New York will soon have off-shore wind turbines for electric power. Three areas are set for development: two off the entrance to the harbor and one to the east, past the east end of Long Island. People have successfully developed solar power in the our area, but between the reduced direct light in winter and our extremely changeable cloud cover, it’s not something we’re ideally suited for. On the other hand, get out into the Atlantic past Sandy Hook and the wind pretty much never stops blowing.
Equinor, a Norwegian energy company, is going to be involved in building and maintaining the turbines, and they’re going to be using a portion of the South Brooklyn Marine Terminal as a staging and assembly facility. Given the rush to redevelop the remaining working waterfront over the last few decades, there’s a certain irony here. It turns out the the industrial buildings and piers are well suited for industrial purposes, and that those purposes can just as readily be green as not. Indian Point, the only nuclear plant in downstate New York, is scheduled to close soon, too anything that promotes clean energy as a replacement is good.
The map above, an 1840s reprint of a 1656 print, shows the Dutch colony – including (traveling north up the Hudson River) Nieuw Amsterdam (New York), Sinsing (Sing Sing / Ossining), Wappinges Kill (Wappinger’s Falls), Kats Kill (Catskill), and Fort Orange (Albany). Most of the names in mid-sized type are the local Native tribes. At the bottom, a rendering of New Amsterdam (with what appears to be a gallows in the foreground) with a windmill in the fort.
