Niagara's Water Power Prowess Embraces the Allure of Wind

While the Niagara Region of Canada is known worldwide for its magnificent waterfalls and associated hydro power, the Ontario Clean Technology Alliance is attending WINDPOWER 2013 in Chicago to announce a series of national and international wind investments by companies including Capital Power Inc., Enercon Canada Inc., Niagara Region Wind Corp. (NRWC), NextEra Energy Canada ULC, REpower Systems SE, Samsung Renewable Energy Inc., and TSP Canada Towers Inc.

These companies are manufacturing components and building an estimated 200 wind turbines that will soon dot the landscape in a swath extending throughout Ontario's Haldimand County and into the Niagara Region. They are attracted by an excellent wind profile and connections to existing transmission lines that carry power from Niagara Falls into southern Ontario's manufacturing heartland.

The wind power infrastructure investment is also made possible by the Province of Ontario's visionary Green Energy Act of 2009 that helped ignite growth in the production of clean and renewable energy. Since 2009, Ontario's Clean Energy Strategy is helping to build on the $27 billion in private sector clean energy investments attracted to Ontario. Ontario's clean energy sector has already created 31,000 jobs and over 30 clean energy companies have set up shop in the province.

"While the 230-megawatt industrial wind turbine project by NRWC is the Niagara Region's largest, promising 770 construction phase jobs through to 2014 and 110 more to maintain the turbine structures, the Ontario Clean Technology Alliance team is working hard to build on this momentum," says Valerie Kuhns, Sector Manager for the Niagara Region's Economic Development Department.

She cites three foreign companies -- Denmark's Avanti Wind Systems, Helukabel USA, Inc. and Synergy Cables USA Ltd. -- that have recently set up shop across Ontario as a direct result of Ontario Clean Technology Alliance investor pitches at international wind industry trade shows.

Kuhns' employer is one of eight municipal members of the Ontario Clean Technology Alliance that also includes the Southwestern Ontario Marketing Alliance, The Department of Foreign Affairs and International Trade Canada and the Ontario Ministry of Economic Development, Trade and Employment.

Kuhns also points out that just last week, wind turbine manufacturer PowerBlades Inc., a wholly owned subsidiary of German-based REpower Systems SE, chose Welland, also in the Niagara Region, as the site of a blade production factory that will serve the province's wind project needs as well as supply the rest of the North American market.

PowerBlades is currently looking for experts in the fields of logistics, purchasing, management as well as production workers and maintenance technicians. The new German-backed Ontario company will create about 125 jobs within its first phase and about 75 within its second phase of operations.

Ontario is Canada's largest province by population, and clean technology industries take advantage of an Ontario government economic growth strategy, backed by a comprehensive series of legislative, regulatory and policy initiatives specifically designed to support the expansion of clean, green industries.