Now is the time for Lakewood to chase Windmills

[Donald Farris]

Hi,
There is a good chance we could very soon have a President that is going to invest heavily in renewable resources.

One major renewable resource is wind and building windmills to generate electricity.

The newest windmills are HUGE. They have to be constructed by a waterway so they can be transported.

I think our City should propose building a new peninsula off of W117th to house the Lakewood WindMill factory. I know congress is studying this now and if we had a rough plan on the table and several things happen we could have great factory jobs in Lakewood.

What do you think?

[c. dawson]

all I know is that every time I walk my dog down West Clifton, towards the Rocky River valley, the wind is a-gusting, and I keep thinking, "geez, someone should put up a windmill here and get all this free energy."

[Donald Farris]

Hi,
I guess I'm stupid, but until this election, I have missed the point that all these dollars we send overseas for oil are taking dollars out of our economy. Plus they are giving others dollars to send on things like our businesses. It's ok if they buy our products, but when they use those dollars to buy our economy generators we are hurt in a compounded way.

I hear some say windmills are not the answer. But they do offer us in NE Ohio several much needed benefits:
1). Comparable energy that is clean and renewable
2). There is a backlog in purchasing windmills (high demand). So there is a market for them.
3). Building Windmills is relatively a clean process and we have quality workers.
4). NASA Lewis is the knowledge source for the World on windmills.
5). Lake Erie offers us 3 super things that makes Lakewood an ideal site for their construction. a). They would work well on the Lake so we can utilize them here. b). The Lake offers an ideal way to transport these massive parts around the World. c). It provides us with an unused area that we can grow Lakewood by building a peninsula to put it on.

With a Lakewood Windmill factory the dollars spent on that technology and energy will be recycled here in NE Ohio. Over and over and over again.

[Tim Liston]

The biggest problem with windmills is that any discussion of them just perpetuates the mistaken notion that we can continue with business as usual: big single-family homes with all the conveniences, unfettered motoring, industrial-scale agriculture, inventory on wheels, etc. Not to mention even the ongoing basic care and feeding of over six billion people, which isn't happening even now. So instead of engaging in a dialog about substantially reducing our energy requirements, we continue to discuss how windmills, biofuels, cap-and-trade, oil sands, compact fluorescent lighting and other schemes can perpetuate the status quo. (Actually, it appears the biofuel “solutionâ€￾ is finally being debunked as “impractical.â€￾ Well it should have been debunked as “utter nonsense to begin with.â€￾ Hopefully windmills will be next.)

The status quo will not be perpetual. There are no alternatives to low-cost fossil fuels that will permit us to continue our current standard of living indefinitely. There probably never will be. So no matter what we do, energy is going to become much more expensive, and things are going to have to change. And even if fossil fuel alternatives could support the status quo, which is highly unlikely, we just don't have enough time left to deploy them. We will wish we had started about 20 years ago.

I honestly don't relish raining on parades and I wish we weren't facing this outcome. But if we don't start talking seriously about reducing our energy footprint, we (and especially our children) are going to suffer the consequences. Right now, any discussion of energy alternatives is just a distraction, and will make the eventual ratcheting down of our standard of living even more traumatic.

I can't believe as a nation we are talking about where we should situate windmills, and how we keep them from killing birds, and not about how we restore our railroads, or how we ensure food security when oil (or maybe water?) shortages render industrial agriculture completely untenable. Certainly both major party presidential candidates are also guilty of happy talk about alternative energy. They remind me of that TV commercial. You know the one: “don't worry, we're BP, we're going green and we got yer back...â€￾. What nonsense....

[Lynn Farris]

In Costa Rica, 95% of the electrical energy is renewable and they don't use natural gas.

They are increasing the wind energy currently. This is working very well here. The energy needs of this country as it develops is expanding and the country is keeping up with those needs very well. It is a priority here.

Birds are really a non-issue if you study this. Even the audabon society is supporting them. There were a few bad examples where they were put in very early, but now they kill less birds than tall office buildings and far less than cats. This is really a problem articulated by the oil industry, in an attempt to stop renewable energy.

Our son did his honor's thesis on this topic and came to the conclusion that Obama's plan which was proposed by Jay Insles a representative from Washington to have a Energy program much like the NASA program was the best solution. After a lot of research, he determined that people won't sit in the dark, they won't not turn on the air conditioner when it is hot. We need to innovate and find low use energy solutions that won't change our lives. A great example is flourescent light bulbs. They work the same way give us light and use a fraction of the energy.

One of my favorite ideas that he found was algae. It was amazing, but the Bush Administration stopped the research. There were other great ideas that were low cost and easy to implement. For example using white pavement instead of black saved lots of money. Using white roofs instead of black also saved lots of money and both reduced global warming.

[Tim Liston]

The U.S. Is home to 5% of the world's people but uses 25% of the world's energy. The rest of the world is home to 95% of the population and uses 75% of the energy. That means we consume about 6.3 times more energy per capita (25/5 divided by 75/95) than the rest of the world, on average. That's a staggering and frankly embarrassing figure.

Right now, the three main fossil fuels (coal, oil, natural gas) supply 86% of the energy we consume in the U.S. So 14% is supplied by alternatives. If our per capita consumption of fuel was the same as the rest of the world, we could already be supplying upwards of 88% of our energy needs from alternative sources.

The reason Costa Rica is less dependent on fossil fuels is not because they have adopted alternative sources. The reason is because they use much less energy than we do.

[Lynn Farris]

You are right Tim, Costa Rica does use less energy, but they have made a concerted effort to use alternative forms of renewable energy such as hydro-electric, wind and geothermal. In fact they have just made an investment for 55 more municipal windmills which will significantly increase the production of energy from wind. In a country this size, this is huge.

This is a very environmentally conscious country. They market themselves as a country that cares about the environment. In fact they have put aside a greater percent of their land as national parks than any other country in the world.

But the exciting thing about the energy crisis is the opportunity it gives us. China is growing at a rapid pace and wants the energy use we have. We can't say you can't build coal power plants like we did.

In our economic times, now we can grab the market on affordable renewable energy sources. We can be the ones with the green jobs exporting green ideas. Not only will it solve our economic woes, make the country more environmentally sound, it may also get us out of the middle east. Plus we may be selling to China our new energy products. A win/win/win/win proposition.

[Donald Farris]

Hi,
Mr. Liston you said:

The status quo will not be perpetual. There are no alternatives to low-cost fossil fuels that will permit us to continue our current standard of living indefinitely.

I don't agree. There are many alternatives. As Lynn said I think Shell developed this algae that made oil. It was so effective that the Bush Administration killed it right away.

There are currently may forces working hard to keep us dependent on oil.

I believe once we are using alternatives we will be amazed we waited so long.

Regardless, of your personal thoughts (which are admirable) windmills are being built and sold by EU nations now. Not China. America needs to start taking these jobs away from these others. NE Ohio has not gotten its fair share of Washington money and we could have a chance to get some. But if we don't ask I know we won't get it.

I'm just trying to make the point that with a little work for our elected officials Lakewood could take advantage of this opportunity. We could get real clean manufacturing jobs. Not some minimum wage retail jobs that you can't live on.

[Donald Farris]

Hi,
Well, it seems much more likely that the US is now going to invest in developing renewable energy industries. I hope Lakewood can get a piece of the action. Wake Up Lakewood City Council! Now is your chance. Make a few phone calls. Turn the improbably into reality.

[Will Brown]

I'm not sure a realist would go to the expense of constructing a peninsula, destroying an influential residential neighborhood in the process, when there is so much underused industrial property with water access in the immediate area, such as Cleveland and Lorain.

As to installing windmills here, Lake Erie is considered by sailors to be an area of light and flaky winds; I would think for power generation we would want an area where the winds are more constant and, preferably stronger, although the demonstration model near the foot of east ninth seems to be active in even the lightest winds, but I'm not certain how much power it could generate.

[Jim O'Bryan]

I'm not sure a realist would go to the expense of constructing a peninsula, destroying an influential residential neighborhood in the process, when there is so much underused industrial property with water access in the immediate area, such as Cleveland and Lorain.

Will


The expense was in line, and nothing would have been destroyed. Actually many thought property value would have gone up for the entire city.

This would have been the views of realtors and developers we spoke to while doing the story.

I personally am not a fan of windmills yet, as they seem to be not as energy efficient as some think when you add in the carbon footprint of making them.

However I am quickly changing my mind on solar, even in Cleveland. We are now involved with a large project that has a massive solar panel installation, largest between East Coast and Phoenix. The numbers as projects are pretty interesting.

FWIW


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[Stephen Eisel]

One windmill = 1 day of electricity for 450 homes.....

[Jim O'Bryan]

One windmill = 1 day of electricity for 450 homes.....

Not true, not even best case scenario.

From everything I have read or seen on the subject, and this could be old data. A windmill just starts to clear into the plus side at 5 years. It is also around that point, they start to need repair.

I would think, that like solar, that should slowly decrease into a much better proposition. No matter you and I both know H3 is the key.

Uou actually typing something in really freaked me out.

I must have clicked on each word 20 times. (is that right?)


.

[Stephen Eisel]

Life is like a box of chocolates The PD had an article about wind farms and how much electricity each windmill would produce out on Lake Erie.. This area is primo for wind farms...

[Stephen Eisel]

no clicky for you round eye