Niagara Could Be Manufacturing Centre For Green Energy

By Doug Draper

The City of Port Colborne, Ontario is being eyed as the possible site of a first-of-a-kind plant in the Great Lakes region for manufacturing wind power equipment.

Tom Rankin, president of Niagara-based Rankin Construction, has long dreamed of manufacturing wind energy machinery in the region. File photo by Doug Draper.

The city’s mayor, Vance Badawey, introduced a team of local and regional economic development representatives along with Tom Rankin, president of Niagara-based Rankin Construction, to outline the opportunity at an October 6 meeting of Niagara Region’s Integrated Community and Planning Committee.

“This is a win-win situation for Port Colborne and for Niagara, and we have to put our best foot forward to get these companies to locate here,” said Rankin of companies in Germany that are pioneers in manufacturing wind generating equipment there and are now actively looking for a place to build them in the Great Lakes region.

Rankin, who has harboured a dream of building this green energy technology in our region for years, went on to say that European wind energy manufacturers are now actively looking for a place in Ontario to site a manufacturing plant. Rankin mentioned London and a few other locations they may be looking at, but why not Port Colborne and Niagara.

Port Colborne should have a natural advantage as a Welland Canal community with harbour facilities for loading and unloading the giant parts that make up the towering wind generators growing numbers of power utilities and others across North America are ordering today as alternatives to coal, oil and other sources of non-renewable energy.

Badawey, in a statement he made during one of his own city council meetings this September, stated that “the demand for the supply of wind energy products in North America is growing and Port Colborne is well positioned to meet the demands coming for this growth.” He went on to add that the city’s “strategic location on the Great Lakes, combined with a robust and well-established manufacturing base make this city a one-stop-location for manufacturers of wind turbines and related components.”

The sites under consideration for this green energy plant include more than a hundred of acres of land, collectively, owned by the city and by Transport Canada on behalf of the St. Lawrence Seaway.

A wind power farm, similar to those we may see more of in the Great Lakes region in the years ahead.

Badawey urged planning and other regional government staff to prepare a report as soon as possible on the project. His request followed Rankin informing the council that European companies are looking for a site to build the plant as soon as possible.

At the same time, Ontario’s government has set a goal of 2012 for utilities and others to purchase at least 50 per cent of their parts – be they wind generators or solar panels – from companies manufacturing them in Canada.

Let’s see if our regional government and other agencies it has to work with can get their act together quickly enough to meet this goal. Unless someone comes up with compelling reasons why Port Colborne and Niagara shouldn’t be a North American center for manufacturing wind power machinery, this sounds like a great opportunity for a region that has suffered the loss of too many manufacturing jobs to win some back in the 21st century.

(Visit Niagara At Large at www.niagaraatlarge.com for more news and commentary on matters of interest and concern to residents in our greater binational Niagara region.)