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Clean energy: Green jobs are the wave of the future

The Buffalo metropolitan area has a unique set of assets that give this region an inside track on creating jobs through clean energy

By Bill Nowak - SPECIAL TO THE NEWS
Updated: 12/02/07 9:34 AM

We stand at the cusp of a new clean energy economy. Climate change and peak oil are twin crises that will have tragic and disorienting consequences as they play out. However, solving these crises creates an enormous opportunity, and thousands of jobs will be generated in coming years as our economic and political systems adjust to the new realities.

Western New York has significant strategic advantages for job growth as a result of the clean energy economy, but we need to act quickly and decisively because other communities across the country are starting to focus intensely on green jobs as the wave of the future.

The Renewable Energy Policy Project recently completed a stateby- state analysis of the job-creating potential of renewable energy technologies. The results of this analysis were very encouraging both for the country as a whole and for New York in particular.

They project that 1,925 firms in New York State can see a growth of 47,930 jobs in wind, solar, geothermal and biomass. Bringing it closer to home, they identified 167 firms in Erie County that have the potential to create 4,276 jobs by manufacturing parts similar or identical to what they are already making for use in clean energy generation.

Communities across the country are gearing up to take advantage of this quickly emerging market sector. Cleveland?s business community has worked through the Cleveland Foundation to vigorously explore the potential for offshore wind energy development. Rochester?s universities, led by RIT, are regularly meeting with businesses and are focused on four types of clean energy ? biofuels, fuel cells, solar and wind energy. They have produced a video titled ?Rochester, the Power Behind Alternative Energy.? In Syracuse, Mayor Matt Driscoll touts energy conservation efforts that have cut city greenhouse gas emissions by 11,000 tons. The list goes on and on. From San Francisco to Chattanooga, communities and businesses with vision are gearing up for the new clean energy economy.

In spite of the cohesive steps other areas have taken to get ahead of the clean energy curve, the Buffalo metropolitan area has a unique set of assets that give this region an inside track on creating jobs through clean energy. If not taken advantage of quickly and decisively, the opportunity will be wrested from us by more aggressive communities. However, for now, our ?one of a kind? combination of seven important assets is unmatched by other U.S. urban areas. Some may have two, three or four of these assets, but development officials from other areas can only salivate at our natural advantages.

These seven assets can be described through the acronym WET SOIL. When one wants to plant a seed, wet soil is the medium of choice:

WIND: Buffalo is perfectly situated at the windy end of Lake Erie. Cleveland and Rochester aspire to be centers for wind technology, and their determination may get them there, but neither has the natural wind resource that pounds the eastern shores of Lake Erie. Wind builds up as it moves across a smooth surface like a lake. As we?ve experienced time and time again in lake-effect storms, the prevailing winds come from the Southwest, moving away from Cleveland and Erie, and toward Buffalo.

According to the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, the Buffalo Airport measures the fifthstrongest winds of U.S. cities with a population of more than 200,000. In 2005, the New York State Energy Research and Development Authority and Erie County joined to produce a shoreline wind study that rigorously documented the wind resource on the Western New York waterfront. This led to the second letter in our acronym.

EXAMPLE: Steel Winds is the largest urban wind farm in North America. The eight turbines on the old Bethlehem Steel site provide monumental advertising both for our wind resource and for the potential that exists for renewal on our urban waterfront brownfields. Any manufacturer looking to make a clear, progressive statement to markets far and wide recognizes the benefit of being associated with this project.

As a pre-eminent example of brownfield reuse, this project has been written up in publications from Reader?s Digest to the New York Times. For the time being, thanks to progressive political leadership from the City of Lackawanna, Steel Winds gives Western New York a huge leg up in the race to establish our regional identity as a hotbed of green activity.

TRANSPORTATION: We are a transportation hub in three different dimensions ? rail, water and trucking. Shipping over water has been a major impetus to our growth spurts in the past, first with the Erie Canal, through which the Western United States was opened up, and then through Great Lakes shipping. In the first half of the 20th century, Buffalo had the nation?s largest capacity in the nation for the storage of grain in more than 30 concrete grain elevators located along the inner and outer harbors on the Buffalo River and Lake Erie.

Our strategic location on the Great Lakes may once again propel us forward. Currently most wind turbine manufacturing is centered in Europe, which has provided the most progressive incentives for renewable energy development. But anyone who has gotten close to commercial-scale wind technology recognizes how expensive it must be to transport these parts halfway around the world. European manufacturers are looking for prime locations to set up new plants in the United States. We need to aggressively invite them to plant one on our . . .

SOIL: Jaws drop when development officials from other areas see the wide-open expanses on our waterfront. Soil ? open land ? is abundant and perfectly located for clean energy development right in the windiest part of our region where rail, shipping and trucking all come together. Incredible, underutilized infrastructure in the form of power lines and supporting small manufacturing shops create a perfect neighborhood for clean energy operations.

In a larger sense, potential industrial sites in Buffalo offer a premier location for shipping. Buffalo sits within 500 miles of 60 percent of the Canadian population and 40 percent of the U.S. population. Of course the flip side of waterfront land is nearby land that sits under water, another significant asset.

OFFSHORE: No one has yet perfected cost-effective wind development in fresh water lakes that freeze, thaw and stress structures, but the day will come soon, and when it does, offshore wind promises to become a significant source of the electricity supply throughout the Great Lakes. As mentioned earlier, Cleveland is banking on this, partly as a result of not having windy, undeveloped on-shore sites.

Lake Erie is the shallowest of the Great Lakes, and the enormous nearshore windy resource at our doorstep on the eastern end of Lake Erie could soon become a major resource in America?s effort to fight climate change. In addition, New York government has developed a decent set of clean energy . . .

INCENTIVES: Brownfield tax credits, a Renewable Portfolio Standard, a state property-tax exemption for renewable projects, the Energy Research and Development Authority and several other state initiatives have created a strong slate of incentives for clean energy development.

Many people are puzzled to learn that Texas, a state dominated by oil interests, is currently leading the nation in wind development. Sure, there are strong winds that blow across the state?s flat plains, but the same is true of much of America?s Midwest. The difference is that Texas adopted an early Renewable Portfolio Standard, a measure that requires utilities to buy a certain percentage of their power from renewable sources in order to do business in the state.

New York has recently adopted a Renewable Portfolio Standard that will require about 25 percent of the power sold in the state to be from renewable sources by 2013. Although New York already starts at 17 percent because of the Niagara Falls and St. Lawrence hydro projects, 8 percent of the state?s electricity market is huge and the standard is fostering intense prospecting by wind developers. This market will create many jobs, and with some skillful work by local development officials, should be enough to attract a manufacturer to this area. And speaking of skill, the last but not least asset on our list is . . .

LABOR: Mark Mitskovski has been a leader in local clean energy efforts, formerly as an Erie County official, and currently as Steel Winds project manager for BQ Energy. According to Mitskovski, BQ internally debated long and hard about whether to use local union labor on the Steel Winds project, as opposed to bringing in folks with experience from out of town. As he tells it, ?much blood was left on the floor? but eventually the decision was made to go local. The results were superlative and many of the local workers have been hired on to maintain the machines, while others are bidding on the many wind projects sprouting up throughout Western New York.

We know how to make things in Western New York. There are 8,000 parts in a modern wind turbine, from rolled steel to space-age composites. Most of them involve materials and processes that workers here know like the back of their hands. Is the axle of a truck much different from the drive shaft that runs from the blades of a wind turbine to the gear box? There may be significant differences, but there is little doubt that the workers at the soon-to-close American Axle plant would be willing and able to bridge that gap.

The Wind Action Group has initiated a petition drive calling on local officials to put together a working group from Erie County, Buffalo, Empire State Development Corp., the New York Power Authority and Buffalo Niagara Enterprise to put on a full-court press to bring a wind turbine manufacturer to Western New York and to help local businesses enter the supply chain for renewable energy, energy efficiency and sustainable development.

This piece focused on wind, because it is the furthest along of our clean energy resources, but similar arguments can be made for solar, biomass, geothermal and energy efficiency.

Bill Nowak is executive director of Buffalo's Green Gold Development Corp. and Communication Committee chairman of the Wind Action Group.