Nov 9 - McClatchy-Tribune Business News Formerly Knight Ridder/Tribune Business News - Matthew Leblanc Columbia Daily Tribune, Mo.

In late 2004, Tom Carnahan was surfing the Internet when he noticed something strange.

In states surrounding Missouri, the St. Louis attorney found, developers were building wind farms to produce electricity. However, there still weren't any being built in the Show-Me State.

"It was like when I was a law student at Mizzou, and KU would come here and beat us in basketball," said Carnahan, the son of the late Gov. Mel Carnahan. "It didn't sit right. I knew there was something we could do about that."

Two years after that Web search, Carnahan is the president of Wind Capital Group. The company is close to completing work on the state's first utility-scale wind farm in Gentry County and plans to build two others in nearby Atchison and Nodaway counties. "I really believe future generations are going to look back at this time and say Missouri and our country were taking a new step in our energy policy," Carnahan said.

City officials in a ceremony at the Daniel Boone Building this morning lauded Carnahan for his work and said they are excited to be the first city in Missouri to purchase power from the Bluegrass Ridge wind farm.

Under an agreement approved this week by the Columbia City Council, the city will purchase power from three of 27 wind turbines scheduled to be completed by the end of the year. The turbines could produce enough power to provide electricity to about 2,300 homes.

City Manager Bill Watkins signed a deal today with Springfield-based Associated Electric Cooperative Inc. to transmit electricity produced at Bluegrass Ridge to Columbia. "We've been looking forward to this for a very long time," said Dan Dasho, director of the city's Water and Light Department. "I'm glad to see this project come to fruition."

Local voters approved a law in 2004 that requires Water and Light to devote part of its energy portfolio to renewable sources such as wind or landfill gas. The law requires that 2 percent of the city's electricity come from renewables by 2008.

Power from the wind farm should account for about 1 percent of the city's output, a spokeswoman for the city utility said. The city should start receiving energy from Bluegrass Ridge early next year. "I'm proud of Columbia for its commitment to sustainable, renewable energy," Mayor Darwin Hindman said. "This city already has had a good record of programs dedicating to conserving energy, ... but that will only go so far."

O.B. Clark, president of the electric cooperative, said his company also plans to sign on to buy electricity from the other two wind farms in northwest Missouri. "We're going to have to maximize all our opportunities if we're going to sustain our economic growth," he said.