New York City Says Wind is More Than Hot Air

If New York City Mayor Michael Bloomberg has his way, the Big Apple will soon be riding the winds of change.

This past summer, when Bloomberg proposed installing windmills on top of city landmarks—bridges, skyscrapers, turbines sitting in the Hudson and East Rivers—the excitement was palpable.

“It would be a thing of beauty if when ‘Lady Liberty’ looks out on the horizon, she not only welcomes new immigrants to our shores, but lights their way with a torch powered by an ocean wind farm,” Bloomberg said.

Then, inevitably, came the backlash.

Mock-ups of the Statue of Liberty with paper windmills fluttering over its head popped up online. So did pictures of the Brooklyn Bridge, looking a bit silly with turbines set across its top.

Donald Trump told the New York Post that the windmills were a great idea—but he didn’t know about putting them on any of his buildings.

Architects, engineers and energy experts interviewed by the New York Times said Bloomberg’s proposal would be complex, pricey, “and barely begin to meet the growth in demand for electricity that is expected in the coming years.”

A little while later, Bloomberg seemed to dial back his rhetoric a touch.

His proposals, he said, were just the “very beginning,” adding that, “if you don't ask, you’re never going to find out” if an idea makes sense.

“Windmills are no panacea for our problems, but they can help,” he said.

Still, experts say that, despite some unfavorable coverage in the press, wind indeed could be a significant source of energy for New York, which mandates that 8o percent of its electricity come from within the city, and is looking to achieve 25 percent renewable energy in its portfolio by 2013.

“To poo-poo it is really buying into a continuation of the fossil-fuel path that brings us to the point where we are today,” says Carol Murphy, executive director of the Alliance for Clean Energy New York and a member of the city’s Energy Policy Task Force. “A lot of it is just educating the public and reporters. There are always nay-sayers. That’s why we’re in the situation we’re in now; we haven’t paid attention to developing our renewable resources.”

Murphy says part of the problem is that many lay people are only familiar with one kind of wind power—the traditional windmill or wind farm. But there are others, she says. Delaware, for example, is developing the first offshore wind-power installation, and Bloomberg has said that similar stations in the waters around Queens, Brooklyn and Long Island could provide 10 percent of the city’s electricity in about a decade.

She also cites vertical axis turbines—which have the main rotor shaft arranged vertically, alleviating the need to have the mechanism pointed into the wind—as another possible source of energy.

And, of course, there are the more traditional turbines. The city is now investigating a proposal to build a wind farm on the Fresh Kills landfill on Staten Island (this landfill bears the dubious distinction of being visible from space). Small turbines are already operating at the Brooklyn Navy Yard.

And, as part of its ambitious environmental plan, known as PlaNYC, New York is looking at or using several other alternative energy sources as well—hydrokinetic and solar, toward which the New York State Energy and Development Authority is now in the process of re-allocating $30 million.

“One of the things the mayor is looking at is really looking at New York City as being a major city that shows you can use renewable resources even in an urban environment,” Murphy says. “It’s very possible to produce renewable energy in a city like New York.”

Photo Caption: Homepage Statue of Liberty photo by Derek Jensen via Wikimedia.