Midwest Wind Energy
211 E. Ontario Street
Suite 1720
Chicago, Illinois 60611
www.midwestwind.com

Michael J. Donahue, Executive Vice President

With over 20 years experience in land planning, zoning and development, Mike Donahue, AICP, has assisted public and private sectors across the country with the development of wind, hydroelectric, natural gas and coal-fired power plants.

As a court-qualified expert in his field, Mr. Donahue has testified as an expert witness in hundreds of court proceedings and public zoning hearings.

Briefly, describe your business?
Midwest Wind Energy is a utility-scale wind farm development company, which means that we acquire all land rights, permits, governmental approvals, and utility agreements, and undertake all studies necessary to make a project “shovel ready.” In other words, we take a project from concept to construction. This process takes 2-3 years for a typical project. When a project is finally shovel ready, we sell it to an equity partner who will construct, own and operate the wind farm.

What size is your company?
We have nine employees including 2 principal owners, 4 developers, and 3 support staff. In addition, we spend about $3 million per year on various consultants.

What is your ideal client?
Our ideal customer is the one who can take a project from us once it’s shovel ready and get it built and up and operating as soon as possible without the need for project financing.

What products and/or services does your business offer?
Leases, easements, option agreements, local zoning permits, geotechnical reports, avian impact studies, FAA permits, Corps of Engineers permits, environmental site assessments, telecommunication facilities impact studies, turbine layout plans, acoustic noise assessments, shadow flicker analysis, wind data and energy production reports, road maintenance agreements, decommissioning plans, pipeline crossing agreements, road crossing permits, power purchase agreements, transmission interconnection agreements, ALTA surveys, title reports, etc.

How did you originally discover the idea for your business?
The company president and founder, Stefan Noe, set out to develop the first wind farm in Illinois in 2001 on his own initiative.

What have been the keys to success in your eyes?
We were pioneers in this business back in 2001 so we were able to operate without much competition back then. As a result, we were able to secure some of the best wind farm sites in the Midwest. Today, competition is fierce and good sites are hard to come by.

What kind of relationship do you establish with your customers?
The key to establishing a relationship with the large equity firms that buy our wind farms is to demonstrate competency and a track record of success. We’ve been able to do that with great staff and a little bit of luck.

How do you maintain these relationships?
The only way to maintain these relationships is to continue to successfully develop sites fully to a shovel ready state. That means that every “i" is dotted and every “t” is crossed on every lease, easement, permit, utility agreement, study, report, or any other document required to construct a $500 million dollar facility. Our customers are not interested in buying wind farm projects that aren’t absolutely 100% construction ready and free of risk and liability.

Have you noticed any trends in your industry at the moment?
We call it the “big box syndrome.” Years ago wind farms were being developed by small entrepreneurial companies like Midwest Wind Energy. The trend the past few years has been for huge corporations like General Electric and British Petroleum to get into the game. In order to compete “on Randall Road,” Midwest Wind Energy partnered with one of these major companies, Edison Mission Energy.

What is the funniest story you’ve come across in your business?
A farmer stated at a public hearing that he was opposed to a proposed wind farm because he would receive less rain on the downwind side of the project and his crop yields would go down. At the same hearing, a dairy farmer who lived near an existing wind farm stated under oath that his milk production was down 50% because of the wind farm. Not everyone is a fan of renewable energy if it’s proposed in their back yard.

What is your greatest achievement?
We have successfully developed and sold six wind farms totaling nearly 600 MWs of renewable energy, which is enough to power more than 200,000 typical homes. We have another twelve projects totaling more than 5000 MWs in our development pipeline.

Describe your business in five words or less.?
Utility-scale wind farm developers.