University of Illinois drops plans for wind turbine

The University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign has canceled its plans to build wind turbines on campus, citing the university's "deteriorating fiscal condition." A contract for GE to build and deliver a 1.5-megawatt wind turbine was sent last week to the university from GE, but university officials did not sign it. Chancellor Richard Herman has notified GE and student leaders of the university's decision to halt the project. One turbine would have generated about 1 percent of the campus's energy needs. The project, announced in 2005, originally called for installing three turbines. Over the years, demand for wind turbines pushed prices higher, and the project was scaled down from three turbines to one.