U.S. Sen. Sherrod Brown and Gov. Ted Strickland, both Democrats, pledged during their 2006 campaigns to join forces in Washington and Columbus to make Ohio "the Silicon Valley of alternative energy." It was a lofty promise, not unlike ones Ohioans have heard before. Gov. Bob Taft launched his Third Frontier high-tech initiative in 2002, only to need two tries to secure the bond money to pay for it. Ohio later hung its high-tech hopes on landing the nearly pollution-free FutureGen power plant but lost its bid last year.

Ohio's greatest wind potential is where its lagging manufacturing base is: in northeast Ohio and along the Lake Erie shore. Bowser said wind developers from Germany, Spain and elsewhere are swarming Ohio looking to position their turbines - and experience in states already using wind energy, such as Texas and California, shows that prices have not spiked.

"Where they want to put up wind turbines, they also want the manufacturing of those turbines to be very nearby because it saves on transportation costs," she said. "These things are enormous and very expensive to ship."

Ralph DiNicola, a spokesman for utility giant FirstEnergy Corp., said consumers seem to be demanding more alternative sources of energy, and his company has contracted for 300 megawatts of wind energy. But he cautioned that wind and solar power can serve only a fraction of the state's energy needs.

"You start doing the numbers on how many windmills would equal 2,000 megawatts of output and you'd cover the state," he said.

He said the visual impact of windmills and the fact that they generate most of their power during fall and spring, when demand is low, are issues that advocates must address. "If a state decides to move in that direction, that's a societal question," he said. "I think what we would object to would be subsidizing alternative energy. In Ohio, generation is not a regulated aspect of the utility industry."

A study by The Renewable Energy Project found that if there is a national investment in wind power - which experts believe will happen soon - Ohio has the chance to gain 22,000 new manufacturing jobs. The 13,000 of those jobs associated with wind power is the largest potential job gain from the industry of any state besides California. The gain pales in comparison to Ohio's manufacturing job losses - 234,000 since early 1998, according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics.

The proposed center would bring together researchers and start-up businesses working on alternatives to gasoline, coal, and nuclear power.

Nearly 80 percent of [France's] electricity comes from 58 nuclear power plants, crammed into a country the size of Texas. Because nuclear plants emit no greenhouse gases, France has the cleanest air in the industrialized world, and because the price of oil is now around $60 a barrel, it has the lowest electric bills in Europe. In fact, France has so much cheap electricity, it exports it to its European neighbors. French nuclear plants supply power to parts of Germany, Italy and help light the city of London.

Jul 5, 2007 USA Today story:

"California's policy targets plants that would burn the West's abundant coal to produce electricity. The region has at least a 250-year supply of recoverable coal, according to federal estimates, concentrated largely in Wyoming, Montana, New Mexico and Colorado."

"Conventional coal-fired plants belch tons of carbon dioxide into the atmosphere. Technologies that pulverize coal, turn it into a slurry and convert it to gas before burning it have the potential to capture and dispose of carbon dioxide. Those technologies raise the price of coal-generated power by about 10% a kilowatt-hour."

"However, none of the 31 new coal-fired plants planned in the West, including at least 10 that intend to sell power to California, would employ those new technologies. Environmentalists worry about more than California. They predict the biggest resurgence in new coal plant construction in the region's history to satisfy Phoenix, Las Vegas, Denver, Salt Lake City and other booming metro markets."

Dec 12, 2006 USA Today story:

"A much smaller group of utilities are building a new type of coal "gasification" plant that emits fewer pollutants and can be more easily retrofitted with equipment to trap carbon dioxide before it's released. Of roughly 150 coal-fired plants being proposed by utilities — what would be the biggest wave since the 1970s — only about a dozen are cleaner gasification plants."

According to MisplacedWindpower.org, "One New California Generating Plant Can Produce More Electricity than the State’s 13,000 Windmills. The California situation illustrates dramatically the small amount of electricity produced by large windmills and the small role that wind energy can play in supplying U.S. electricity requirements."

According to the book Global Warming and Other Eco Myths, "Global fossil fuel supplies are in no near-term danger of being depleted, and a single 555-megawatt natural gas power plant produces more electricity than 13,000 windmills."

Georgia Democrat Senator Zell Miller suggests in his book, "The only way out of this dark valley is a broad-based energy policy that has a strong focus on conservation and efficiency. We should increase America's investment in domestic energy production. We need new technology that will produce clean coal energy."

Wind energy is competitive right now because of hefty federal subsidies. Just wait until those federal subsidies are dropped. The consumer will be left holding the bag, in the form of high electric rates. When something better than wind turbines comes out, the government will allow all the utilities that built them to recover stranded costs. Essentially forcing the consumers to pay for the utility’s and the government’s screw ups.

Wind power is America's fastest-growing energy source, but still accounts for less than 1 percent of the nation's power. By 2020, its market share is expected to be 6 percent, the federal Government Accountability Office has said.

Although wind power bills itself as ecologically superior to nuclear power, Ohio's top bald eagle researcher calls the wind industry "a tremendous eater of land." "It would take [almost] 600 turbines to replace Davis-Besse," said Mark Shieldcastle, of the Ohio Department of Natural Resources' Crane Creek Wildlife Research Station in Ottawa County. "You're talking 10 times as much land use and habitat as a nuclear plant."

Mr. Shieldcastle isn't sold on wind as a technology. "It's not the green energy the propaganda machine is purporting," Mr. Shieldcastle said, citing the amount of energy necessary for production of wind turbines and the amount of oil needed for lubricating turbine blades.

Being the shallowest part of the Great Lakes and in close proximity to electrical transmission lines, Toledo could become attractive to wind industry developers, Ms. Seymour said.

But Toledo is also in the heart of one of North America's most valuable flyways for migratory birds. That, plus the cost of obtaining offshore permits, could dissuade developers, she said.

While land-based turbines are more practical, offshore turbines benefit from stronger winds. Wildlife advocates are fighting to keep the near-shore from becoming a compromise. They want turbines prohibited within three miles of Lake Erie's shoreline. Putting them farther out into the lake, however, would likely be a problem for maritime shippers.