The Institutional Investor Guide to Modern Energy - (Page 10) The Institutional Investor Guide to Modern Energy to manage a then 300-person team of engineers, which has since grown to 700 in number, and is expected to top out at more than 1,000 by the end of the year. “Vestas is very much focused on very smart turbines and very light turbines,” says Patton. “Because if fundamentally you have a lighter machine, you need less steel to build it and that’s going to cost less. It means you’re generating lighter loads so you have less to hold up, which translates into a smaller foundation and smaller towers. That means less cost and more money in our customers’ pockets,” he says. Pointing to a three-by-five foot grid cover sitting atop his desk, Patton says he is now in the process of figuring out how to manufacture the piece in plastic rather than steel. “We’ve always used steel because of German and Danish design guidelines and certification requirements,” he says. Tackling Inherent Problems “It doesn’t mean we’re going to make plastic turbines, by any means, but there are — even in cast irons — some new techniques. The Japanese and Chinese steel industries have developed different types of steel we could start using,” he notes. Visual impacts can be greatly minimized through careful design of a wind power plant. Using turbines of the same size and type, and spacing them uniformly can go a long way to satisfying most aesthetic concerns, says Lars Christian Christensen, a vice president in charge of managing the company’s site competence center. Being Nimble with NIMBY* Preparing An Energy Community For Wind Bluewater Wind workers trooped up and down the coast of Delaware in the spring of 2006 to deliver their message at town council meetings, festivals, gatherings of civic groups, and even to people congregating at boardwalk exhibits. In fact, the messengers sent from this U.S. developer of offshore wind energy projects would go wherever they were invited to build support for an offshore wind project they hoped to develop about a dozen miles off the coast of Delaware. “We felt we were starting behind a level playing field,” says Jim Lanard, a spokesman for Bluewater Wind. “We wanted to introduce ourselves to people. We found that people knew nothing about offshore wind projects. They thought of windmills,” he says. The company’s sustained outreach program helped persuade people and government officials that offshore wind was a clean and reliable source of renewable energy that could deliver stable prices to customers, Lanard says. In 2007, the company passed muster with four state agencies during a bidding process and received approval to build their turbines; they then sealed a power purchase agreement with Delmarva Power. “It was a remarkable outcome and a testament to the public support we had,” says Lanard. The project’s first turbine is slated to be built in 2012, with completion a year later. With plans to develop offshore wind projects in Rhode Island, New Jersey and Maryland, Bluewater Wind executives see a wider role for its public outreach. “We work hard. We see ourselves as ambassadors for the industry,” Lanard adds. “The only way to move forward is if there is political and public support behind these projects,” he says. Samir Succar, an energy analyst with the Natural Resources Defense Council, in New York City, agrees. “It’s important to Glenn Wattley, The Alliance to Protect Nantucket Sound develop plans in conjunction with the stakeholders and not just show up at a town hall meeting with a completed plan,” says Succar. “Places where developers work pro-actively with the community to develop support will have a better outcome.” Project Opposition and NIMBY Yet Lisa Linowes, executive director of the Industrial Wind Action Group in New Hampshire, says the public was becoming increasingly aware of wind energy’s detrimental impact on the environment and communities. Projects in New England, for example, had created noise and even indoor shadow problems for homeowners living near the 280-foot turbines. And wind turbines placed on ridgelines created soil erosion problems while destroying sight lines. “Investors better understand that there is growing opposition across the country to these projects,” says Linowes, whose 10 • Institutional Investor Guide to Modern Energy • March 2009 This Special Report was prepared by the Special Projects Department of Institutional Investor.
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