For a year now there has been a moratorium on the development of offshore wind projects in the Great Lakes. The Ontario government issued the ban because it said more study was needed to make sure the projects can be developed safety and responsibly, even though such studies were supposedly already done when the previous moratorium was lifted in January 2008. It’s more than likely that the latest ban was politically motivated, which is why a consortium of companies stretching from Kingston to Niagara Region has high hopes of changing the government’s mind.

The consortium, calling itself the Lake Ontario Offshore Network, aims to make Ontario the North American capital of offshore wind development. The group includes Windstream Energy Inc., the only company that holds a feed-in-tariff contract with the Ontario Power Authority to sell power from offshore wind turbines into the province’s electrical grid. It doesn’t matter that Windstream, because of the moratorium, can’t currently develop its project. It hopes that by bringing together an industrial consortium it can dangle thousands of jobs in front of the government and possibly convince the powers that be to reconsider its offshore ban.

The cast that has been assembled for this PR play is impressive. The consortium includes turbine suppliers Siemens Wind Power and Vestas Wind Systems, steel fabricator Walters Inc., steel supplier Essar Steel Algoma Inc. and a number of small and medium-sized companies — Anchor Concrete Products Ltd., Ortech Power, Samuel & Son Limited, Akzo Nobel Coating Ltd. and Bermingham Foundation Solutions, to name a few. In total, 18 companies/organizations large and small have signed on, representing a comprehensive supply chain and about 1,800 jobs that could exist over a five-year period if Windstream’s project ever got the go-ahead.

And what is this project? Windstream, which is based in Burlington, Ontario, is planning to build a 100-turbine, 300-megawatt offshore wind project about five kilometres west of Wolfe Island, which is an island just offshore the city of Kingston, itself about 250 kilometres east of Toronto. My own personal feeling is that it’s not the greatest site for development, if only because it’s not far from the onshore wind farm that’s currently located on Wolfe Island and has been a lightning rod for controversy from the beginning (partly because of the density of wind turbine development there). Windstream is proposing that the government keep its moratorium but allow an exemption for its $1.5 billion Wolfe Island shoals project, on the grounds that it would be a pilot project used as part of studies that would determine if further offshore development is the right step forward.

You’ll recall from an earlier column of mine that the “pilot project” approach is one that I support and proposed last July. Specifically, I wrote, “Maybe we would have been better off to focus initially on a public-private pilot project, one located several kilometres offshore in a carefully selected location; one that could be closely studied and be a launch pad for future economic growth.” I’m happy that Windstream has embraced this approach, and it will be interesting to see how the government responds to this invitation.

But here’s the thing: I’m not convinced this is the “carefully selected location” that would be ideal for a pilot project. I’m also not convinced that a 300-megawatt project could rightly be called a “pilot”. I understand the need to go big. There are simply better economies of scale. But if a pilot was truly what Windstream envisions, it should break up the project into smaller phases, with the initial pilot phase being no larger than 20 or so megawatts (similar in size to the world’s first lake-based wind farm in Lake Vanern, Sweden) with plans to develop larger phases once the pilot has been properly studied and ultimately convinces the Ministry of Environment that offshore wind makes sense for Ontario.

I would also argue that there are much better sites to consider for a pilot, including those once held by Trillium Wind Power before the government wiped the slate clear and unjustly forced all developers without a FIT contract to start from scratch. Trillium, by the way, had also started developing a supply chain consortium before the rug was pulled from under it, resulting in a $2.25 billion lawsuit filed against the Ontario government. One wonders how any company could trust dealing with Queen’s Park these days.

But Windstream is the one that finds itself in the fortunate position of being the only developer with a FIT contract. Whether the piece of paper it holds gives it the edge when it comes to pilot-scale projects, that’s unclear. After all, pilots are given special consideration. Presumably, FIT or not, picking the location of a pilot project should be based on the site, not the developer.

The saga continues…

My Clean Break column this week takes a look at Ontario’s decision back in February to put a moratorium — once again — on the development of offshore wind in the Great Lakes, and argues the province should reconsider development of this resource even if this time around it takes a more measured approached.

My own beef with the February moratorium is that the government cited environmental concerns that were supposedly addressed in a previous round of studies done prior to the lifting of the last ban in January 2008. At that time, Premier Dalton McGuinty announced that environmental studies had been done and, in his mind, “you can do it in a way that does not compromise ecosystems.” At that point, he fired a starting gun for industry and, to stimulate interest even further, the government included offshore wind in its feed-in-tariff program. Three years later — i.e. this past February — the plug was pulled once again. Turns out Ontario was jerking the industry’s chain.

Now, I can understand the desire to pull back a bit. One could easily argue that the government moved too fast by including offshore wind in the feed-in-tariff program. But why completely halt all development, indefinitely, especially when jurisdictions such as Ohio are pushing ahead? Why go so far as to tell all developers that if and when offshore wind is put back into play, they have to start from scratch (effectively rendering all past site-specific research and studies useless)? It made no sense.

Anyway, as you’ll read in the column, I think the government needs to reconsider its decision. Perhaps a way back into it is to start by focusing on a pilot project, maybe 50 to 100 MW in size, developed far enough offshore that it wouldn’t get the NIMBYs all worked up. This could be the basis of real-world study, during which new rules can be set making a distinction between near-shore and truly offshore resources, and bringing clarity to a new market craving guidance.

To simply sit back and let U.S. jurisdictions take the lead — and future manufacturing and job creation — isn’t fitting of a province with the most to gain from offshore wind development in the Great Lakes, and the most to offer.