Climate and energy

Held in the “windy city” of Chicago this year, AWEA’s annual WINDPOWER Conference & Exhibition brought together over 22,000 people to visit over 12,000 exhibitors, and attend sessions on siting, transmission, asset management, technology, community wind, project development, supply chain, policy, and more.

As a WINDPOWER novice, I found the choices a bit overwhelming.  I spent most of my time on policy, supply chain and trying to decipher how the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act (ARRA) affects wind financing. The supply chain pre-conference session gave an overview of the anatomy of a wind turbine (nacelle, hub, blade, tower), what makes up the supply chain for an OEM, major component sourcing and value chain services. (For a really great visual on what makes up a turbine, check out Gamesa’s website.)

WINDPOWER was an opportunity for states who understand the supply chain to showcase their success. For example, Ohio has more than 50 globally competitive companies in the wind energy supply chain. The Ohio Energy Office has also sponsored a collaborative project led by the Great Lakes Wind Network (GLWN) to identify 300 companies that can retool, retrofit, and replace facilities and business strategies to serve the growing demand for wind power components.

In Iowa, wind-power manufacturers like Siemens, Acciona and Clipper among others have committed $300 million in direct capital investment, and created between 1,000 and 1,200 jobs. In addition, more than 200 Iowa-based firms are now part of the supply chain for these manufacturers.

Everyone at WINDPOWER seemed to agree that ARRA will play a huge role in financing both commercial scale and potentially community wind in 2010.  The big story in 2009 is the lack of capital. The recovery bill tries to address this problem in several ways:

Details about the ins and outs of these programs expect to be released between May and July.

I didn’t even attempt to check out all the exhibitors at the conference. The exhibit floor was amazing – component manufactures of all shapes and sizes, harness equipment used for scaling turbines, developers from all over the world, plus everything in between.

My competitive spirit really got going when I walked through Ohio, Iowa and Michigan’s booths. Those states clearly were courting wind manufacturers and developers with everything they had.

Kansas has a long ways to go! Landing a company like Siemens is just the beginning if we want to make Kansas the Wind Capitol of America.

— Dorothy Barnett, www.climateandenergy.org