Officials in Wyoming, the country’s largest coal producer, believe the state could become a leader in using wind to generate power. This story in the Casper (WY) Star Tribune says the state ranks as the seventh windiest in America and has 14 million acres of windy land:
“Wind energy is the fastest growing energy technology in the world, and the future looks bright for this clean energy source in Wyoming,” said documents from FPL Energy, which owns and operates the Wyoming Wind Energy Center near Evanston. “The state has world-class wind resources, the technology is improving and the costs are coming down, making wind power cost competitive with other forms of electricity generation.”
The Evanston center powers about 43,000 homes, and Wyoming has two other wind generation sites… one south of Cheyenne, and one in Medicine Bow. The article says the potential for wind electrical generation in the state is 883 million megawatt hours per year. Wyoming used only 12 million megawatt hours in 1999.
The Ride & Drive is bigger and better than ever here at the National Biodiesel Conference this year. If you want, you can drive any of several vehicles like this 2007 Volkswagen Toureg TDI.
One of the newest stars to advocate biodiesel is Merle Haggard. The legendary country star performed for attendees at this year’s Conference after meeting with the press and the board of the 
As someone who is in a diesel powered bus a lot he says he really doesn’t like the smell of burning diesel but heard that biodiesel smelled different and that was what got him interested. He also said that he’s happy for how the development of biodiesel is helping American farmers. (Thanks to Brian Kanof for the picture of Merle filling up)
Being a Floridian at heart, if not by birth, I can honestly say I have never been in weather as cold as last weekend in Ely, Minnesota when I had the opportunity to attend Ely’s Winter Festival and visit with the community’s favorite son, arctic exporer Will Steger.
The official low Saturday night was 32 below zero, but it had warmed up to a balmy 25 below when we left Ely on Sunday morning to catch a plane out of Duluth. 
The dogs may be pulling the sled when world-renowned arctic explorer 
“The world has become acutely aware that the use of fossil fuels is warming our planet at an alarming rate,” said Fagen. “We are honored to support his efforts to document these effects and inspire changes that will halt this trend.”
The documentary “Freedom Fuels” is now available for free download. 
I think that I’ve mentioned that many of my interviews and some other audio files like general session presentations are available as a podcast. It’s the National Biodiesel Conference Podcast in fact. You can find the link and instructions on 
At this morning’s general session a panel discussion was held that featured U. S. Representatives, Collin Peterson (D-MN), Kenny Hulshof (R-MO), Thaddeus McCotter (R-MI) and Dave Wheldon (R-FL). These are also the members of The Second Amendments, the band that played at half time during the Super Bowl party yesterday here at the National Biodiesel Conference.