Appeared in Thunder Bay’s Chronicle Journal July 10th, 2004

Wind turbine global demand is exploding at 40 per cent a year. Yes, those huge, slow, quiet, elegant energy producers. In the states of Minnesota, Iowa, Wisconsin, energy from wind is now cheaper than natural gas which is why Warren Buffet and his son are building a 310 megawatt wind farm in Iowa.

The city of Thunder Bay, Ontario on the north shore of Lake Superior is an ideal location for wind turbine manufacturing plants because it is in the middle of Canada and North America. Thunder Bay itself is an industrial city with the second largest inland port in the world. Both the port and city are essentially sleeping. It is time to wake both of them up. We can build wind turbine factories here, manufacture these gentle giants designed for disassembly and ship them everywhere.

Wind turbines enjoy the benefits of mass-production where the more we make the cheaper they become. In factories around the world only 3,000 wind turbines are manufactured, in contrast to the automobile industry, which makes 17 million vehicles a year. Imagine when we get to scale!

Would you like to build good long-term jobs and the clean, green economy of prosperity where we profitably fly passed Kyoto. Thunder Bay would you like to build these factories here, you have all the assets?