By Tim Krohn
A green energy venture near Rapidan started at Greg Hawkinson’s thermostat. More precisely, with the monthly heating bill he gets in the mail.
His rural home, built in the cheap electricity days of the 1970s, is heated entirely with electricity.
“The bills were $700, $900 a month. We started tinkering with things, and the next thing we were designing things,” said Hawkinson, CEO of Green Duck Energy Solutions.
While he and a team of colleagues and friends didn’t find a magic bullet for his heat bills, they are designing and marketing a variety of lower-powered solar panels, including some that attach to the roofs of golf carts and flexible panels that light up billboards and signs.
Small startups like Green Duck, and major players such as a the Finland-based turbine gearbox manufacturer building an $8 million plant in Faribault, are being actively courted by local economic development officials hoping to grow jobs and create a new economic future.
Gov. Tim Pawlenty said creating green jobs is the bright spot amid the recession.
“It’s a huge opportunity,” said Pawlenty in a recent interview. He said the state needs to ensure more research and development are done in the state, which will lead to more green products produced here.
Helping green startups
Tom Riley, new business development director with Greater Mankato Growth, said the area has many existing companies capitalizing on the push for clean energy.
“Look at things like the Wilmarth plant recycling waste. We have a lot of local investors in wind farms in southwestern Minnesota. Schwickert’s is doing a lot with solar lighting and making huge moves into green roofing. The big local generator companies are looking at alternative fuels for generators instead of diesel,” Riley said.
What existing businesses and new ideas need most, Riley says, is easier access to the business, technical and financial help that’s available and a clear commitment — in funding and assistance — from the state.
“We need to help those people with entrepreneurial enterprises. There are a lot of resources out there, but there are a lot of separate groups with separate budgets. There’s no unified place for people to get help.”
Riley said he and others, including Minnesota State University, are trying to connect people with the help that’s available and do it without duplicating what someone else is doing.
“If you can bring all these resources together for someone in the wind industry or other industries, it’s a powerful tool to attract and develop those businesses,” Riley said. “We need to help them connect the dots.”
Green Duck
A pair of large work shops on Hawkinson’s rural Rapidan home serves as the base for Green Duck Energy. The place has all the look and feel of a startup on a tight budget. Wall dividers provide office space that is shared with a shop where solar panels, batteries tools and a variety of projects in various stages are scattered.
“We’re trying to go from a startup to a real company,” said Hawkinson. Known as “Tank” to his friends, Hawkinson has a diverse background that includes real estate sales and bartending.
Hawkinson met Rich Lehmann, the firm’s president, nearly 30 years ago in the Army. Lehmann, who practices law in Los Angeles, spends much of his time here as the company, which launched in July 2007, evolves.
Other partners in the venture are Zac Lyons, whose family owned the Square Deal where Hawkinson worked, and Sue Prosser, who had a home-based graphic design business.
Lehmann, who had a lifelong interest in the subject, said the friends began serious discussions about renewable energy business possibilities three years ago. The problem as they saw it was that most green business ventures tend toward big projects, such as wind farms or big home solar projects, or oddities such as solar calculators.
“We’re trying to show there’s a lot in between,” Lehmann said.
Green Duck (greenduckenergy.com) is focusing attention on thin, flexible solar panels they are using to power golf carts and for lighting signs and bus stops.
The 4-pound solar panel for golf carts simply has a self-adhesive backing that attaches to the roof of the cart and some retrofitting to power the batteries.
Green Duck believes there is a lucrative market in using similar solar panels for lighting signs and bus stops because it’s expensive to trench in new wiring — and the added electric costs — for signs and bus stops, especially those far away from a power source.
“If you want a nice lighted sign out in front of your parking lot, you don’t have to dig a trench to it,” Lehmann said.
Where to start
Virtually every state, county and community wants to attract clean-energy jobs, but knowing how to do that is a challenge.
The new green economy can be small startups such as Green Duck or heavy hitters already established in the industry.
In Faribault, Finland-based Moventas is building its first North American assembly plant.
The 75,000-square-foot plant will assemble wind turbine gearboxes and bring a $4 million payroll for 90 employees.
John Frey, recently retired dean of the college of Science, Engineering and Technology at Minnesota State University, said any community can attract green jobs if they go at it methodically.
“The common denominator, no matter the size of the town, is they need to look at their resources. It requires an audit from an outside source,” Frey says.
In fact, he believes small towns will have an advantage. “If we do go with renewable energy, it’s going to be a non-metropolitan enterprise. It’s going to be the Comfreys and Walnut Groves that will benefit because they will be producing our bioenergy, whether it’s wind or biofuels.”
He also thinks communities of all sizes need to create a specific plan for reducing energy use. “Conservation is going to have to be a key element. We need to look at our buildings and our building materials and how we handle our wastes.
“Every community needs to say, ‘Where do we want to be in 2025?’ They need to say at least 25 percent of their energy needs to be renewable by then and then try to top that goal.”
