Oracle Online

This internship was made available to Kruger through Modern Language Professor Russ Christensen’s repeated visits to East Tyrol.

Christensen and his wife traveled to Austria the last two years to visit the City Warmth Project. Christensen said that in past winters, there was a haze of smoke that would accumulate and hover over the area trapped in between surrounding mountains. He said he is very impressed that people could eliminate the smoke from past fuels and render themselves free of oil and fossil fuels.

Stadtwaerme Lienz is part of the City Warmth Project, which provides energy for 14,000 people year round with biomass fuel, the leavings of the forest floor, said Christensen.

The plant, located in the state of East Tyrol, is a district heating plant that provides heat and warm water to the entire city of Lienz from only solar power and waste wood sources, said Kruger.

On a normal day, Kruger was at work by 7 a.m. after eating breakfast with his host family. Once he arrived at the Stadtwaerme Lienz plant, he had a mix of duties which included accompanying workers following energy requests from citizens, checking meters, computer work and assisting workers from the nearby hydropower plant.

“My job was to learn as much as I could about the plant,” Kruger said. “Pretty much a job shadow.”

It occurred to Christensen, he said, that there was something very special going on in this region. He said the Germans have started harvesting the wind and now it makes up 35 percent of their energy. The United States should encourage alternative fuels, Christensen said. “Why don’t you give tax breaks to wind, solar biomass, to anything other than oil and gas.”

He was so impressed last year he went back and chartered a meeting with three people from the company to talk about the possibility of an internship with a Hamline student.

“He set up the internship with me in mind,” Kruger said. “I was chosen because of my interest in renewable energies.” Kruger also applied for and received a summer research grant That grant, which entailed testing water for contamination, was how Kruger paid for most of his expenditures. However, it was not easy for him to find contaminated water. Eventually, he managed to find some very old lead mines that contributed to water contamination, according to Christensen.

“We don’t often have a student capable of taking this type of exchange,” said Christensen. “The next one has to speak the language almost as well as Jake, has to be a person whose research interest is renewable energy as well as physics.”

“In the future we would like to do it in six weeks,” said Christensen. Kruger interned for four. Kruger made such a good impression that the people who took him in gave him all his money back.

“It was great,” said Kruger. “All the workers were cool guys.” Speaking of his host family he said, “They told me that Austria is a country based in hospitality.”

Christensen said he is writing German letters of thanks which President Linda Hanson will sign. “I’m pleased that there is an interdisciplinary project like that,” said Christensen, “That’s what liberal arts is all about. It should be ancillary to other perspectives.”