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Bauer would spend most of his working life in U.S. Steel's Fairless Works - until he was forced to retire in 2002, marking the end of an era.
Now, it's the beginning of another, and Bauer, 56, is part of that, too.
It's about wind.
Every morning at 6, Bauer is back at work in one of the old U.S. Steel buildings, heading a team that makes giant hubs for wind turbines.
Gamesa Technology Corp. Inc., part of a Spanish company that's one of the world's largest turbine makers, took over part of the property - now the Keystone Industrial Port Complex - in 2006 and is a key player in its transformation from rust to green.
Across the state, wind has become the dominant renewable-energy fuel.
Nine commercial wind farms with a total of 175 turbines have a capacity of 294 megawatts - enough to power 78,000 households. Five more wind farms under construction will double that by year's end.
About 70 more projects are in development.
"Right now, it's the cheapest renewable resource available," said Charlie Young, a spokesman for the state Department of Environmental Protection. "It's on par, in some cases, with traditional sources of energy."
Indeed, as those fuels rise in price, wind remains free.
Once a plant is built, "you know what its costs are going to be for 25 years," said Tom Tuffey, energy expert for the advocacy group PennFutures.
Nationwide, wind provides just 1.2 percent of electricity needs, but that's changing.
Last year, with $9 billion worth of new projects, U.S. wind power capacity increased 46 percent. Wind accounted for about a third of all new electric generation.
The projects were enough to power 1.5 million homes.
The national wind market is now the fastest-growing in the world.
The federal Department of Energy recently brokered a research collaboration between Gamesa and five other turbine makers aimed at getting 20 percent of the country's electricity needs from wind by 2030.
This month, Texas oil tycoon T. Boone Pickens introduced a plan to get there in 10 years.
Also in Texas, the biggest state for oil and wind, officials have announced the biggest investment in wind energy in U.S. history. Billions of dollars will build transmission lines from windy west Texas to needy urban areas.
Although Pennsylvania's winds hardly rank with those of the Great Plains states - the "Saudi Arabia of wind" - the state still has enough to power five million homes, Gov. Rendell has said.
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