if it means jobs and expanded economic activity.
Unfortunately the jobs appear to be temporary (for the life of the installation) and most of the profits from the development get hoovered out of the community to the carpet-bagger developers and the Wall Streeters who finance them.
In the US the community probably doesn't even get the new community bus shelter the developers toss them over here in the UK for not resisting too hard.
What's needed is a "Community Energy Partnership" development model that keeps the turbine in community ownership and pays a community dividend in perpetuity in energy or sales proceeds from energy.
It's not too hard use an LLC to achieve that result.
"Any economic unit can emit money. The serious problem is to get it accepted" Hyman Minsky
First, if Ohio rolls out, first, 20% of its current electricity consumption, and then proceeds to go offshore and starts exporting power, the "installation phase" is by no means temporary. It may be temporary for any given location, but its an ongoing economic stimulus in the state.
Second, the ongoing impact will be a greater share of consumption spending by Ohions remaining in the state.
Now, certainly a state-sponsored financing system that provides community financial dividends, over and above financing costs, will boost that further. But we are not going to get that state-sponsored financing system by trying to minimize the overall job creating potential of the windplants themselves ... to get that, we need to point out the full job creating potential of the windplants themselves, and then point out how it can be leveraged still further with public ownership of the wind generators. I've been accused of being a Marxist, yet while Harpo's my favourite, it's Groucho I'm always quoting. Odd, that.
