Wind At Our Backs?
The Race is On For Clean Renewable Power on Lake Erie

This is an exciting time for Cleveland and Northeast Ohio. More and more people are beginning to appreciate the importance of the region’s strategic location on the shore of Lake Erie. Not only is there easy access to a plentiful supply of fresh water, but the city and its environs also abut the site of a huge untapped energy resource. That energy is contained in the strong winds that blow across the lake.

Now, with every passing day, momentum is building in a movement to tap this abundant source of clean renewable power. Cuyahoga County, the City, The Cleveland Foundation, and Case Western Reserve University have come together to drive forward an initiative to build the world’s first freshwater offshore wind farm. This visionary program would build an array of tall elegant wind turbines a few miles out from Cleveland’s lakeshore. It would be an achievement that would bring honor, prestige, and esteem to Cleveland, and it could give a great stimulus to the regional economy...

A couple of years ago, to the north, some Canadian companies had begun to focus on developing this huge slumbering power supply themselves, and had appeared to be proceeding rapidly towards the establishment of a number of offshore wind farms. However, their initiatives had been stalled by the imposition of a moratorium, in November 2006. This was instituted in response to expressions of concern by some Ontario residents about the possible impact on butterfly and bird migration routes, and on recreational boating and fishing.

The resulting brake on projects that were being considered, or were in the planning stage, caught wind developers off guard, particularly those trying to raise money for their proposals. As well as suffering this setback, the developers also noted the growing interest in wind power generation south of their border. As reported in the Toronto Star: “The wisdom of halting development was called into question when it was discovered that some U.S. states, such as Ohio, were actively moving forward with offshore projects in Lake Erie despite the Ontario policy.”

On January 17, Ontario’s Minister of Natural Resources, Donna Cansfield, announced the lifting of this controversial moratorium on the development of offshore wind projects on the Canadian side of the Great Lakes.

So the efforts in Cuyahoga County have prompted a renewal of interest by the Canadians in developing their own offshore potential, along the north coasts of Lake Erie and Lake Ontario. Given that the planning stages for some of their projects are further along than those in the U.S., it might be assumed that our northern neighbors will soon be able to claim the credit for creating the world’s first freshwater wind farm.

However they face one hurdle that we, in Northern Ohio, fortunately, do not. Much of the proposed Canadian offshore wind development would be supplying electricity to communities quite far from the site of power generation. The cost of transmitting that power to consumers could be very high. In contrast, the customers for a wind farm offshore from Cleveland would need far fewer miles of cabling to hook them up, so that this aspect of the installation would be much more rapidly and cheaply solved.

While all the development of wind power over our Great Lakes that will take place over the coming years will be seen as beneficial to the planet as a whole, regardless of the national origin of the simple yet beautiful instruments that generate it, there will be a particular distinction associated with that first step into the water.

The international attention generated by such a move will stimulate not just business and job growth but the recognition that those taking that initiative will have become world leaders in addressing humanity’s need for the production of sustainable, non-polluting energy.

Question is, will that leadership come from Ontario... or from Ohio?

From Cool Cleveland special correspondent Sarah Taylor sarahATwindustrious.org
Taylor is the founder of the Windustrious Cleveland website, previously featured in Cool Cleveland. http://windustrious.org.

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