Foote Creek I

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Foote Creek I wind project is the first commercial wind farm in Wyoming. The project benefits climate change strategies by reducing the amount of greenhouse gases produced in the public electricity grid, by substituting fossil fuel based power with clean renewable power.

The project’s first came online on Earth Day in 1999, and three additional phases have with over 100 MW of capacity have now been implemented.

TerraPass funds would help ensure an adequate financial return for the project and satisfy the expectation project developers had about the voluntary market supporting the project. In addition, TerraPass funding is directed to PacifiCorp, one of the more progressive wind-supporting utilities.

This project meets the Green-e Energy standards.

Project details

Foote Creek I wind project is the first commercial wind farm in Wyoming. The Facility is sited on the top of a high plateau with an extremely good wind profile and near transmission lines that parallel Interstate 80.

Sixty-nine 600kw Mitsubishi Arctic Turbines spread over 2100 acres provide a total nameplate capacity of 41.4MW. The hub height is 131 feet and the blades have a diameter of 138 feet.

The facility is sited on BLM land used for grazing by local ranchers. 99% of the original land use has been preserved. The site experiences extremely cold winter temperatures (-30C), high wind gusts (125mph) and was a test bed for wind farm operations in extreme temperature.

Prior to launch, the facility was involved in a major environmental impact assessment that continues to be cited in wind planning literature. The mitigation plan involved a number of firsts, including burying all cables, coating the turbines in UV reflective paint, and moving the turbines away from the edge of Foote Creek Rim. The plan represented a step forward for the wind industry in environmental planning processes.

The facility went commercially online on Earth Day 1999.

The facility was also one of the first facilities built expressly with the voluntary market for green power in mind. The project parties including SeaWest, the developer, Bonneville Power Administration, the Eugene Water and Electric Board, and PacifiCorp all based early green power pricing programs on the facility.

A July 2003 NREL Study³ reported on the role that green power markets had in the Foote Creek Project:

In 1999, wind energy investment accelerated when PacifiCorp and Eugene Water and Electric Board (EWEB) jointly developed the 41-MW Foote Creek Rim project. The utilities were motivated, in part, to include cleaner energy resources in their generation portfolios. The project output has also been used, in part, to meet demand for green power in the Pacific Northwest. PacifiCorp owns about 33 MW of the 41-MW Foote Creek Rim I project, of which almost 20 MW is included in its base rates. PacifiCorp uses 3 MW of the project to supply its Blue Sky green pricing program and markets the remaining 10 MW as green power at wholesale. For example, the Los Angeles Department of Water and Power has purchased Foote Creek wind power from PacifiCorp for its Green Power for a GreenLA program. EWEB owns the remaining 8 MW of the Foote Creek Rim I project and uses a portion to supply its Windpower green pricing program. The rest of the capacity is supported by all of EWEB’s ratepayers. In addition to its voluntary green pricing program, EWEB has set a goal of acquiring new renewable energy capacity equivalent to 1% of its total load each year. To meet its goal, EWEB has also contracted with the Bonneville Power Administration (BPA) for about 7 MW of capacity from a later phase of the Foote Creek Rim project.

Three additional phases of this project (Foote Creek, II-IV) have been implemented for a total capacity of 85 megawatts.

Project location

The project is located near Arlington, WY. This is located in Carbon County, Wyoming, USA off I-80 between Laramie and Rawlings.

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Other environmental and social benefits

Environmental benefits

• The project provides renewable energy to a region that still relies on coal for 96% of its generation, and has no Renewal Portfolio Standard (RPS) in place.
• The facility has good integration with cattle land - cattle like to lie in the shadows of the turbines.
• The project served as a pilot for wind planning in sensitive wildlife areas.

Social benefits

• Lease payments are made to cattle ranchers leasing land from BLM, typically several thousand dollars per turbine.
• Local employment for construction related to the project, installation of equipment, and operation of the Project: 22 full time technicians and eight office workers are now employed (across all three phases). In addition, the facilities hire 12 to 30 summer maintenance technicians.²

Project’s ability to foster further greenhouse gas emissions reductions

• Development priming: this is the first wind farm in state of Wyoming, and the first to be developed in an area now home to over 100 MW of wind capacity.

Discussion of appropriate use of TerraPass funds

The project is an ideal candidate for TerraPass funds as planned carbon revenues clearly were a decisive factor in helping a path breaking project that significantly and permanently reduces greenhouse emissions.

TerraPass considers many aspects of projects before deciding whether to fund them. Here is a summary of key considerations for this project.

Baseline conditions

As with all wind farms, the Baseline conditions are those of the surrounding public grid.

The facility is located in the WECC region of the National Electricity Reliability Council, and in the newly released Green-e Climate Protocol for renewable energy has a modeled carbon intensity of 1295 lbs CO2/MWh. We use this figure to determine the translation from MWh to lbs CO2.

Additionality

No regulatory requirements. Wyoming has no requirements for renewable power. US wind not used to satisfy an RPS requirement is often considered additional by analysis of their aggregate economics and adoption profiles. This project meets the eligibility criteria of all the following performance standard protocols: Green-e Energy and the Chicago Climate Exchange Offset Protocol. The project will be certified against the standards of the Green-e Energy Protocol.

Barriers to Implementation. This project is the first wind farm in Wyoming and as such faced early market and technology barriers. Other alternatives open to the facility, such as continuing to build less expensive fossil-fuel based electrical generating capacity, were not prevented by these barriers.

Impact of TerraPass funds. TerraPass seeks projects where the funding from our purchases helps assure a positive financial outlook on the greenhouse gas emission reduction project. A review of the project’s documents showed clear expected revenues from environmental attributes at the time of launch, and the magnitude of environmental attribute revenues significantly contributes to making the project economically feasible.

Better than most. TerraPass seeks projects where the operations have shown good practices and avoided substantial negative impacts. Foote Creek had implemented a widely cited environmental impact study and took advanced mitigation steps into consideration.

Footnotes

1. Photo of Foote Creek wind facility courtesy of EWB.
2. Bird and Parson et al. Polices and Market Factors Driving Wind Power Development in the United States. National Renewable Energy Laboratory (NREL/TP-620-34599) . July 2003.
3. Wind: A renewable energy resource, Laramie Boomerang. 10/20/2007