Jeff Buster and I attended the ASES Conference in the Cleveland Convention Center in 2007 and there met Dr. Stefan Schmitz who was at that time with the London office of Squire Sanders. He has moved as of September 2008 to McDermott, Will & Emery. In the article linked below he makes a good argument that aligns with Jeff's argument that Cleveland should have begun to support turbine manufacturing before wind on the lake.

Schmitz is a lawyer with extensive knowledge of the regulatory hurdles ahead of wind farm projects. As I recall, he said that 10 turbines in the lake was laughable and not cost effective. The costs to do the legal work need to be offset by the return on investment. If you're going to do the legal work for three, you'd be better off erecting a much larger number of them. So if Cleveland is to be part of a renewable energy renaissance in wind, our current assets such as moribund manufacturing facilities and manufacturers who have the capability to fashion the component parts of the lagging turbine production industry could have been supported and providing green jobs already while a handful of local folks got up to speed on the wind industry.

"More than 90 companies in the state already crank out many of the 8,000 parts needed to build a wind turbine.

"We have companies making bearings, generators, electronics and fasteners [for wind turbines] within a half-hour drive of Terminal Tower," said Ed Weston, a task force member and expert on Ohio's wind energy supply chain.

That manufacturing capacity is a big reason the American Wind Energy Association is hosting a national, two-day conference, opening this morning at the InterContinental Cleveland hotel.

While the wind industry is growing fast, it's still constrained by a supply chain that can't meet the demand for wind turbine components."

Quadruple this and build a top to bottom tubine industry in Ohio, hire an expert and get those tubines spinning on land - then talk about ice in the lake.

Farmers in Ohio have plenty of prime land, and if the ethanol market continues to tank (as it should), and if Obama lags in revamping agriculture subsidies as he has, farmers need the financial help that turbines sited in their fields could bring. 

The financial scale of the 10 turbines proposed for Lake Erie by the Commissioners is far too small to attract any bona fide attention because costs - such as the legal costs - don't scale down by the megawatt output of a wind farm. In other words, a 100 megawatt wind farm will have essentially the same legal costs as a 20 megawatt wind farm. Dr. Schmitz said that as a rule of thumb a $50 million dollar project was necessary at a minimum to make the project economically attractive.

Developing and financing the American wind market 

Sometimes it is good to listen to an expert. Is Mason a legal expert on wind energy regulations? 

We have a few people here in Ohio who are doing double duty while there are surely other minds that could use the opportunity and have the expertise. Ronn Richard as the infrastructure czar to the federal stimulus is another prime example of a double dipper. While he already earns a salary near what bank CEOs will top out at, he has been handed a sweet job by Governor Strickland - "dole out the stimulus money for me, will ya, Ronn?" Ohio is still mired in the old boy network.