Callahan’s Cleveland Diary

From the Cuyahoga County Regional Energy Task Force’s report to the County Commissioners, page 10:

A wind pilot and research project in Lake Erie would also bolster the Cuyahoga region’s emerging reputation for embracing economic development through clean energy. The marketing and tourism benefits already generated by the Great Lakes Science Center wind turbine could grow exponentially with the development of the world’s first freshwater wind farm right off our shores. Much like Seattle has the Space Needle and St. Louis has the Gateway Arch, Cleveland could have its own iconic structure: wind turbines in an aesthetically configuration in Lake Erie.

Our “emerging reputation for embracing economic development through clean energy”? “Marketing and tourism benefits”? “Iconic structure”?

Oh my god. And you wonder why people are embarrassed to say they’re from around here.

Here’s a survey of utility-scale wind power projects throughout the U.S. at the end of 2006. Click on the map and check out the state by state totals (especially California, Texas, Minnesota, Iowa, Pennsylvania). Then click on Ohio.

Where do you suppose our alleged “emerging reputation” comes from? That quarter-megawatt museum exhibit in front of the Science Center?

Well, maybe it’s all the solar panels you see downtown. Or all the electric and biodiesel vehicles on our streets. Or the hundreds of thousands of CF bulbs we’ve installed in our homes, or the ground heat pumps in thousands of our back yards.

Oh, right, we don’t have any of those things, do we? But maybe, if the Task Force has its way, in five or six years we’ll have a $20 million iconic structure out on the lake.

Let’s say, just hypothetically, that there was a Task Force looking for a “regional energy strategy” that was actually about energy: how much the region is going to need, what we use it for, how to use it more efficiently, how to send less money out of town to pay for it, how to reduce its economic drag on households, businesses and taxpayers, how to get it without turning so much coal and methane into CO2.

Let’s imagine this Task Force was concerned about these energy issues for their own sake… not as an excuse to start a new business sector, attract tourists, improve our reputation or build an iconic structure. And let’s imagine, just hypothetically, that the members were realists who understood that others are far ahead of us on this road, and that we need to learn to walk before we can expect to join the frontrunners.

Do you suppose this hypothetical Task Force would conclude that our first investment priority should be a handful of experimental wind plants that can’t go on line in less than five years; must be engineered from the ground up with unpredictable costs, unpredictable construction and operating problems, and unpredictable output economics; and for all these reasons can only be built with millions of dollars in scarce public subsidies that would otherwise support lots of smaller, less risky initiatives?

I wouldn’t. But maybe that’s just me.

Maybe that’s one reason I don’t get appointed to task forces.

This entry was posted on Tuesday, March 13th, 2007 at 9:13 am and is filed under Utility blogger. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.