Newton, Iowa, hit hard by the impending closing of the Maytag Appliance factory, is getting a second life as a company that builds wind turbines moves in.
This article from the Des Moines Register says TPI Composites of Warren, Rhode Island is putting in a 500-employee factory in Newton:
TPI will begin construction next week on a 316,000-square-foot wind turbine blade factory.
The plant will make blades for General Electric Energy’s 1.5-megawatt wind turbines.
GE Energy says it has 6,500 of the turbines installed, making it one of the most popular units used today.
TPI chief executive Steven Lockard says the company’s facility on 33 acres near a new biodiesel plant in Newton will make turbine blades up to 150 feet long and weighing up to 20,000 pounds.
State and local officials revealed last summer that Newton was in the running for the plant, saying at that time that employment would be about 720 workers. The worker figure has since been scaled back.
The new jobs would help replace the nearly 1,800 positions lost over the past 18 months as operations wind down at the former Maytag headquarters and washer/dryer factory, now owned by Whirlpool Corp. Both facilities are scheduled to close by the end of the year.
In addition, the wind turbines blades will be made right where they are needed most as Iowa and other surrounding states become leaders in the wind energy business.
Linc Energy and Bio Clean Coal announced the creation of the company last week and said they would spend $1 million over the next year to build a prototype bioreactor.
The University of Minnesota Twin Cities campus is hosting an energy, economic and environmental – or E3 – conference this week. 
Scientists at Stanford University are looking at a way to connect North America’s wind farms, making wind power less intermittent than its source.
Besides providing a steady production of electricity, connecting wind farms would present other cost benefits by “reducing the total distance that all the power has to travel from the multiple points of origin to the destination point” and by combining all the power on a single transmission line.
Democratic presidential candidate Sen. Joe Biden (D-Delaware) has unveiled a five-year, $50 billion energy plan akin to the Apollo project that put men on the moon during a campaign stop in Iowa.
General Motors and the U.S. Department of Energy have invited the media to ride in the vehicles participating in the Challenge X Competition… a multi-year engineering competition that has 17 university teams from across North America in a real-world engineering experience to develop GM vehicles in the company’s global vehicle development process. The idea is the teams will create advanced propulsion technology systems that increase energy efficiency and reduce environmental impact through hybrid, plug-in, or fuel cell systems, powered by alternative fuels such as biodiesel, ethanol and hydrogen.
A state program administered by the Iowa Department of Economic Development has handed out $563,800 to 21 Iowa retailers installing pumps for E-85 and biodiesel fuel, terminals installing biodiesel storage tanks and blending equipment, and tank wagons for farm delivery having dedicated compartments for E-85 and biodiesel.
There´s no denying the capability for the use of ethanol is a few steps ahead of the infrastructure for accessing the alternative fuel. But, that doesn´t mean consumers can´t fill up their flex-fuel vehicles with E85 without ease. Simply log on to 
And while the amount of turkey grease that Rocky Mountain Sustainable Enterprises collects this Saturday isn’t likely to cut our dependency on Middle Eastern oil, the company is still hopeful its post-Thanksgiving drive will be beneficial.