought into Billingsley’s vision of the huge Hale County farm as investors. And each wind farm has a board of directors that looks like a small-town Kiwanis Club, peopled with farmers, doctors, lawyers, university professors, and auctioneers.

In the big-money world of Texas energy, it’s an audacious bet by a good-humored straight shooter with the soul of an old-fashioned wildcatter.

Known for making a gainful go at ventures as varied as buying a bank and massaging mineral rights, Billingsley may finally succeed where others have fallen with a thud: transforming wind power from a money-sucking novelty into more than just a stable, viable power source, but into a profitable, growing part of the state’s energy portfolio.

“Traditionally, community wind was in the small projects, 20 megawatts,” said Larry Flowers, deputy director of the American Wind Energy Association. “Tri Global is coming from the top down in looking at much larger projects and providing opportunities for local and community folks to participate financially in those projects. That’s the piece I think that is exciting.”

From all indications, his plan seems to be working—even without a single blade spinning. For renewable energy in oil-rich Texas, that’s saying something.

Tri Global expects 2014 to be a breakout year with projected revenue of more than $19 million. The company brought in $4.9 million in 2013 and $3.7 million in 2012. Billingsley said he’s turning a profit, but wouldn’t disclose numbers.

The first of what Billingsley hopes will be many turbines would be erected this month in Crosby County. Later this year, construction is slated to start on the 1,100-megawatt Hale Community Energy Wind Farm, the one that will propel Tri Global into the record books.

“I’d say it’s some of the best wind in the world,” said Jeff Clark, executive director of The Wind Coalition in Austin. “What Tri Global has done is they’ve tried to find a way to get involved with the landowner. Spreading the benefit to more people is always good.”

Wind is the latest in Billingsley’s long line of successful endeavors. The Texas Tech grad has worked as a certified public accountant and founded his own CPA firm that later merged with Arthur Young. He owned a bank in Midland and a prefab building manufacturing plant in Arlington. After all that, the entrepreneur has no intention of slowing down. “It’s basically my life,” he added.

CFO Henry “Hank” Schopfer said Billingsley is remarkable; his work ethic is “as though he never left the farm he grew up on in West Texas,” Schopfer said. “His business success is attributable to his strong vision, the ability to see into the future and his analytical ability, combined with his willingness to put his own money at risk.”

In Texas, the rise of wind power has coincided with an increase in the construction of quick-start natural gas plants, which can respond quickly when needed.

“Wind can really keep costs down and gas can keep the reliability up. And together, you’re able to build a hybrid system that is reliable and cost-effective,” Clark said.

At least some people believe that.

To show its commitment to alternate fuels, the federal government offers a production tax credit for wind farms. Tri Global has seven projects, totaling 1,520 megawatts, that qualified for the credit, which pays producers $23 per megawatt hour.

Some states even offer an additional wind credit on top of that. But Texas, the top wind-producing state in the country, doesn’t. With its powerful oil, coal and natural gas interests, such a credit has become a hot political target for conservative groups and investors, including the billionaire Koch brothers.