Welcome and resounding goods news from the Great Plains: NativeEnergy is
now Native-owned, giving strong evidence that the effort to capture prairie
winds to produce affordable, safe and clean energy is well under way.

This is the recent message from Bob Gough, secretary of the nonprofit
Intertribal Council On Utility Policy, the group that has spearheaded the
most intriguing and potentially impactful energy project in Indian country.
For one thing, it has united over a dozen Great Plains tribes, as Gough
described it, in the “historic effort to power America with Native wind and
fight global warming.”

Intertribal COUP is a nonprofit council of federally recognized Indian
tribes from North Dakota (Mandan, Arikara and Hidatsa, and part of Standing
Rock and Sisseton-Wahpeton), and South Dakota (Cheyenne River, Flandreau
Santee, Lower Brule, Oglala, Rosebud, Sisseton-Wahpeton Oyate, Spirit Lake
Tribe and Standing Rock), and the Omaha Nation of Nebraska and Iowa.
Chartered and headquartered on the Rosebud Sioux Reservation, it has
operated since 1994 to provide a tribal forum for policy issues in energy
utility operations and services and telecommunications.

NativeEnergy has been a leading national marketer of Renewable Energy
Credits and greenhouse gas offsets. It has worked to help tribal and rural
communities develop their own sustainable economies based on the generation
of clean, renewable energy. Now, on behalf of its member tribes, COUP has
closed the ownership circle by purchasing a majority interest in the energy
marketing company.

The new, Native-owned business marks a milestone in the movement that COUP
has led, providing direct access to the retail market for the energy the
inter-tribal council will ultimately produce. A major initial strategic
goal of the purchase is to help develop an 80-megawatt distributed-wind
project, hosted in 10 MW (10,000 kilowatt hours) “clusters” at eight
different COUP reservations. The wind farms will provide clean energy to
fuel more than 23,000 homes and also create jobs. The sale of electricity
and Renewable Energy Credits will generate additional revenues for the
tribes.

Renewable Energy Certificates are a type of “currency” established by the
Renewable Energy (Electricity) Act of 2001. They come in the form of
electronic certificates and reside on a publicly available Internet
database. Each REC represents 1 MW of electricity that is generated from a
renewable energy source. This is either by a power station or 1 MW of
electricity displaced by a solar water heater. RECs can be used to
demonstrate compliance with the requirements of the government’s mandatory
renewable energy target.

One heartening aspect of the Intertribal COUP project is the strong
assertion of concern for the wider issues of global warming and industrial
pollution. “Wind turbines generate electricity that would otherwise have to
come from polluting power facilities on the regional grid, preventing
carbon dioxide, a leading cause of global warming, from entering the air,”
according to Gough. The renewable energy credits, also called “green tags,”
offer individuals and organizations a way to compensate for their global
warming pollution by committing to powering their homes and businesses with
renewable energy.

Said COUP President Patrick Spears, a member of the Lower Brule Sioux
Tribe: “Living in harmony with our Mother Earth is not only good for the
environment, it is also good business.” Spears also pointed out the
excellent strategic fit between the two outfits, which stems from the
mutually recognized integrity of purpose and method. It is always
encouraging to hear such language from Indian country leaders of tribal
economic ventures.

The earlier success of the Rosebud Sioux Tribe wind project was also
directly tied to its partnering with NativeEnergy, from which it received
the benefit of that company’s wide range of customers. Also run on a
commercial level, the Rosebud initiative was the first such 100 percent
American Indian-owned and operated wind facility. The new venture intends
to continue expanding by supporting “off-reservation,” renewable projects
in partnership with the COUP tribes, according to President and CEO Tom
Boucher.

Intertribal COUP constantly sponsors and participates in briefings,
conferences, workshops and forums on telecommunications and energy issues.
In June, 1996, it co-sponsored the Telecom/Utilities 2000 Summit (the first
tribal utility conference) with the RST Utility Commission, BIA, Federal
Communications Commission, Commerce, Agriculture and Energy departments.
Since 1997, it has provided Indian representation on the FCC’s Local and
State Government Advisory Committee for Telecommunications. It has worked
on Restructuring, Renewables and Reservations — Tribal Energy gatherings
with the Department of Energy and the National Labs, helping as part of a
three-year plan for sustainable economic development.

The work of Intertribal COUP is highly commendable — an ethical,
practical, useful and profitable organization. The group is right on the
button when it comes to perceiving and adapting the trends of current-day
American life to the potentials of tribes based on their actual geography
and potentials for environmentally friendly energy development.

The wind corridors of the northern Plains offer a promising solution.
Spears pointed out the “all-time record low water levels behind the dams on
the Missouri River have resulted in diminished hydropower generation, lost
revenue from the lack of surplus power sales, reductions in hydropower
allocations to preference customers, [and] increased costs…” It also
forces the Western Area Power Association to fuel 80 percent of its
capacity with conventional fossil (non-renewable and polluting) fuels.
Again, Spears: “The tribes in the northern Plains have a huge wind
resource. Wind energy from tribal lands alone can meet at least one-third
of the nation’s energy needs. Wind energy has the greatest potential to
restore our economies. With more than half of our population under the age
of 20, wind energy development can provide skilled technical employment for
our youth.”

This is good thinking for Indian country and, therefore, for America.

For more information, visit www.nativeenergy.com/Rosebud_Turbine.htm.
Contact Tom Stoddard, NativeEnergy, at (802) 425-3419 or
tom.stoddard@nativeenergy.com; or Patrick Spears, Intertribal COUP, at
(605) 945-1908 or pnspears2@aol.com.