Another green energy domino has fallen, this one in the Great Lakes region.
Politically connected green energy barons dreamed of putting up a wind farm in Lake Erie, just offshore of Cleveland, OH. The project was suppose to be the first freshwater wind farm in North America. Those plans have now been put on ice.
The Lake Erie Energy Development Corporation’s board of directors said last week that court challenges and rising costs played into the decision. LEEDCo is the public-private partnership behind Icebreaker. The project has been in the works since 2009….Similar projects are currently in development in New York and Illinois. The pause described as indefinite could mean Ohio loses the lead it had on the region for wind generation.”Demonstrating that we can generate electricity from wind energy in Lake Erie would have been, in and of itself, a really important step as we try to develop alternative forms of energy in response to climate change, and so that we have ample energy to supply to users here in Ohio,” LEEDCo Board Member and Port of Cleveland President Will Friedman told Ideastream’s Zaria Johnson.
The project has been halted, mainly because the regulations were too burdensome to make the venture profitable . . . or even possible.
A nearly 15-year long effort to develop what would have been the first, and possibly only, freshwater wind farm in the United States has been shelved with the developer lashing out at the obstacles and delays created by regulators. Lake Erie Energy Development Corporation (LeedCo) says it is not ready to concede but admits that the project is “financially untenable in the immediate future.”LeedCo points to the long delays and legal challenges it faced while specifically calling out “a project killing condition by the Ohio Power Siting Board which significantly impeded the project.” The company was involved in an extended battle with regulators and legal appeals after the Ohio Power Sitting Board initially ruled that the wind farm would have to cease operations in the evening to protect birds.The company highlights the board spent 18 months of extensive study and review before determining that the wind farm “serves the public interest.” LeedCo says it invested great amounts of time reviewing any potential impact on birds.
Hot Air‘s Beege Welborne reviewed the history behind the 15-year trail-of-flaming-hoops, including an intensive signature campaign to show that local citizens wanted the project (even if their energy bills went up) and submitting poorly done and incomplete environmental impact statements. But the stake driven into the heart of this project came from genuine environmental concerns about the bird life in the region.
They got their thumbs up, but it came in a mitten. Sure they could put their turbines out in the lake, the new chair of the OPSB [Ohio Power Siting Board], Sam Randazzo said, but the blades had to be “feathered” – or stopped – at night for nine months out of the year to protect waterfowl, raptors, and bats. LEEDCO went ballistic, calling it a “poison pill.”
By the time the firm got the approvals to proceed, the funding was freezing up and the Republican legislature nixed the plans for a “surcharge.”
But, as this is the Christmas season, I would like to end on a positive note for our friends in Ohio. A more reliable and efficient energy project is being planned for the state.
A California company has signed an agreement to open two new cutting-edge nuclear power plants by the end of the decade on the site of a long-shuttered Southern Ohio facility built to enrich uranium for nuclear weapons.Oklo Inc., announced this week it intends to build two small, advanced nuclear power plants on part of a 3,700-acre site south of Piketon that once was home to the Portsmouth Gaseous Diffusion Plant. They would be the first nuclear power plants built in Ohio in decades.The two plants, if and when they’re built, would look and operate differently than traditional nuclear power plants, as they would be smaller and able to use the nuclear waste from other reactors as fuel, according to WOUB Public Media.
I am looking forward to counting even more falling green energy dominoes in 2024 with you! There are sure to be plenty.
CLICK HERE FOR FULL VERSION OF THIS STORY