Shifting winds for Great Lakes energy; Minnesota leads way

Strong gusts give the Great Lakes region the potential to become a renewable energy hub. And economic winds, too, may be shifting in favor of wind energy.

Consider:

• The first U.S. offshore wind project was approved last week off the Massachusetts coast.
• Ohio recently announced a 20-megawatt, $100 million offshore wind project in Lake Erie.
• The New York Power Authority is looking for a developer to install up to 500 megawatts of offshore wind in Lake Erie, Lake Ontario or both.
• A Minnesota-based company announced in March that it wants to bring a wind turbine manufacturer – and about 3,000 jobs – to western Michigan, and to build a wind facility 6 miles off the coast of Grand Haven.

There are currently no offshore wind turbines in the Great Lakes. But on land, the region’s states have begun to put their turbines where their wind is.

And by most metrics, Minnesota is the king of wind in the Great Lakes:

• The state generated 8 percent of its energy through wind in 2008 – the highest percentage in the country, according to the U.S. Energy Information Administration. The seven other Great Lakes states ranked below the U.S. average of 1.34 percent.
• Nationally, Minnesota ranked third in 2008 for total wind production, generating more than 4.3 million megawatt hours – that’s 2 million more than Illinois, which ranked ninth. New York produced 1.25 million megawatt hours, good for 13th. No other Great Lakes state produced more than 1 million megawatt hours in 2008, the most recent year reported by the agency.
• Minnesota has been the most aggressive, too, adding almost 2.8 million megawatt hours from 2005 to 2008. Illinois and New York increased their wind-generation totals by about 2.2 million and 1.1 million megawatt hours, respectively, during that time frame. The other Great Lakes states combined increased production by about 1.2 million megawatt hours.

So why is Minnesota leading the region in wind generation? The easy answer is that strong winds blow along the state’s border with the Dakotas. The state ranks 10th nationally in wind capacity potential, according to land-based estimates by the National Renewable Energy Laboratory.

“Those are really high-class winds,” says Roopali Phadke, assistant professor in the Department of Environmental Studies at Macalester College in St. Paul. “When you compare that with Michigan, Wisconsin, for instance, they just aren’t endowed with the same wind resources as Minnesota. So there are some natural conditions that make it possible.”

But the rest of the Great Lakes states also rank relatively high for wind quality: Illinois, Indiana, Wisconsin, Michigan and Ohio rank 14th-18th, respectively. New York ranks 21st.; Pennsylvania 29th, according to the National Renewable Energy Laboratory.

Other factors have contributed to Minnesota’s robust wind energy industry, Phadke says, including state incentives for community-based energy development.

“We have a really fantastic support for community wind,” she says.

Windustry, a Minneapolis-based wind-advocacy group, defines community wind as “locally-owned, commercial-scale wind projects that optimize local benefits.” The initiative allows communities and farmers to produce their own wind energy, and sell it to utilities.

Minnesota leads the nation in community wind production, according to the group. The state has 469 megawatts of community wind capacity. Ohio is second in the Great Lakes region with 8 megawatts.

“Our neighboring states can’t even match our community wind levels,” Phadke says.

Minnesota was the first in the region to implement a renewable energy objective in 2003, encouraging utilities to produce 10 percent of their power through renewable sources by 2015. In 2007, the state mandated a 25 percent renewable portfolio standard by 2025.

It’s not alone:

• Illinois has also mandated a 25 percent renewable standard by 2025.
• Michigan’s standard calls for 10 percent by 2015.
• New York is on the hook for 24 percent by 2013
• Pennsylvania’s standard requires 8 percent by 2020.
• Wisconsin must reach 10 percent by 2015.
• And Ohio requires 12.5 percent by 2025.

In all, 33 states and the District of Columbia have set renewable portfolio requirements or goals, according to the EPA.

Indiana is the only Great Lakes state without a renewable energy target. And it didn’t report wind energy production to the Energy Information Agency until 2008, when it generated about 238,000 megawatt hours.

The potential for wind production in the Great Lakes is huge, but the region is a long way from fully tapping it, says Orhan Yildiz, project leader and industry economist at the U.S. Energy Information Administration.

“In the Great Lakes area, they always talk about the [wind energy] capacity and potential they have, but I’m not sure they’ve taken action on that,” he says.

Even with its progress, Minnesota produces just about one-quarter of 1 percent of its potential, according to the National Renewable Energy Laboratory. Pennsylvania leads the Great Lakes states, generating 7.54 percent of its total estimated potential in 2008 with its relatively meager 729,000 megawatt hours.

But while Minnesota currently blows away the other Great Lakes states, Michigan could surpass the state by 2030, according to a 2008 U.S. Department of Energy report. The report estimated Michigan could generate more than 10 gigawatts of wind energy by tapping considerable offshore resources.

Phadke is skeptical.

“How will this happen? That’s really the big question,” she says. “It’s one thing if Minnesota had to get there, because we’ve already made such significant strides. But I think it’s a huge leap to think that Michigan could be in this category.”

No matter which state leads the charge, Great Lakes Renewable Energy Association Executive Director Jennifer Alvarado believes the Great Lakes region is poised to serve as a major wind-producer.

“I think it’s going to come from our companies here, and the manufacturing, the technology and the expertise that we’re going to be able to put behind that industry,” she says.

Phadke says the region’s future as a wind-energy nerve center will depend on how leaders balance mitigating carbon output through new energy development – such as placing wind farms offshore – while preserving the Great Lake’s aesthetics.

“[There are] really huge concerns around what it means to industrialize the lakes,” she says. “We can look at the politics of water around the Great lakes as evidence that people are going to be really concerned about wind developments that are sort of in the scale of industrial developments in these protected areas.”