Photo: Erico Guizzo

BIG, NOISY, AND SMELLY: San Cristóbal uses three 650‑kilowatt diesel generators to produce electricity. The island’s new wind system will reduce the amount of diesel burned by 950 000 liters per year.

AS WE LEAVE El Tropezón, Tolan recalls how he first got involved with the project. He’d been working as a project manager at Industry & Energy Associates, a consulting firm in Portland, Maine. In 2001, Paul Loeffelman, director of environmental public policy at American Electric Power, the e8 member company chosen to lead the San Cristóbal project, called him up. Would he be interested in building a cutting-edge wind farm on a tiny island located 1000 kilometers out at sea, where 85 percent of the land consists of protected national park? Sure, replied Tolan, always up for a challenge.

To navigate Ecuadorian laws and energy policies, Loeffelman picked Vintimilla, a former director of Ecuador’s energy regulation agency. Tolan, a 47-year-old detail-oriented, straight-talking New York City native who graduated from the U.S. Merchant Marine Academy in Kings Point, N.Y., and Vintimilla, a 60-year-old mild-mannered engineer widely respected in Ecuador, made a formidable team.

Vintimilla’s first major task was persuading the government to establish regulations for wind-power projects, as San Cristóbal’s would be the country’s first. Then there was the issue of ownership. The plan was that the e8 would establish a trust entity to manage the project and gradually transfer control to Elecgalápagos, the local electrical utility. “We had to do so many reports for so many different people,” Vintimilla says.

In the meantime, Tolan pored over the engineering and financing details. A 2001 study had estimated that a wind system capable of reducing diesel ­generation by 98 percent would cost $5.4 ­million. To Tolan, those numbers looked far too ­optimistic. What’s more, since that initial study, annual electricity demand on San Cristóbal had grown from 4950 megawatt-hours in 1999 to 7150 MWh in 2006. Tolan recalculated the project’s cost—this time factoring in such details as how many construction cranes you’d need to rent and how much you’d spend relocating Miconia plants from the site—and concluded that the project would achieve a diesel reduction of about 50 percent at a cost of some $10 million.

“Everyone was asking me, ‘Jim, what did you do?!’ ” Tolan recalls. He had to explain that the typical costs for a big wind project in the United States—$1000 to $1500 per kilowatt—didn’t apply to the Galápagos, where transportation and environmental-related expenses brought the cost per ­kilowatt to $3500.

Tolan and Vintimilla also had to address concerns from the local community. Wouldn’t the turbines disfigure the pristine landscape and hurt tourism? The project ­managers convinced local leaders that the visual impact would be minor, because the towers wouldn’t be visible from town. Moreover, they argued, the idea of renewable energy in the Galápagos would appeal to environmentally conscious visitors, who might even want to go see the towering turbines.