Jason Margolis reports for Public Radio International (PRI): “Around the turn of the 20th century, Buffalo was the place to be. It had the most millionaires, per capita, of any city in America. It hosted a World’s Fair. It was a bustling inland port, the terminus of the Erie Canal, with hulking grain elevators and steel mills. “One of the world’s largest mills used to stand on the shores of Lake Erie. These days, all you hear is the wind roaring off the water. For Paul Curran the managing director of BQ Energy, that’s the sound of opportunity. “‘We’re standing at the bottom of turbine #1, there are 14 turbines in all that generate 35 megawatts of electricity,’ says Curran. ‘Today it’s a bit windy, which is good for business.’ “His turbines supply enough power for about 10,000 homes. “Driving around the 1,200 acre site, you see industrial ruins alongside wind turbines and rows of solar panels. It’s something of a success story — repurposing toxic, polluted land in a way that’s helping combat climate change. But it’s not a jobs story. “‘There used to be something like 25,000 jobs on the land we’re sitting on right now, today there are zero,’ says Curran. “But projects like this could become a Buffalo jobs story. Right now, Curran buys many of his parts from overseas, and ‘to the extent that they were made here in Buffalo, that would great for us as a consumer of that type of equipment,’ he says. “That’s what the state of New York is betting on, trying to create a so-called ‘cluster economy’ for clean technology. “You’re more likely to grow in industries where you have a particular concentration because you have the skilled labor for that industry, because you have the supply chain for that industry,’ says Howard Zemsky, the president of Empire State Development, the state of New York’s economic development agency. “A few years back, New York’s Governor Andrew Cuomo spearheaded the ‘Buffalo Billion’ initiative — pumping a billion dollars into the area. Three-quarters of that total went toward building a massive solar panel factory that is now being rented out to California-based SolarCity. That partnership is expected to bring about 1,500 jobs to Buffalo and eventually create about 5,000 jobs statewide. “Critics argue that’s a lot of public money for a few thousand solar jobs. And it’s certainly not how President Donald Trump thinks things should be going. The president sees America’s future in old-line industries: things like coal and oil. Zemsky doesn’t worry about that. “‘What President Trump decides to do or not do with respect to renewable energy will prove in history to be an asterisk or a bump in the road,’ Zemsky says.”
