Icebreaker Wind undertaking halted, no plans to resurrect effort to place wind generators in Lake Erie

A pilot undertaking to convey wind energy to Lake Erie has been placed on maintain amid rising prices and different challenges which have delayed progress and dimmed its probabilities of success.

The Lake Erie Power Growth Corp., which a number of years in the past appeared destined to realize its aim to place six wind generators in Lake Erie about eight miles off Cleveland, said Friday it has “made the troublesome determination to quickly halt the Icebreaker Wind undertaking.”

Icebreaker was to be the primary freshwater wind farm in North America and a take a look at to see if generators may face up to the trials of a frozen lake. Advocates envisioned many extra generators within the Nice Lakes over time and a whole trade constructed across the renewable type of power.

The undertaking would have been groundbreaking, and LEEDCo had made important progress towards its aim earlier than it got here crashing down. The agency partnered with a outstanding Norwegian wind developer to convey the undertaking to fruition and obtained all of the permits wanted to proceed.

However challenges from fowl lovers and a lawsuit funded partly by a coal firm managed to delay the undertaking lengthy sufficient to push away the developer and for rising rates of interest to drive up the associated fee supplies and development.

“Given the set of circumstances proper now we don’t have a approach to push issues ahead until one thing modifications,” Will Friedman, a LEEDCo board member and president and CEO of the Port of Cleveland, informed cleveland.com and the Plain Supplier.