Wind, Lake Erie`s invisible power, awaits a harness
WINDWARD

The audacity to lead. That is what Cleveland needs right now, at a turning point in this nation`s and the state`s energy futures.

Even as Congress prematurely declares the auto industry terminal, northern Ohio has a chance to make the next big thing for manufacturing wind and solar - not out of the ashes of auto, but in concert with the strengths it represents and this region retains.

Such strengths don`t merely include heavy manufacturing capacity and the industrial engineers, skilled workers and transport hubs that go along with it. They also reflect this region`s long history of experimentation on wind, fuel cells, next-generation batteries and photovoltaics.

Yet perhaps most striking of all the local assets are plentiful offshore winds on Lake Erie, which have the potential to feed the world`s most extensive freshwater wind farms while powering industry throughout the region.

Ohio`s pot of gold stands not at the end of some rainbow, but over an entire arc from wind-power invention to production to transmission. It stretches from the smallest component of a wind turbine to an experimental Lake Erie wind farm to the high-voltage lines needed to move that power where it`s needed.

That`s why the American Wind Energy Association wind-power supply chain workshop in Cleveland last week sold out, with more than 800 experts from 30 states attending, and 250 cooling their heels on a waiting list.

According to conference organizers, more than half of those present do not currently work in the wind business.

They were interested in the next big thing.

The next day, it was standing room only at a follow-up conference on the potential of offshore wind development, held at Case Western Reserve University. That meeting`s sponsors revealed the striking local range of interest, from the university`s Great Lakes Institute for Energy Innovation to the Cuyahoga County Prosecutor`s Office, the Great Lakes Energy Development Task Force, the Ohio Department of Development, Ohio Department of Natural Resources and the Ohio Wind Working Group.

They, too, all want in on the next big thing - which could be right around the corner.

Starting next year, a new Ohio energy law doesn`t merely create the springboard for investment in Ohio-based renewable energy. It also seems to be making renewables in the state virtually recession-proof.

"I`ve had the opportunity to talk with some of the current component-part manufacturers that already are doing work here in Ohio, and I believe that there is a sense that this is one industry that has a bright future, and it is full steam ahead," Ohio Gov. Ted Strickland said at a Tuesday news conference tied to the wind-industry workshop. That`s partly because of optimism about President-elect Barack Obama`s promises to invest in renewables.

But Strickland added that the Ohio law requiring utilities serving electric customers in the state to include a percentage of Ohio-generated renewables in the electricity they supply "has had a very important effect just in the few months since it`s been enacted."

Next year`s first annual benchmark is relatively small - one-eighth of 1 percent of electricity that must come from Ohio-generated renewables. Yet it`s already creating a boomlet in energy pricing for Ohio-based renewable power.

Dayton Power & Light Co., serving about half a million customers in west central Ohio, estimates that Renewable Energy Certificates - the currency of green power, sold separately from the actual generated power - are trading at a fivefold premium for Ohio power over national prices, or about $20 per megawatt hour in Ohio, said spokeswoman Mary Beth Weaver.

Can northern Ohio become the epicenter for wind energy? Will it help reinvent the future for autos by setting a new standard for electricity production and industrial innovation?

Richard Stuebi, the BP Fellow for Energy and Environmental Advancement at the Cleveland Foundation, believes the answer to both questions is yes.

Add to a two-to-three-year backlog for wind turbines and solar components the shrinking availability of suitable land near major population centers, and offshore wind automatically starts looking pretty good, he said.

There`s also nowhere to go but up with a federal investment in offshore wind research and development - since today`s federal budget is zero.

And Stuebi says the amount of suitable wind accessible over the Great Lakes greatly surpasses any available along the Atlantic seaboard, where "you have to go hundreds of miles offshore" to find comparable breezes. He sees the technological barriers to designing windmills for lakes prone to winter icing as minimal, although Stuebi says new platforms also would need to be designed.

Some wind conference participants seemed to be wishing for a local Bill Gates of wind power to step forward - someone with the foresight and tenacity to build the corporate structures needed to pull it all together.

And Cleveland has been here before, with wind and solar research expertise that was swiftly devalued as oil prices dipped in the 1980s.

Robert Kozar, interim director of research development at the University of Toledo`s engineering college, remembers that period. He spent 18 years heading NASA`s experimental Plum Brook Station near Sandusky, where Ohio-based scientists pioneered many of the breakthroughs that European wind companies commercialized to lead the field today.

Yet this time Kozar senses a breakthrough moment, where public perceptions about the need for green power have caught up with and surpassed not just the technology but also the to-and-fro associated with oil prices.

"We don`t know how it will all play out," he said, "but I`m more optimistic that renewable energy will survive in this decade, where it didn`t in the `80s.