No sooner was the Great Lakes Basin Compact approved in October of 2008 than wind turbine consortiums and manufacturers started talking about the potential of Great Lakes wind to deliver massive amounts of clean energy to the Upper Midwest.
Their hopes and statistics are based on several wind distribution maps. The first, a government-sponsored wind mapping system, shows eastern Wisconsin having the greatest potential. A Wikipedia resource confirms this, and adds the Upper Peninsula area in Michigan as having wind speeds from 12 to 15 miles per hour offshore, with winds exceeding 20 miles per hour on Lake Michigan itself. The U.S. Energy Information Administration, a division of the Department of Energy, rates offshore wind speeds at both Lake Superior and Lake Michigan as ‘good', and wind speeds over the lakes themselves as ‘excellent'.
Clearly the potential is there. On October 1, the Land Policy Institute of MSU released a study (in PDF format) showing that 100,000 wind turbines located off the coast of Michigan could produce almost 322,000 megawatts of energy.
To get an idea of the phenomenal amount of power that represents, consider the fact that one megawatt can power up to 300 homes. This means 322,000 megawatts can electrify up to 96 million homes! It's not just a pipe dream, either. Institute members and some wind power consortiums agree the project is feasible, "once depth, technology, view and environmental concerns" are addressed.
Opponents argue that the supply-side economics won't pan out, because wind doesn't blow all the time. In fact, when speaking of the Lakes, the wind does blow nearly all the time, and at fairly consistent speeds that increase the closer one gets to the middle. Of course, it's not always at 30 or 40 miles per hour, but it is fast enough and consistently enough to provide the Upper Midwest with a whopping amount of ‘green' energy. And, since solar energy is the truly unreliable resource in the Midwest, especially in winter, wind power will go a long way toward filling the eventual gap as the 17 aging nuclear power plants in the area reach decommissioning age.
These proposed freshwater, offshore wind farms, ringing the lakes from Superior to Huron, with Michigan as the flagship enterprise, could produce enough electricity to turn on the lights for all the roughly 40 million inhabitants of the region, with enough left over to light up Indiana, Ohio, Pennsylvania and New York, with Vermont added on as an afterthought.
Environmental boon or disaster? It depends on who you ask. One side is all for it, envisioning row upon row of 12-story turbines spinning merrily as they generate enough electricity for one-third of the entire country. Another side - environmentalists, sportsmen and even some businesses - sees nothing but danger for the Lakes themselves and the commerce based on them.
While the debate rages, government regulators are already considering the legal ramifications. The Great Lakes Compact's language will likely require the consent of all Lake state's governors (Minnesota, Wisconsin, Michigan, Illinois, Indiana, Ohio, Pennsylvania and New York), as well as those of the two participating Canadian provinces, Ontario and Quebec.
While regulators speculate, the 27th Annual International Submerged Lands Management (ISLM) Conference in Traverse City, Michigan debated human and environmental consequences, ranging from commercial haulage to migratory bird flight patterns. The ISLM conference, held from October 26 to 29 and hosted by such notables as the Great Lakes Commission des Grandes Lacs, The Nature Conservancy, and an arm of the U.S. National Oceanographic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA), was aimed at uncovering "possible solutions to conflicting uses".
With no offshore wind projects under its belt, conflicting use is the main regulatory hurdle the U.S. must overcome, and it has no protocols to draw upon. The Cape Wind project, slated for offshore Massachusetts, is still leaping these hurdles, and proposed projects from Texas to Ohio face the inertia of a government and public unfamiliar with wind energy. This has wind power developers holding their breaths, with none anxious to be the first to explore this unknown and likely perilous terrain.
The same is not true of Ireland, the United Kingdom, Denmark, Sweden, and the Netherlands, all of whom have installed offshore wind projects. Germany, with a record two dozen projects ready to go online, recently put its experimental five megawatt Wilhelmshaven turbine on the grid. In Denmark, a 72-turbine farm stands six miles off the coast of Nysted, its 230-foot towers clearly visible.
What might some of the legal and environmental hurdles be? First, there's the Compact. Second, the fact that portions of the Great Lakes freeze over every winter might impact tower stability. Third, according to Chris Shafer of the Thomas M. Cooley School of Law, Great Lakes bottomlands are held in trust for citizens, and states will have to designate sites that would be restricted from use. These areas should include shipping lanes, bird migration corridors and fish spawning locations.
The obstacles are many and varied, the potential for environmental harm large. Nonetheless, Great Lakes offshore wind would likely present less degradation than Hydro Quebec's Rupert River diversion, while providing even more energy to a region growing by leaps and bounds. And, judging by the Lake Benton Wind Project, the towers - even at 100,000 - would be less of an eyesore (pun intended) than PSI Energy's R. Gallagher power plant in Indiana, which ranks number one in terms of sulfur dioxide emissions, the main component of acid rain.
Further Reading:
