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Front & Center
Gas drilling could take air out of offshore wind
Cleveland has the best shot at building a Great Lakes wind farm. But the financing remains uncertain as Ohio focuses on energy that could generate more jobs.
Chip Mitchell | Nov. 09, 2011
I understand the power of Lake Erie wind as soon we’re out past the breakwaters of Cleveland Harbor. The waves make our 74-foot tugboat bob like a rubber toy in my preschooler’s bath tub.
Before long, I’m sweating and looking for a place to heave.
Right next to me, Bill Mason seems to be enjoying the ride. In fact, he wants to show me a spot where the wind is even stronger. “Where we’re headed is to an anemometer,” Mason says, mispronouncing the instrument’s name. “It’s been measuring the wind speeds since, I think, 2007. So I know we have good wind.”
Mason doesn’t know all the particulars about wind energy. But, as the Cuyahoga County prosecutor, he knows a lot about Northeast Ohio. Since taking office in 1999, Mason has seen about a 100,000 manufacturing jobs disappear from the area.
Installing a handful of wind turbines offshore could spark a revival, Mason says, changing Cleveland’s image from a deindustrialized ghost town to “a green city on the blue lake.”
Mason has been promoting the wind-farm idea for seven years. In 2009, he helped form a quasi-public group, the Lake Erie Energy Development Corporation, to turn the idea into reality. Representing Cleveland and four counties along the lake, LEEDCo has held dozens of community meetings. It has secured an option for nine square miles of the lake. It has studied possible impacts on wildlife. And it has begun work on designs and permits.
Mason tells me Cleveland could help build offshore wind farms throughout the Great Lakes. He points to the city’s proximity to rail lines, deep-water port facilities and manufacturers. He says companies in the area could retool to make parts and supplies ranging from transmission cables to ice-resistant blade coating. The wind-farm supporters commissioned a study that says their project could lead to 15,000 new Ohio jobs within two decades.
The supply chain could include Lincoln Electric, which makes welding equipment in Euclid, a suburb northeast of Cleveland. Lincoln Electric is already getting a taste of wind-energy generation since installing a 443-foot-tall turbine this year to help power the company’s main plant.
Driving up the lakeshore, I can see the three rotor blades spinning from miles away. On a windy day, the tips go 160 miles an hour, the company tells me. But I can’t hear any sound from the turbine until I’m within a stone’s throw. Looking straight up at the blades, I notice a subtle swoosh as each one passes.
The turbine has given a lot of local people—from regulators to engineers to truck drivers—their first contact with a wind project. Lincoln Electric energy manager Seth Mason (no relation to the prosecutor) says this experience could help with the offshore installation, which would be just a few miles away.
“You basically have the same wind regime [and] you’re basically going to have the same amount of migratory birds at this longitude,” Mason says. “So I think it provides a case study for the next machine.”
It’s not just local boosters who think a Lake Erie wind farm could revive Northeast Ohio. Christopher Hart, the U.S. Department of Energy’s offshore wind chief, sees it that way too. “If a place like Cleveland is able to establish the demonstration project and then is able to leverage that demonstration project into a larger position in the industry, this could really, really have an impact on the local economy.”
Hart tells me Cleveland has the best shot at installing the first Great Lakes wind farm. But he points to a huge barrier: “Given the current technology, given the current regulatory structure, offshore wind doesn’t make economic sense.”
DOE calculations suggest it’s more than twice as expensive to generate electricity from offshore wind as from coal, natural gas or nuclear fission. The New York Power Authority pointed to costs this fall when it pulled the plug on some proposed Great Lakes turbines.
That frustrates Chris Wisseman, who leads a consortium called Freshwater Wind that LEEDCo chose last year to develop Cleveland’s offshore wind farm. “All we’re talking about here is a new technology that looks like it’s got the ability to be very cost-effective inside of a decade,” he says.
The construction will run about $130 million, Wisseman tells me. The financing will be tricky because few utilities are eager to buy electricity that is so expensive. The only purchaser on board so far is municipally owned Cleveland Public Power, which has agreed to buy a quarter of the wind-farm output.
So LEEDCo is pushing for Ohio to compel utilities to buy the electricity and pass along the cost to customers—a process known as rate recovery. If the plan covered just northern Ohio, Wisseman says, business and residential customers would each pay an extra $0.40 a month.
The area’s big utility, Akron-based First Energy, says it won’t take a stand on that rate recovery until it sees a proposal. The Ohio Association of Manufacturers tells me it will probably go along with the plan if it doesn’t hit electricity-intensive companies hard.
But rate recovery won’t get far without support from Gov. John Kasich. He appoints the members of the Public Utilities Commission of Ohio, which regulates the state’s electricity rates. And his Republican Party controls both houses of the state legislature.
At an energy forum Kasich’s office organized this fall, the governor didn’t leave any doubt that his energy focus would be an Appalachian rock layer called Utica Shale. In Ohio, that shale holds a lot of natural gas. To free up the fuel, companies such as Oklahoma-based Chesapeake Energy Corp. want to drill thousands of horizontal wells and inject pressurized fluids—a process known as fracking.
An industry-funded study says the fracking could create more than 200,000 jobs in Ohio over the next four years. The potential boom is keeping Kasich’s staff busy. “We have had 129 separate meetings—5 regional meetings, 78 with business associations, 46 meetings with oil-and-gas division experts—all across Ohio,” the governor said at the forum.
At the same time, contaminated groundwater in nearby Pennsylvania is giving fracking a bad name. Kasich promises environmental safeguards for Ohio.
The governor says he’ll also promote renewable energy efforts. So, when I catch up with him, I ask whether those will include Cleveland’s offshore wind project.
“There is a place for renewables,” Kasich replies. “But we have to be very clear: They’re very expensive. That doesn’t mean there aren’t opportunities in the state. It doesn’t mean that over time they [won’t] become less expensive. But specific projects have to be looked at very, very carefully.”
I press Kasich, asking whether he will support the rate recovery proposed for the offshore project. He declines to answer.
Another Ohio Republican is talking about that rate recovery. State Sen. Kris Jordan, who represents suburbs north of Columbus, tells me it’s a bad idea. “I just don’t believe—when we have more affordable, more ready energy sources—that government should be subsidizing" an offshore wind farm.
Back on the Lake Erie tugboat, the vessel’s captain notices my pale color. He says he once had to clean off a seasick crewmate with a hose.
Bill Mason, the prosecutor behind the proposed wind farm, agrees I’ve seen enough of the lake. On the way back to port, he shakes his head at the thought of a natural-gas boom tripping up his project.
“We don’t know how much energy is going to be produced from this fracking,” Mason says. “We don’t know the environmental damage that possibly could happen from it. And we don’t know what it’s going to cost, if there is damage, for that recovery. If we take that step down that road, won’t it be nice to know that we have other alternatives such as the wind industry out here on the Great Lakes?”
And wouldn’t it be nice, Mason adds, if the center of that industry were Cleveland?
Great Lakes wind projects struggle for footing
Offshore wind-energy advocates face tall hurdles in the Great Lakes, but some projects are advancing. WBEZ’s Maham Khan brings us these snapshots.
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Comments
Hey Chip,
Boy, not only did you get tossed around on the boat, you swallowed the hook, line and sinker. You were taken out by people who stand to gain lots of money with wind turbines. What did you expect?
It's the rest of the people, the majority, who will be paying the bill. Their big talk about jobs created? not so, according to recent government reports. Actually, we'd be looking at NET losses with the burden of the high costs. Did they tell you that a few weeks ago, the Lake Erie proposal in NY was given up on because they said it would require $60-$100 million just in subsidies EVERY YEAR. on top of the billion dollars to construct them.
The EIA has put the cost of offshore wind 2 1/2 times the cost of fossil fuels, and that's in salt water. Ice tends to make for problems that could only increase costs and decrease the already short life of a turbine, 25 years. That would be giving our children and grandchildren a big mess to clean up, and costly.
Wind turbines "cannot displace or replace the need for baseload generation" according to Consumers Energy's "Balanced Energy Initiative" report. Putting a few wind turbines in Lake Erie will not affect any change as far as closing a baseload power plant, rather it would be an added cost burden. What's the point?
I live in Grand Haven, MI. and believe me, offshore wind would not be welcomed here either.
You basically should read more, and not rely on info. from stakeholders. I'd like to read your take on that, in print. No other paper in the entire Midwest has written anything negative about offshore wind. Why do you think that is?
Great that WBEZ is doing stories on offshore wind in the Great Lakes because people need to be informed beyond...."offshore wind is good because its green" or "offshore wind is bad because it will deface the lake". I am not an expert, but there is more to this issue than meets the eye.
Some comments about this particular story are:
1). This story seemed to imply that the only downside to offshore wind in the Great Lakes might be cost. There are definitely other things besides cost, about which we should be concerned, not limitted to, but including that there is very little research on the ecological impacts of offshore wind farms in fresh water. There is only one other place in the world where fresh water wind power is being used. And it is practically brand new. Data collected there may or may not be applicable to the Great Lakes. One example of an ecological concern for Lake Michigan is to look at whether wind turbines in the water break up/prevent the formation of ice along the shore that protects the coastal ecology in winter. And will that, in turn, lead to more non point polluting runoff? There are many other ecological questions to be answered.
2).This story seemed to imply that offshore wind turbine power is an alternative to fossil fuels. It makes it look like its one or the other....if that were the case, the clear choice would be wind. This is, at best an oversimplification and maybe just not true. Wind is an intermittent power source, and I don't believe there's any way to store it (yet). Therefore a back up power source which is not intermittent, is required (including fossil fuels, nuclear, hydropower).
I hope that people living in the Great Lakes basin will comment on my post and the others here and that WBEZ will continue to do stories to keep people looking at the many issues there are. Its so important that we get this right. As we hear over and over again, the Great Lakes hold 20%+ of the world's surface fresh water and 95% of North America's. We've been exploiting the lakes for at least 200 years. A hundred years ago, people thought of them as a limitless resource. We now know that the Lakes’ ability to tolerate and withstand our encroachment is not limitless.
I just looked at your story and I think you missed a very basic point: Can initial offshore wind be developed w/o a strong federal presence and support?
Initial commercial projects of every energy technology will be more expensive by virtue of their being the first. These initial costs stem from techology risk and process costs. State regulatory commissions are restricted from passing these kind of costs along to ratepayers in the absence of specific enabling law. And most of these technology commercialization efforts really benefit at least the nation if not the world...
Loan guarantees, initial cost buy-downs, targeted process R&D, support for the supply chain industries are all necessary...and they are now missing.
The technical potential of domestic offshore wind is 4,500,000 MW about three times the installed capacity of the electric industry now...will we pass it off to Europe and China?
Is shale gas going to make renewables like offshore wind uneconomic. Forever. Maybe. But a lot of the decline in the price of natural gas should be attributed to the recession. According to a study done by the industry four years ago, US natural gas consumption should have been at 28-29 trillion cubic feet year by now. Instead annual usage is about 23 tcf. As one industry insider put it: "The quickest way to $8 gas is to assume $5 gas will last forever.
"Mason doesn't know all the particulars about wind energy", but he seems to know they are going to create 15,000 new jobs! Mr. Mason should do all of us a favor and educate himself thourghly. Mr. Mason is pulling numbers out of thin air. Are these long term jobs or short term jobs. Are the jobs specifically required in the Request for Proposal"?
What effect will the higher cost of wind energy have on jobs in Ohio?
Exactly how many wind turbines will be put into the lake for $130 million? One, ten or one hundered and ten? I'd like to know. The bid for the Cape Wind project was for 140 wind turbines at a price of $2.3 billion!! Will Ohio be shocked at the price tag of this project?
I'd like answer to some of these questions.
LEEDCO's push for "rate recovery" will doom consumers with electric power costing several times what they now pay and lead to fuel poverty just like what's happening now in Ontario and the UK. Compelling consumers to buy low quality, expensive, volatile, intermittent electric from a plant that won't last 20 years and operates less than 25% of the time is outrageous! Have a look at Buffalo's failed Steel Winds project on the shore of Lake Erie - it is truly an embarrassment. Bad as wind is - fracking is worse! How could anyone possibly justify the risk of forever contaminating our precious water supply with chemicals? Wind and fracking both have a common denominator - GREED and selling out the environment for the sake of a few jobs. Isn't Ohio smarter than this? Although not perfect - think NUCLEAR or better yet - mini or modular nuclear.
Fracking is the answer? sigh Kasich just had his butt handed to him by the workers/voters of Ohio.
Overturning his poor legislation received a higher percentage than put him in office. Not to mention his current 30 some % approval rating.
Yet, he still has no lack of hubris. But, he will certainly have options beyond "pollutics" in the private sector lobbying for the same corporations he is currently a shill for.
Everybody has to make their own mistakes. And then some get to make the mistakes for many.
I presume their hindsight will be much better than their foresight.