The Great Lakes Towing Company Forecasts Unprecedented Economic Growth in Clean, Offshore Wind Energy in Lake Erie.

Often laud­ed by pun­dits, politi­cians and many indus­try lead­ers as the “Sau­di Ara­bia of Wind,” Lake Erie has the poten­tial to sup­ply enough clean ener­gy to light up tens of thou­sands of homes and pow­er thousands
of busi­ness­es. Lake Erie Ener­gy Devel­op­ment Co. (LEED­Co) has pro­vid­ed the spark nec­es­sary to ignite that pow­er gen­er­a­tion. Armed with  $50 mil­lion in fed­er­al sup­port, LEED­Co will car­ry the dis­tinc­tion of being the first-to-mar­ket play­er in the fresh­wa­ter off­shore wind ener­gy are­na, with the antic­i­pat­ed com­ple­tion of its “Ice­break­er” wind farm in 2018.

Lake Erie: The Central Hub for U.S. Offshore Power Generation

Once com­plete, the six-tur­bine demon­stra­tion project locat­ed eight miles from the Cleve­land shore­line could poten­tial­ly posi­tion Lake Erie as a cen­tral hub for U.S. off­shore wind pow­er gen­er­a­tion. As quot­ed by U.S. Rep. Mar­cy Kap­tur (D‑OH), “The strength of the Ice­break­er project, as opposed to its com­peti­tors, lies in LEEDCo’s com­mit­ment to lever­age off­shore wind ener­gy with local Ohio-based jobs in the steel, con­struc­tion and trans­porta­tion indus­tries. This means local job pos­si­bil­i­ties beyond wind gen­er­a­tion are on the hori­zon.” One of those Ohio-based sup­pli­ers with its sights set on the vital mar­itime role in future off­shore wind devel­op­ment is The Great Lakes Tow­ing Com­pa­ny (GLT), a fix­ture on the Cleve­land shore­line since 1899. GLT owns and oper­ates a fleet of tug­boats and a full-ser­vice ship­yard, and has been pur­su­ing mul­ti­ple mar­ket oppor­tu­ni­ties in off­shore wind, includ­ing man­u­fac­tur­ing of tur­bine foun­da­tions, con­struc­tion logis­tics, and long-term main­te­nance, repair and oper­a­tions services.

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Arti­cle fea­tured in Crain’s Cleve­land Business