New York City’s East River to See Energy Turbines In Its Waters In a Year

What do you do when your local population starts growing out and consumption skyrockets? The answer is you start looking at alternative ways to feed its energy hunger. According to the Mayor Michael Bloomberg, New York’s population will reach another million by 2030, so Verdant Power Inc., a marine clean-energy company looked towards New York City’s East River for an energy source.

If it were to install turbines on the river’s floor, then it could sell that electricity to Consolidated Edison Inc. or the New York Power Authority and that’s how the Roosevelt Island Tidal Energy Project came into being in 2002. The idea was to search for new renewable technologies that could still treat nature well.

Now, just this week, the company went out and took a license for its 1,050-kilowatt project, which will put 5 turbines online by the end of 2013. The final 30 turbines, ready by 2015, will ensure power for some 9,500 houses located between Manhattan and Queens.

Now what about protecting the environment? Won’t all those fish, vegetation and sediment have to suffer because of our increasing need of energy? That’s exactly why this permit Verdant got is only a pilot license: to test the waters, literally and figuratively and make sure the respective area is not too sensitive.

[via BusinessWeek]

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