Oregon Public Broadcasting

Oregon is supposed to be a leader in green erergy. At least, that's what state lawmakers and Portland city officials have been pushing hard for, especially in the last year.

Some of these efforts have drawn national attention. Presumptive Republican presidential nominee, John McCain, even gave his “climate change” address in Oregon earlier this month.

But for all the talk, some of Oregon’s most important work on “green energy” is happening far away from the public eye.

In the first of two stories, Rob Manning looks at a wind energy program in the Columbia River Gorge that’s providing jobs, and "blowing away" industry leaders.

The idea for a  wind energy program hit Susan Wolff one day on her daily commute on  I-84.

Susan Wolff: “I live in Hood River, and then drive to The Dalles every day to come to work."

Wolff is the chief academic officer at Columbia Gorge Community College.

Susan Wolff: "And I would be passing the turbine components – the towers and the nacelles and the blades and the hubs, and thought there had to be jobs connected. Because it was just the number of them, there was just a mass number of them – I knew there had to be jobs connected to that.”

Wolff followed up and spoke to wind industry officials to  confirm her theory. She found that there were in fact hundreds of jobs – but  not nearly enough people to fill them.

Jan Johnson is a spokeswoman for wind energy company, Iberdrola. She says even more jobs will be needed  if business and government leaders invest in wind.

Jan Johnson: “The wind energy works’ group estimates that it takes one skilled operations and maintenance worker for every ten wind turbines installed. In other words, as we keep adding more wind turbines everywhere in the U.S., we keep needing skilled workers.”

Johnson says the program at Columbia Gorge Community College  is one of only three in the nation that are producing high quality graduates. Officials say those three programs can't possibly fill the hundreds, maybe even  thousands of future job openings.

Columbia Gorge started just two years ago with a six-month, non-credit pilot program in wind technology. Now it offers a one-year certificate, and a two-year associates’ degree.

Tom Lieurance: “This is called a HAS 200, a HAS 200. It’s basically a factory emulation.”

Instructor Tom Lieurance is in the community college basement. He's showing me around one of the new program's computer systems. He says students need a strong foundation in math and circuitry--since technicians do a good bit of computer programming.

Tom Lieurance: “In a wind turbine, you would find a programmable controller in many of them, controlling all the functions of the wind turbine. It’s checking wind speed, it’s checking wind direction, to make sure that it can yaw into the wind, yaw out of the wind if it needs to.”

Columbia Gorge doesn’t have an actual turbine on campus, though the college does have  some key components – like the computer system, and some of the  important tools.

There’s a hands-on lab out back, called “The Barn.”

Student: “Turn the pressure counter-clockwise, loosen it all the way.”

Alan Bailey: “Did that, go ahead and push the button.”

Instructor Alan Bailey leads labs focused on mechanical and hydraulic systems – and how to fix them.

Alan Bailey: “I thought everybody had a percentage of mechanical ability, knowledge of something. Turned out, I was wrong. Some people are very much into it, and understand it right off the get-go. Some, it does not. That’s where I come in, have to get them up to where they should be, and beyond, frankly.”

Students hail from all over the Northwest, and the college has gotten inquiries from as far away as Iowa and Illinois.

Student AJ Quakenbush is a native of The Dalles. He's finishing his first year in the wind tech program and says wind power is giving the eastern gorge a boost.

AJ Quakenbush: “It opens the door to a lot of different people to an aspect of industry. I think this will definitely help the economy in this area. You know, I think it’s an exciting opportunity, and I hope that it brings more people to the area, and just helps everything in general.”

Quakenbush is excited to start  his  summer internship, and can't wait for the more intense second year. College officials say even though the full two-year program produces some of the best technicians in the country, only a fraction of students return for year two.

Instructor, Alan Bailey, says that's because first-year students are landing jobs.

Alan Bailey: “You got to be realistic about life. You’re the  one that’s got to live it. If you got to work, you got to work."

In some ways, the attrition actually helps the college. Here's why: the college has promised to triple the size of the program in the next three years. And despite winning a grant for more than $1.5 million, administrators don't know exactly how they're going to do that.

That's the challenge facing Susan Wolff, the administrator who dreamed up the wind energy program in the first place. She says the college has to add instructors and classes of course, but it also has to find a place for two big turbine components.

Susan Wolff: “I don’t have a covered space right now to put those two pieces in. And industry is saying that it’s almost crucial that we get our hands on that kind of equipment, so that students are used to working at that scale.”

But to many in the industry, it seems like Columbia Gorge has the wind at its back, so to speak.

Next month, the college is hosting a national wind energy conference, and the excitement on The Dalles’ campus is infectious.

Instructor Alan Bailey was plucked from his manufacturing career to help advise the program, two years ago. He says he’s glad he stuck around.

Alan Bailey: “When you take a man that is almost 61 years old, that has worked out on the road, has done many years, built things, torn things apart. I’ve had a major good life, I’ve done things that 90 percent of the world will never do. And you’re getting ready to come into retirement, at my age, and you get to do something like this, it’s like I’ve died, and I’m already in heaven.”