When I read Ed Morrison's "too much money in your wallet" (so blow it with Super Bowl ads) on RealNeo today, Ed's discussion got me thinking about incremental change vs dramatic radical change. The Cleveland Foundation’s President Ronn Richard and the Foundation’s energy advisor Richard Stuebi want Cleveland to be the first City in the US to have “about 10 wind turbines 3 miles out in Lake Erie”. On January 18, 2007, Mr Richard spoke to the public about the Foundation’s turbine installation aspirations at Levin Urban College at CSU. In the public discussion period following Mr. Richard’s insightful and forward-looking energy outlook, Holly Harlan, of E4S (Entrepreneurs for Sustainability) asked Mr. Richard to put a date on when the wind turbines could/would be operational in Lake Erie. Mr. Richard paused, told the audience that in preparing for the speaking engagement he had asked Mr. Stuebi what he should say if he was asked, as Holly was asking, for a realization date. Mr. Richard said that Mr. Stuebi’s advice was “don’t give a date”. And in fact, in responding to Ms Harlan, Mr. Richard did not give a date. That told me that the water based turbine installation plan was too radical for NEO. Incidentally, another key principal of the Kaizen manufacturing philosophy is to avoid radial changes, preferably make only incremental changes in process. Now it surprised me to find that the Cleveland Foundation has 5 (five) full time public affairs staff. (Go to http://www.clevelandfoundation.org/page1447.cfm [1] and click on “Cleveland Foundation Expands Communications Function” under “Press Releases” ) The publicity staffers are experienced and have quality CV. It would seem reasonable that this publicity staff could present a positive image for land based wind turbine use in NEO, and wind turbine manufacturing in NEO, rather than contacting the PD to run press releases about installing Lake Erie marine turbines for which no one can fix a realization date. I’ll bet the Town of Hull, Massachusetts, (a few miles south of Boston) which now has 3 large turbines supplying tax saving power to its infrastructure, doesn’t have one public affairs staffer. Hull has had a turbine powering its High School (photo above I took from a commercial flight into Logan Airport last summer – photo shows newest turbine adjacent to brick HS buildings)for a decade or more Land based wind turbines can be a reality in NEO immediately. Setting a dateless goal of dramatic turbines in Lake Erie in fact has a negative result for NEO, because it puts off indefinitely improvement that we can incorprote into our region today. (and by the way – who would own those lake turbines?) Let’s take the simplest, least radical nuts and bolts approach to our wind turbine aspirations. See the $ numbers on Hull's turbines at this Boston Globe link http://www.boston.com/news/local/articles/2006/02/24/wind_turbines_gaining_power/ [2]
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