On the Winds of Change ~ Jetstream Wind

Meet New Energy Steward, Mr. Henry Herman, Founder and CEO of Jetstream Wind, Inc.   

In our incredibly eye-opening discussion, I asked several questions that have been on all of our minds surrounding our future on this planet and how renewable energy can assure that future. 

While speaking with Mr. Herman, I realized that a whole new type corporate America was taking shape, and with that, a place for a more heart-centered economy (not to be mistaken for a weak economy, but one that involves a conscious awareness of how we all, as humans, must work in unison with the Earth and each other). 

Let’s talk a little about Jetstream Wind and how your company is forging a new path in the renewable industry.

Mr. Herman: 

Jetstream Wind is a renewable energy developer that leases land from private land owners, tribal lands, and municipalities.  What we do is continually examine and implement more effective, productive renewable technologies for the greater good, and create scenarios where the collective has the power and real-time ability to re-create the future as we know it.

In that, we basically give land owners an opportunity, depending upon their land size to become scheduled millionaires by assisting in the implementation of renewable energy.

What that means is that a land owner gets a percentage of the gross electrical revenue off of land they typically wouldn’t be using anyway. This has saved people’s houses, their farms, and it’s been a really neat situation in that we’ve created entire new economies for pueblos that previously had no economy to speak of.

This is kind of a new way to pursue things in the industry, because not only do we help land owners with those specific issues, but we also have long-term plans to supply renewable waste technology to communities. This is exciting. We’re working toward alleviating trash for communities and actually helping them to generate revenue if they so choose.

It’s a unique situation. You’ve got people on any given level that can benefit from this. It’s not just the large corporations that can benefit. It’s not just the cities that can benefit. Every single person benefits from this.

A vast majority of consumers feel somewhat powerless and ineffective to begin personally utilizing clean alternative energy in their homes and businesses. A similar number also feel it’s much too expensive and intimidating. What can consumers to do help this process?

Mr. Herman: 

The easiest way for consumers to alter any given renewable market themselves, is to support the implementation of large renewable energy farms. This is the way a normal consumer won’t have to put huge costs into their own system on their own house. They actually have the power to lower their electricity rates by allowing more renewable developers to come in and put in more solar farms, more wind farms, more hydrogen plants, etc.

Once the infrastructure around a certain livable area gets to a point where there’s more electricity than can be used, you’ve then got the laws of supply and demand on your side. The supply is extremely high so the costs actually drop. This way, individual consumers don’t have to put money into their own renewable systems.

A lot of people would love to put a ten thousand dollar solar array on top of their house, and in that aspect, the people that can afford to do it, may not feel about renewable like everybody else does. But if the change occurs at the utility level, then everybody’s costs get lowered without anybody putting in a dime. At that point, all people would have to do is give their verbal support and then you could literally free an entire city from the bonds of utility rates.

You’ve probably heard of Al Gore’s ten-year plan to begin relying 100% on clean energy by 2018, ending our reliance on carbon-based fuel sources. Do you see this proposal as attainable.

Mr. Herman: 

It actually is attainable. There’s an incredible push. Nothing like this has ever occurred in history before where you’ve got the entire human race united on a front in the implementation and use of renewable energy due to global warming, the energy crisis, and so forth.

For once, this is something that 99.999 percent of the population can agree upon. It’s never happened before. It’s also a case where you’re also looking at a push by Al Gore; a push by renewable developers, T. Boone Pickens for example, and us, of course, Jetstream Wind. I don’t want to forget that…

There’s also a push on the government side.

The Department of Energy is doing an incredibly massive push for renewable energy.

The National Renewable Energy Laboratory ( NREL) is creating a massive push.

 Los Alamos National Laboratory 

Sandia National Laboratory 

Lawrence Livermoe National Laboratory …

You’ve got a push from the federal level, the state level, the university level, the public level, and the private level. We’re all pushing in the same direction for once. It’s easily attainable. Even the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission, who governs the transfer of electricity from state-to-state is assisting like I’ve never seen any government entity assist before. They’re implementing new legislation that specifically is beneficial for renewable developers. This is so that an actual rise in renewable use can occur nation wide.

How does Jetstream Wind fit into this ten-year plan?

Mr. Herman: 

Well, if you’ve taken a look at our website, what you’ll see (contrary to our name) is a company not only developing wind (we started with wind), but also utilizing solar, solar thermal, and hydrogen powered plants. We’re the first company on the planet doing hydrogen powered plants, and here in New Mexico will be the first one.

We’re doing a broad spectrum implementation and have almost eighty power plants scheduled for New Mexico alone. We can supply 7.2 million watts of electric through our power plants. We also have long range plans to carry this out on local, regional, national and international levels.

We have multiple countries we’re working with, as well as multiple states and communities, and they’re all running parallel at the same time. We project that we will probably be able to supply almost a terawatt of electrical power to the United States in ten years (which is approximately 25% of US consumption).

US energy consumption is 4.2 terawatts per year at this time, according to the US Department of Energy, and a good percentage of US electric supply comes the outside of our country.

The majority of US produced electricity, however, comes from coal and nuclear power, and then you’ve got about 16% that is produced by natural gas or the firing of natural gas at combined cycle plants.

This is starting to be drastically effected by natural gas prices. Natural gas plants are getting to a point now where the cost that they pay for natural has is starting to equal or exceed the price that they can charge consumers by the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission. So what we’ve got is a situation where a lot of these plants don’t know if they can continue to run profitably.

One of our plans at Jetstream Wind is to help these companies along with the implementation of hydrogen.  Because the plant doesn’t care what type of gas that’s being burnt - to boil water, to create stream, to turn turbines to create electric…it doesn’t matter.

In that aspect, it’s a very small infrastructure switch out to go from natural gas to hydrogen. We’ve examined this for almost a year now and if you were to have 16% of America’s electrical capacity drop out while the Department of Energy is projecting a 4-7% rise in electrical consumption each year, you can see that we’re in a very dire situation. This is one of the reasons we put a great deal of effort into figuring out how to solve the combined cycle plant issues with natural gas.

Jetstream Wind is in a position where we can step in and alleviate any concerns about these plants going out of business, and so now you’d have a situation where an entire one gigawatt plant (for example) that only burns natural gas while creating a massive amount of hydrocarbons being put into the air (CO2) will be putting nothing into the air…zero.

What types of renewable energies does Jetstream Wind work with? 

Mr. Herman: 

We supply photovoltaic solar for smaller properties, anywhere from one acre all the way up to one hundred acres. For properties that are twelve hundred acres and up, we supply solar thermal (which are the mirrored troughs). For very large megawatt-scale plants we utilize our hydrogen technology, and of course, there’s our wind technology, which is also used on very large megawatt scales.

How long has Jetstream Wind been in business?

Mr. Herman: 

Believe it or not, Jet Stream Wind has only been publicly active since the beginning of 2008, and we’ve already outpaced every other renewable developer in the state of New Mexico combined. We have more land in process than any developer in the United States, and in six months we’ve already gone from implementing on a local level, to implementing on a national and international level.

Not only are we working with eighty locations in New Mexico, we’re also working with ninety-four locations nationwide, examining renewables in seven other countries, and becoming the specialists in the industry for supplying renewables to islands and closed communities cut off from other areas.

Tell me about you Henry, the owner of Jetstream Wind. What is the “wind” under your sails?

Mr. Herman: 

I guess there are times in life that you feel you are predetermined or predestined to do something. I personally have spent many years in prototyping…different products for different companies. I’ve prototyped over twelve-hundred products for companies nationwide.

The common factor, regardless of whichever company I developed or designed the products for, was in the problem solving. And maybe the problem of designing products just got to be too small, and I wanted to work my way up to a bigger problem!

But ironically this problem of renewable energy has been extremely easy to solve, and I think that it boils down to simplicity. So maybe I just see my aspect as a good problem solver, and if I see that I can solve a global issue with simple implementation, then that there is every reason in the world for me.

With so much progress being made inside this industry, why do you believe so many consumers are still hesitant to get involved?

Mr. Herman: 

Well, with any given spread of information in society, whether it be the media, (television, radio, newspaper) or even word of mouth you’ll see a push, and the push for renewables is there and it‘s happening.

Granted we had renewable solar back in 1912, and wind power back in the 1960’s, and even improved photovoltaic solar in the 1970’s. The problem is that what we didn’t have then was a challenge that affected every single person on this planet. No change can happen until somebody’s life is affected by it, and until it affects a person directly, it’s only a story that’s happening to someone else.

I think that everyone realizes it’s happening to all of us…every one of us right now. And that’s creating a change in the way people perceive renewable energy and the way people accept renewable energy. I actually can’t even perceive of a situation where people will be adversely affected by this. We’re looking at technology that is cleaner than anything that has EVER been implemented.

The fear of change is a common factor with people that you’ll probably never be able to get fully around. Now, the percentage of lessening that fear of change happens with every generation. We had fear of change moving from the horse and buggy to the automobile, to the train, and to the airplane. Another big one was the computer…that’s a perfect example.

This is simply this generation’s time of change, and several years from now when our children are benefiting from clean energy and a clean environment, people will step back and say, “What a great change that was, and what a great time we’ve all lived in.”

Find out more about Jetstream Wind “Saving The World With Every Turn”

Our sincere thanks to Henry Herman and all of the people at Jetstream Wind for their valuable contributions to society.

Ornesha De Paoli

Green Ascension - Evolving People on an Evolving Planet