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Denver’s burgeoning alternative-energy industry will get a boost this September when formerly Portland, Orgeon-based wind energy company REpower USA Corp. moves its headquarters to Denver. The Denver Business Journal reports that the company, the U.S. subsidiary of German wind-power manufacturer REpower Systems AG, is one of the first to take advantage of the state’s new Job Incentive Growth Fund and will relocate or hire 25 employees in the area. It could grow to twice that many staff in the next year or so according to the firm.
Company CEO Steve Dayney said in a statement that the move was prompted by Denver’s strategic location in relation to the company’s projects and customers — a nice way of noting that our fair city is the only real metropolitan area within spitting distance of the huge, godforsaken and, most importantly, wind-swept wastelands of Wyoming and the various Dakotas. Those areas are ideally suited to providing wind power, and Denver is ideally suited to managing the business of exploiting it, based on proximity, infrastructure and the fact that we aren’t actually in Wyoming or the Dakotas, thereby making it a hell of a lot easier to convince capable executives, engineers and support professionals to move here. It’s a nice situation, one that could make Denver the Queen City of the new energy economy. Go us.
