Windsor – Denmark derives 20 percent of its electricity from wind power, while in the U.S. the amount is less than 1 percent.
That one statistic helps explain why Vestas, the Danish producer of wind turbines, broke ground Thursday on a $62 million blade-manufacturing plant in Windsor, its first plant in North America.
“We consider this a historic day,” Gov. Bill Ritter said at the groundbreaking, adding that the new plant shows the rest of the country that Colorado is a leader in renewable energy.
Once all four production lines are up and running by next summer, the Windsor plant will produce 1,200 blades a year, enough to build 400 wind turbines.
Those turbines, once turning, will produce enough electricity for 225,000 households with minimal environmental impacts, according to the company.
“We feel confident that the new factory and the jobs it generates will be a benefit to the community,” said Ole Jakobsen, president of Vestas Blades.
For Weld County, the plant should generate about 464 jobs, the majority of them manufacturing positions.
Vestas officials estimate that contractors, vendors and suppliers working with the company will generate a similar number of positions.
For the longer term, the plant ties Colorado to the world’s leading producer of wind turbines, a company growing rapidly in the United States and globally.
“Wind is a global source of energy with a significant local impact,” said Jens Soby, president of Vestas Americas in Portland, Ore. “Wind is free and inexhaustible.”
Well, not exactly.
Putting in a large turbine to catch the wind can cost $2 million. Despite that cost, more and more turbines are rising.
U.S. investors installed 2,454 megawatts of new wind turbine capacity last year at a cost of $4 billion.
Projections are for even more capacity to come online this year, including 1,000 megawatts planned for Texas alone.
Leasing land for a single turbine can generate between $4,000 to $6,000 a year in income for a farmer, Soby said. Given that wind turbines are built in clusters or farms, they can represent a significant new income source for rural communities.
As to the criticism that wind farms kill too many birds, Soby said that the Audubon Society has supported a major wind farm in Massachusetts after careful study.
“More birds are killed by cats every year than wind farms,” he said.
Staff writer Aldo Svaldi can be reached at 303-954-1410 or asvaldi@denverpost.com.
