Qwest and CenturyLink merge

On April 1, Qwest Communications International Inc. merged into CenturyLink Inc., creating the nation’s third-largest telecommunications company. As a condition of approval of the deal by the Iowa Utilities Board, the company pledged to invest $25 million in additional broadband infrastructure in the state in the next five years. Tim White, vice president and general manager for CenturyLink in Iowa, said in November that his company is committed to investing in its markets to expand its broadband network and provide faster connections. The company employs about 1,500 people in Iowa; White said that though there have been reductions in work force in some areas of the company, they have so far been balanced by additions in other areas.

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Dealerships launch projects to spur more ‘green’ vehicle sales

The sexy-looking little red car parked in Gene Gabus’ Des Moines Motors showroom doesn’t run on gasoline, ethanol or batteries. This baby fills up with compressed natural gas (CNG).

Gabus, president of Gabus Automotive Group, hopes to begin selling the Chinese-made vehicles, which will be converted at locations in Iowa and Nebraska from gasoline power to run on CNG, by summer 2012. Working in tandem with Gabus is NatGas Services LC, an Ankeny company that plans to develop a network of CNG refueling stations and sell conversion kits.

Both businesses are targeting high-mileage commercial fleet users as their primary customers, to either purchase new vehicles or convert existing ones.

Gabus hopes to create a network of more than 200 dealers in the Midwest and supply them with up to 10,000 vehicles a month. Much of the demand will depend on the future price of gasoline, he said. “If gas goes to $4 a gallon, I probably won’t be able to get enough of them (to meet the demand).”

Farther north at Karl Chevrolet in Ankeny, the dealership was among the first in the state to install specially designed photovoltaic canopies to recharge the all-electric Volt sedan. Bob Brown Chevrolet will also install a canopy at its new dealership that will open this spring in Urbandale.

The canopies are part of the Chevy Green Zone Initiative, a partnership between General Motors Ventures LLC and Sunlogics PLC, a Michigan-based solar energy company. When the canopies aren’t being used to recharge Volts, they’ll provide supplemental power for the dealerships.

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Put a lid on it: Iowa Stored Energy Park calls it quits

Developers of the Iowa Stored Energy Park shut down the ambitious project earlier this year, after tests confirmed the state’s geology wouldn’t support it.

The concept behind the compressed air energy storage electric generation facility was to store wind energy as compressed air and pump it into limestone formations 3,000 feet below ground, releasing it as needed to power turbines to produce electricity. The project was intriguing enough that it attracted more than $12 million in federal, state and municipal-utility funding

In August, tests conducted at the 85-acre site near Dallas Center showed that the permeability of the rock was too low to allow air to be pumped in or out fast enough, said Kent Holst, who was a principal with the project. The site was the only potentially viable location in the state, Holst said. However, “there are quite a number of other projects that are going forward that do not appear to have this problem,” he said.

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