Friday, July 20, 2007
Thursday, July 19, 2007
Who is Jim Bates?
James W. Bates was born on February 17th, 1954 in Detroit, Michigan. He was a placenta previa baby that kept his mother in labor for three days. Against the odds of surviving such a birth he grew up as the son of two wonderful parents. Both of them had there own monumental obstacles that they were yet to overcome.Once upon them though they set a great example of what personal fortitude can achieve. This set the stage for who James may become.
Helen Catherine Murphy Bates was born July 10th, 1928 in Ferndale, Michigan to Frank and Doris Murphy. A brief description who Frank and Doris are is in order, although that really short changes their story because what made them who they are could fill volumes.Frank Murphy was kicked out of school in the fifth grade after placing the girl's hair in front of him in the inkwell. He then took his families experience as a glassblower and rode the rails ending up in Toronto where he later met his future wife Doris Lyman.
Fast forward to Detroit, Michigan where Mr. Murphy was working on the line of the Plymouth Lynch Rd. Assembly plant. The General foreman was asking Franks foreman "why is Murphy here after losing the sight in his eye to the accident earlier today" his foreman’s reply was "I dunno boss, all Murphy said to me was-"I'll be blind at home as well as at work, so you tell me. What is the point in staying home?" "So here you have it. This is one of the building blocks of who Bates is.
Mr. Frank Murphy went on for some decades as the superintendent of the Plymouth Lynch rd. assembly line, a man with a fourth grade education who had the respect of both the management and the unions alike, a man who knew everyone by their first name and a man that knew how to get things done. Frank once walked out for two weeks when a new assistant plant manager told him "Frank we have to get more production out of the men" this was stated by a man who in Franks words were "his only qualification is not from experience, but a piece of paper from college" After the plant workers began staging walkouts because Murphy was gone, Frank agreed to come back on the condition that only He ran the assembly line.
Franks wife, Doris knew how to get things done also. Having grown up with a Mother who was a Midwife in the slums of Toronto and a father who fed his family by picking up junk off the street curbs and reselling it. Doris used to, as a little girl go to the train yards and pick up coal to warm their little flat. Doris had to grow up fast as kids sometimes do. Her mother after having seen five of Doris's brothers and sisters die of starvation back in England and on the journey over to Canada. And after delivering hundreds of babies in Toronto in poverty, drank carbolic acid as her ticket out of the misery. Doris however chose to seek the silver lining in the storm clouds of life and hitched her wagon to Mr. Frank Murphy’s.
Mom used to tell of the day that Michigan’s Governor Frank Murphy was elected. In the midst of all the flowers and congratulatory telegrams that showed up at their home on St Louis Blvd. in Ferndale, Michigan. Someone showed up in a long black limousine, it was Governor Frank Murphy, she never forgot the snapshot in her mind of the two Frank Murphy’s shaking hands and the Governor thanking her father for all the votes he received by people actually thinking they were voting for Helens Father Grandfather.
Helen Catherine Murphy had the world in the palm of her hands after spending 13 years in school at St. James in Ferndale. Shortly after graduation she met a young sailor in Algonac by the name of Charles Thomas Bates, they were engaged soon after and eventually married. Helen was always very interested in writing, a lifelong skill she utilized as best as she could. She also was a deeply spiritual Woman who was devoted as a Third Order Dominican Sister.
After being married for six years, Helen went into the University of Michigan hospital in the spring of 1958 to be treated for uveitis an inflammation of the eye muscle. The good doctors decided to experiment on this beautiful young woman, a young mother with three children at home and a bright future ahead of her living out the American dream. Well, after injecting enough steroids of the rather new drugs Prednisone and Cortisone to drug an elephant. The good doctors were perplexed as to why this a woman was babbling and seeing spiders. So not (maybe?) knowing that they had created another case of steroid Psychosis, thereby ensuring Helen a long and painful struggle for her health and sanity. Her health and sanity in a world she loved dearly, one that included her family and God and all of her previous hopes and dreams.
They instead said, oh so she is schizophrenic. However drawing on her upbringing and a deep sense of faith and in the beauty of love, Helen went on in her periods of sanity between the relapses of psychosis that returned every couple of years to continue to write about education and children and now to write about her new found hobby, the struggle with sanity in a world that now seemed off kilter at times. She also gathered 160 some credit hours from college along with starting a Great Books Discussion Course amongst women in St Clair Countyin the early 1960's no less. The ladies would read books like Dante's Inferno and discuss there thoughts about the books. While Helen could add her own personal depth of understanding.
Charles Thomas Bates was born September 25th, 1926. Born to Frank and Cora Bates where he grew up in Algonac, Michigan. Charlie grew up a happy kid. Sometimes helping his dad working in the families Butcher shop in Fair Haven, Michigan. A real treat considering this was during the Great Depression. When he wasn't there he was caddying on the Golf Course that is now overgrown by the St John's Marsh. (kind of Southeast of Algonac). Charlie was on leave from the U.S. Navy when he met Helen Murphy. They were just a stones throw from the St Clair River where he had fired the boilers on the Great Lakes Freighters at age 16. He used to shovel the coal by hand into the boiler hoppers and had arms like Popeye. Now between wars he was falling in love with a beautiful woman.
This woman and him shared some great common ground. The both of them could swim the powerful waters of the St Clair river like fish. Helen having been taught by Japanese POW's on Walpole Island, Canada ( where Frank Murphy was also an honorary Indian Chief and where she spent her summers) to freestyle dive 40 feet down in the swift river currents. And Charlie, well he was like Tarzan anyway. And now he had met his Maureen O'Sullivan.Charlie would prove out his whole life to be the best at anything mechanical he attempted. And he attempted and accomplished a lot. Charlie was a Great lakes sailor, Also a U.S. Navy Veteran of both WWII and the Korean war, after which he worked for the Grand Trunk Railroad as a fireman on the steam engines and having been self taught he spent 40 years in Local 636 Pipefitters union being the best in the field of installation and operations of large HVAC and Pipefitting systems.Yep, Charlie was well respected, and by the people who were close to him especially, because although they did understand all of the dynamics of his wife’s illness they did know that he always did his best to stick by and love her while trying to provide for his children. Putting himself last in the scheme of things.
So who is James Bates? Part of Jim is always going to be the Six year old trying to make sense out of why the Police were hauling his mother away in a straightjacket. He will never forget that because it allowed him to strive for a depth of understanding of how to empower people to realize their full innate creative abilities. Jim knew from early on that if only given the respect and a chance that his Mother and others could excel in life. He had to quit high school at age 15 because of the difficulty of having to move four times in the same number of months due to his mothers recurring illness. But the next year Jim started college at age 16 when his Mother encouraged him to "just try it."
From that vantage he was able to learn more about the world and how to maybe help change it. He helped to start a free clinic in Pennsylvania and learned from that experience what a cooperative effort could accomplish.Jim tried on many hats while trying to find some synergy amongst people trying to bring some sanity and sustainable goodness to a troubled world.Jim was also honorably discharged from the U.S. Navy and for the next 32 years he has worked in various aspects of the Electrical industry, including railroad signaling, marine construction and engineering, 8 years in the auto plants, machine tool industry and in 1985 started Bates Electric Inc. and has successfully completed a varied assortment of jobs, usually in areas not ventured by most contractors.
While always having had an appreciation for Nature and life in all its manifestations he found a niche in utilizing his electrical experience by trying to help develop renewable energies. This had brought him to take part in the State of Michigan sponsored Wind Working Group for the past four years. While in those meetings he realized that there is an answer to the problem of water based wind energy development.
Having grown up in Algonac he has always had an affinity for the water and the energy that it has both from a spiritual and physical sense. Because of his unique experience in trying to understand interpersonal relationships. Ones that had been dramatically impacted by a system of traditional capital development that appeared to know the cost of everything and the true value of nothing, especially people and life in general. Jim strove to develop ways to make a change by helping to place value in the development of the Natural Capital given to us by our creator. There is immense latent talent held in all the seeds of life. He realized early on that the only way to make a sustainable change in this world is to strive to find other people who have the ability to place a value in respecting and developing all that natural energy. This has brought him to the point where he can help co-create the new company called Sustainable ENergy Delivery LLC and a project for the realization of this much valued natural capital.
This project is not at odds with traditional forms of development. Traditional development is at odds with life itself. It had its place and now it is time to move on to develop complementary and sustainable living systems. Nature has done so for millions of years. As we have seen the misappropriation of all that capital and the placement of money ahead of life has brought earths life systems to the edge of and in some cases to extinction. This was and is not necessary.
So Mr. Bates has invited you to take part in a new journey of discovery, a journey to simply step back and look at the world with new vision as that of a child.This journey already has on board all of the hopes and dreams of those that have come before us and of those yet unborn.
What can I do you might ask? Well, try asking for "Permission to come aboard" and let's begin this journey together.
Helen Catherine Murphy Bates was born July 10th, 1928 in Ferndale, Michigan to Frank and Doris Murphy. A brief description who Frank and Doris are is in order, although that really short changes their story because what made them who they are could fill volumes.Frank Murphy was kicked out of school in the fifth grade after placing the girl's hair in front of him in the inkwell. He then took his families experience as a glassblower and rode the rails ending up in Toronto where he later met his future wife Doris Lyman.
Fast forward to Detroit, Michigan where Mr. Murphy was working on the line of the Plymouth Lynch Rd. Assembly plant. The General foreman was asking Franks foreman "why is Murphy here after losing the sight in his eye to the accident earlier today" his foreman’s reply was "I dunno boss, all Murphy said to me was-"I'll be blind at home as well as at work, so you tell me. What is the point in staying home?" "So here you have it. This is one of the building blocks of who Bates is.
Mr. Frank Murphy went on for some decades as the superintendent of the Plymouth Lynch rd. assembly line, a man with a fourth grade education who had the respect of both the management and the unions alike, a man who knew everyone by their first name and a man that knew how to get things done. Frank once walked out for two weeks when a new assistant plant manager told him "Frank we have to get more production out of the men" this was stated by a man who in Franks words were "his only qualification is not from experience, but a piece of paper from college" After the plant workers began staging walkouts because Murphy was gone, Frank agreed to come back on the condition that only He ran the assembly line.
Franks wife, Doris knew how to get things done also. Having grown up with a Mother who was a Midwife in the slums of Toronto and a father who fed his family by picking up junk off the street curbs and reselling it. Doris used to, as a little girl go to the train yards and pick up coal to warm their little flat. Doris had to grow up fast as kids sometimes do. Her mother after having seen five of Doris's brothers and sisters die of starvation back in England and on the journey over to Canada. And after delivering hundreds of babies in Toronto in poverty, drank carbolic acid as her ticket out of the misery. Doris however chose to seek the silver lining in the storm clouds of life and hitched her wagon to Mr. Frank Murphy’s.
Mom used to tell of the day that Michigan’s Governor Frank Murphy was elected. In the midst of all the flowers and congratulatory telegrams that showed up at their home on St Louis Blvd. in Ferndale, Michigan. Someone showed up in a long black limousine, it was Governor Frank Murphy, she never forgot the snapshot in her mind of the two Frank Murphy’s shaking hands and the Governor thanking her father for all the votes he received by people actually thinking they were voting for Helens Father Grandfather.
Helen Catherine Murphy had the world in the palm of her hands after spending 13 years in school at St. James in Ferndale. Shortly after graduation she met a young sailor in Algonac by the name of Charles Thomas Bates, they were engaged soon after and eventually married. Helen was always very interested in writing, a lifelong skill she utilized as best as she could. She also was a deeply spiritual Woman who was devoted as a Third Order Dominican Sister.
After being married for six years, Helen went into the University of Michigan hospital in the spring of 1958 to be treated for uveitis an inflammation of the eye muscle. The good doctors decided to experiment on this beautiful young woman, a young mother with three children at home and a bright future ahead of her living out the American dream. Well, after injecting enough steroids of the rather new drugs Prednisone and Cortisone to drug an elephant. The good doctors were perplexed as to why this a woman was babbling and seeing spiders. So not (maybe?) knowing that they had created another case of steroid Psychosis, thereby ensuring Helen a long and painful struggle for her health and sanity. Her health and sanity in a world she loved dearly, one that included her family and God and all of her previous hopes and dreams.
They instead said, oh so she is schizophrenic. However drawing on her upbringing and a deep sense of faith and in the beauty of love, Helen went on in her periods of sanity between the relapses of psychosis that returned every couple of years to continue to write about education and children and now to write about her new found hobby, the struggle with sanity in a world that now seemed off kilter at times. She also gathered 160 some credit hours from college along with starting a Great Books Discussion Course amongst women in St Clair Countyin the early 1960's no less. The ladies would read books like Dante's Inferno and discuss there thoughts about the books. While Helen could add her own personal depth of understanding.
Charles Thomas Bates was born September 25th, 1926. Born to Frank and Cora Bates where he grew up in Algonac, Michigan. Charlie grew up a happy kid. Sometimes helping his dad working in the families Butcher shop in Fair Haven, Michigan. A real treat considering this was during the Great Depression. When he wasn't there he was caddying on the Golf Course that is now overgrown by the St John's Marsh. (kind of Southeast of Algonac). Charlie was on leave from the U.S. Navy when he met Helen Murphy. They were just a stones throw from the St Clair River where he had fired the boilers on the Great Lakes Freighters at age 16. He used to shovel the coal by hand into the boiler hoppers and had arms like Popeye. Now between wars he was falling in love with a beautiful woman.
This woman and him shared some great common ground. The both of them could swim the powerful waters of the St Clair river like fish. Helen having been taught by Japanese POW's on Walpole Island, Canada ( where Frank Murphy was also an honorary Indian Chief and where she spent her summers) to freestyle dive 40 feet down in the swift river currents. And Charlie, well he was like Tarzan anyway. And now he had met his Maureen O'Sullivan.Charlie would prove out his whole life to be the best at anything mechanical he attempted. And he attempted and accomplished a lot. Charlie was a Great lakes sailor, Also a U.S. Navy Veteran of both WWII and the Korean war, after which he worked for the Grand Trunk Railroad as a fireman on the steam engines and having been self taught he spent 40 years in Local 636 Pipefitters union being the best in the field of installation and operations of large HVAC and Pipefitting systems.Yep, Charlie was well respected, and by the people who were close to him especially, because although they did understand all of the dynamics of his wife’s illness they did know that he always did his best to stick by and love her while trying to provide for his children. Putting himself last in the scheme of things.
So who is James Bates? Part of Jim is always going to be the Six year old trying to make sense out of why the Police were hauling his mother away in a straightjacket. He will never forget that because it allowed him to strive for a depth of understanding of how to empower people to realize their full innate creative abilities. Jim knew from early on that if only given the respect and a chance that his Mother and others could excel in life. He had to quit high school at age 15 because of the difficulty of having to move four times in the same number of months due to his mothers recurring illness. But the next year Jim started college at age 16 when his Mother encouraged him to "just try it."
From that vantage he was able to learn more about the world and how to maybe help change it. He helped to start a free clinic in Pennsylvania and learned from that experience what a cooperative effort could accomplish.Jim tried on many hats while trying to find some synergy amongst people trying to bring some sanity and sustainable goodness to a troubled world.Jim was also honorably discharged from the U.S. Navy and for the next 32 years he has worked in various aspects of the Electrical industry, including railroad signaling, marine construction and engineering, 8 years in the auto plants, machine tool industry and in 1985 started Bates Electric Inc. and has successfully completed a varied assortment of jobs, usually in areas not ventured by most contractors.
While always having had an appreciation for Nature and life in all its manifestations he found a niche in utilizing his electrical experience by trying to help develop renewable energies. This had brought him to take part in the State of Michigan sponsored Wind Working Group for the past four years. While in those meetings he realized that there is an answer to the problem of water based wind energy development.
Having grown up in Algonac he has always had an affinity for the water and the energy that it has both from a spiritual and physical sense. Because of his unique experience in trying to understand interpersonal relationships. Ones that had been dramatically impacted by a system of traditional capital development that appeared to know the cost of everything and the true value of nothing, especially people and life in general. Jim strove to develop ways to make a change by helping to place value in the development of the Natural Capital given to us by our creator. There is immense latent talent held in all the seeds of life. He realized early on that the only way to make a sustainable change in this world is to strive to find other people who have the ability to place a value in respecting and developing all that natural energy. This has brought him to the point where he can help co-create the new company called Sustainable ENergy Delivery LLC and a project for the realization of this much valued natural capital.
This project is not at odds with traditional forms of development. Traditional development is at odds with life itself. It had its place and now it is time to move on to develop complementary and sustainable living systems. Nature has done so for millions of years. As we have seen the misappropriation of all that capital and the placement of money ahead of life has brought earths life systems to the edge of and in some cases to extinction. This was and is not necessary.
So Mr. Bates has invited you to take part in a new journey of discovery, a journey to simply step back and look at the world with new vision as that of a child.This journey already has on board all of the hopes and dreams of those that have come before us and of those yet unborn.
What can I do you might ask? Well, try asking for "Permission to come aboard" and let's begin this journey together.
O.K. Jim Ross I haven't stretched the limits of my autobiographical talents. But I have a little time for a synopsis.
Jim Bates grew up as the son of two wonderful parents. Both of them during his life had monumental obstacles to overcome. It wasn't always pretty what their day to day struggles looked like but having never given up they set a great example of what personal fortitude can achieve. Helen Catherine Murphy Bates was born July 10th, 1928 in Ferndale, Michigan to Frank and Doris Murphy.A brief description who Frank and Doris were is in order although that really short changes thier story because what made them who they are could fill volumes.
Frank Murphy was kicked out of school in the fifth grade after placing the girl's hair in front of him in the inkwell. He then took his families experience as a glassblower and rode the rails ending up in Toronto where he later met his future wife Doris Lyman. Fast forward to Detroit, Michigan where Mr. Murphy was working on the line of the Plymouth Lynch Rd. Assemsly plant.The General foreman was asking Franks foreman "why is Murphy here after losing the sight in his eye to the accident earlier" his foremans reply was "I dunno boss, all Murphy said to me was-I'll be blind at home as well as at work, so you tell me. What is the point in staying home?"
So here you have it. This is one of the building blocks of who Bates is. Mr. Frank Murphy went on for some decades as the superintendent of the Plymouth Lynch rd. assembly line, a man with a fourth grade education who had the respect of both the management and the unions alike, a man who knew everyone by their first name and a man that knew how to get things done. A man who walked out for two weeks when a new assistant plant manager told him "Frank we have to get more production out of the men" this was stated by a man who in Franks words were "his only qualification is not from experience but a piece of paper from college" After the plant workers began staging walkouts because Murphy was gone, Frank agreed to come back on the condition that only He ran the assembly line.
Franks wife, Doris knew how to get things done also. Having grown up with a Mother who was a Midwife in the slums of Toronto and a father who fed his family by picking up junk off the street curbs and reselling it. Doris used to, as a little girl go to the train yards and pick up coal to warm their little flat. Doris had to grow up fast as kids sometimes do. Her mother after having seen five of Doris's brothers and sisters die of starvation back in England and on the journey over and after delivering hundreds of babies in Toronto in poverty, drank carbolic acid as her ticket out of the misery. Doris however chose to seek the silver lining in the storm clouds of life and hitched her wagon to Mr. Frank Murphys.
Mom used to tell of the day that Michigans Governor Frank Murphy was elected. In the midst of all the flowers and congradulatory telegrams that showed up at their home on St Louis Blvd. in Ferndale, Michigan. Someone showed up in a long black limosene, it was Governor Frank Murphy and she never forgot the snapshot in her mind of the two Frank Murphys shaking hands and the Governor thanking him for all the votes he received by people actually thinking they were voting for my Granfather.
Helen Catherine Murphy had the world in the palm of her hands after spending 13 years in school at St James in Ferndale she met a young sailor in Algonac by the name of Charles Thomas Bates. Helen was very interested in writing, a lifelong skill she utilized as best as she could. After being married fir six years, Helen went into the University of Michigan hospital in the spring of 1958 to be treated for euviitis an inflamation of the eye muscle. the good doctors decided to experiment on this beautiful young woman, a young mother with three children at home and a bright future ahead of her living out the American dream. Well, after injecting enough steroids of the rather new drugs Prentalazone and Cotrtezone to deflame an elephant. The good doctors were perplexed as to why this a woman was babbling and seeing spiders. So not (maybe?) knowing that they had created another case of steroid Phycosis, thereby ensuring Helen a long and painful struggle for her health and sanity. Her health and sanity in a world she loved dearly, one that included her family and God and all of her previous hopes and dreams. They instead said, oh so she is schidsophrenic. However drawing on her upbringing and a deep sense of faith and in the beauty of love, Helen went on in her periods of sanity between the relapses of psycosis that returned every couple of years to continue to write about education and children and now to write about her new found hobby The struggle with sanity in a world that now seemed off kilter at times. She also gathered 160 some credit hours from college along with starting a Great Books Discussion Course amongst women in St Clair County. the ladies would read books like Dante's Inferno and discus there thoughts about the books. While Helen could add her own personal depth of understanding.
Charles Thomas Bates was born September 25th, 1926. Born to Fank and Cora Bates and groew up in Algonac. Charlie grew up a happy kid. Sometimes helping his dad working in the families Butcher shop in Fair Haven, Michigan. A real treat considering this was during the Great Depression. When he wasn't there he was caddieing on the Golf Course that is now overgrown by the St John's Marsh. Kindof Southeast of Algonac, Michigan. charlie was on leave from the U.S. Navy when he met Helen Murphy. They were just a stones throw from the St Clair River where he had fired the boilers on the Great Lakes Freighters at age 16. He used to shovel the coal by hand into the hoppers and had arms like Popeye and now between wars he was falling in love with a beautiful woman. This woman and him shared some great common ground. The both of them could swim the powerful waters of the St Clair river like fish. Helen having been taught by Japanese POW's on Walpole Island ( where Frank Murphy was also an honorary Indian Chief and where she spent her summers) to freestyle dive 40 feet down in the swift river currents and Charlie well he was like Tarzan anyway. And now he had met his Maureen O'Sullivan.
Charlie would prove out his whole life to be the best at anything mechanical he attempted. And he attempted and accomplished a lot. Charlie was a sailor, he also worked for the Grand Trunk Railroad as a fireman on the steam engines and having been self taught he spent 40 years in Local 636 Pipefitters union being the best in the field of installation and operations of large HVAC and Pipefitting systems.
Yep, Charlie was well respected, and by the people who were close to him especially, because although they did understand all of the dynamics of his wifes illness they did know that he always did his best to stick by and love her while trying to provide for his children. Putting himself last in the scheme of things.
So who is James Bates? He had to quit high school at age 15 because of the diffaculty of having to move four times in the same number of months due to his mothers recurring illness. But the next year Jim started college at age 16 when his Mother encouraged him to "just try." From that vantage he was able to learn more about the world and how to maybe change it. He helped to start a free clinic in Pennsylvania and learned from that experience what a cooperative effort could accomplish.
He tried on many hats while trying to find some synergy amongst people trying to bring some sanity and sustainable goodness to a troubled world.
For the next 32 years. Jim worked in varius aspects of the Electrical industry
there he while trying to help his mother and younger Brother and are all the sum of our experiences and how we have chosen to utilize the knowledge imparted on us by those experiences. I have learned from those people that that have crossed my path. From some of those people I learned what to do and from some I have learned what not to do. People should always learn from the good and bad examples in life. When one learns to dance this tightrope they can achieve a balance and thereby affect some small difference in life for themselves and those met along the way
Jim BATES may have an Answer to our Engergy Problems
Jim Gordon May Have an Answer to our Energy Problems
An alternative to oil? Check. Completely green? Check. Economical? Check. So why has the entrepreneur been sued, pilloried, and lampooned?
From: FastCompany.com | July 2007 | By: Kermit Pattison
Jim Gordon has a vision. It moves him so much that he abandoned his chair about an hour ago and paces the corridors and rooms of his Boston offices. He stops at a map of Cape Cod and taps his finger in the middle of Nantucket Sound. He wants you to understand why it's the perfect site for America's first offshore wind farm. "Nobody will ever embargo it, nobody will ever manipulate it," Gordon says. "This is our own domestic resource we're blessed to have off of the coast here. We're hoping Cape Wind can inspire other communities to look at their indigenous energy resources."
Here, near the coastline where the Pilgrims first beheld the New World, this former fossil fuel power plant tycoon wants to pioneer a new era in renewable energy. His $1 billion Cape Wind project would be America's first offshore wind farm, with 130 turbines, each higher than a 40-story building, turning the inexhaustible ocean breezes into enough clean energy to supply three quarters of the electricity needs of Cape Cod, Martha's Vineyard, and Nantucket -- all with zero emissions of air pollution, no wastewater discharge, and probably even a reduction in electricity rates for customers.
For all of those reasons, wind is one of the fastest growing sources of renewable energy. And yet, the industry has remained landlocked in the U.S. Gordon is risking his personal fortune and reputation to lead it offshore -- and if he succeeds, he is likely to have far-reaching effects on the future of renewables. But that success is far from guaranteed because there's one major item in the negative column: the storms that come from shore. For six years, Gordon has weathered a political tsunami of opposition because he wants to erect one of the world's largest collections of wind turbines smack dab in the middle of one of the East Coast's most prominent summer playgrounds. He's been lambasted by Ted Kennedy on the Senate floor, sued, targeted by political dirty tricks, lampooned in cartoons, sued again, and pilloried as a killer of birds, a despoiler of the environment, and a greedy developer. Wait, isn't he supposed to be the environmentalist? His opponents even tried to blow him out of the water with an act of Congress. By all odds, Gordon should be sunk by now. Yet here he stands, after repelling more shots than Old Ironsides, the famous warship anchored a few miles away in Boston Harbor. Gordon has already sunk $25 million into this project, watched his costs double and still hasn't got his permits, financing, or agreements from utilities to buy the power.
But he does have his vision. Today is the kind of hot summer day when fossil fuel peaking plants are fired up to meet the demand. Offshore, the winds are blowing and -- this part drives Gordon crazy -- nobody is capturing them. And here's Jimmy, tapping his finger on Nantucket Sound. Gordon, 53, speaks in a thick Boston accent so the word milieu comes out as "mill-yer." His manner is deliberate, even plodding -- his wife describes him as the tortoise that beats the hare -- yet there's a boulder-rolling-down-the-hill momentum that gathers behind him as he becomes electrified by his own vision. His eyes become ablaze behind his round glasses and he jangles coins in the pockets of his linen pants as he paces. Here comes Hurricane Katrina again. "The most urgent environmental problem facing the Cape and Islands is that it's a low lying coastal community, like New Orleans," says Gordon, hand sweeping over the map like a giant tidal wave. "There's the threat of climate change, with more intense and frequent storms, rising sea levels that are already, according to Woods Hole Oceanographic Institute, eroding precious beaches on the Cape and Islands. Insurance companies are pulling out of the Cape and Islands. Look, how many billions of dollars of damage was done in New Orleans?"
Understand?
"We have got to do projects like Cape Wind," he concludes. "We have got to start transitioning away from fossil fuels to a more sustainable energy and environmental future."
Can You Sell?
Jim Gordon is traveling back to his past. He's behind the wheel of his Audi Quattro, empty child seat in the back, pulling out of a garage in his Beacon Hill neighborhood. He glides past Boston Commons and the brownstone mansions of Commonwealth Avenue. He's in rewind mode, passing the landmarks of his life, and explaining how he got to wind. "For some people, the whole thing is to put as much money on the scoreboard as possible," says Gordon. "I think if you don't obsess about that, and put yourself to work on some good and worthy things, it comes back to you in many ways."
Gordon grew up in a rental duplex in a working class neighborhood of Boston. His father owned small corner grocery stores and Gordon spent afternoons and weekends stocking shelves or working behind the counter, where he learned the art of face-to-face business. Yet he had grander visions for himself. He studied film at the University of Miami and Boston University. "My aspiration was to be a film director," he says. "I thought I was going to be the next Stephen Spielberg."
During his senior year, he tried to break into the business by applying for internships at the local TV stations but couldn't find a job. He tried to get his foot in the door at the new Warner cable station. "When I got down there," he recalls, "they said, 'We don't have any more positions in the television studio, but we do have sales positions. Can you sell?'"
Yes, he could. Gordon went door to door and, he says, broke company sales records. A few months later, the second Arab oil embargo hit and Gordon saw another opportunity. He was waiting in a gas line down the street from his father's store when he had a revelation: energy. He spent his entire $3,000 savings to start a new business, Energy Management, with virtually no experience. He began banging on doors and making cold calls to businesses and factories, selling off-the-shelf products to improve heat transfer and combustion efficiency. Over the next decade, EMI grew to 45 employees and designed and installed customized systems for factories around New England.
In 1984, the price of energy plummeted and clients began to shelve conservation programs. Gordon shifted into the power-generation business. At the time, the electrical industry was going through deregulation under the Public Utility Regulation Policy Act. Regulators encouraged entrepreneurs to develop smaller power plants -- a high-risk business with potential for boom or bust. Gordon leveraged himself to the point where he had two lines of credit on his condo. EMI developed two plants for industrial clients (one a wood-fired plant and the other a natural gas-fired cogeneration plant that produced electricity and steam) then built five more natural gas-fired plants on its own around New England. The last three projects were "merchant" plants, or ones that had no long-term power purchase agreements with utilities; they sold electricity on the spot market. "These guys were going into debt beyond their net worth," says Henry Lee, director of the Environment and Natural Resources Program at the Kennedy School of Government at Harvard University. "Most of us wouldn't sleep at night if we were even close to that exposed."
During these years Gordon proved to be a tenacious businessman. "There would be moments when you'd be absolutely sure this project is over -- multiple times," says Dennis Duffy, an EMI vice president. "But you've got to be able to ride through those times and just keep pushing. Otherwise you should look for another line of business." For Gordon, it was the right business. "Jim, short of being thrown in jail for something, was going to stick with it, come hell or high water," says Ron Cochran, an engineer who worked with Gordon. "He might be a little offended by this, but he for sure is a hustler personified."
His hustling paid off. In 1999, EMI sold two plants to El Paso Energy and the following year it sold the remaining three to Calpine for a combined total reported to be around $250 million.
After that, EMI shrank from a company of 110 employees to a core management team of a dozen people. A few cashed in their chips and retired. Gordon and his remaining colleagues began looking for the next opportunity. "We looked at the portfolio -- we've got gas, we've got oil, and we've got coal," Gordon says, drumming his desk for emphasis. "But we don't have renewable energy."
Kayaking with Kennedy
"If it goes well, it will make it possible for others to follow, says Ted Roosevelt, great grandson of the conservationist president, who owns a house on Martha's Vineyard. If it gets killed, that's going to send a signal that offshore wind is very difficult and it will retard the development of these kinds of projects for a decade, if not a generation."
Gordon and his team looked at several forms of renewables before deciding that wind offered the best option. He traveled to Europe to study the wind industry that had begun in the North Sea. New England shared many of the same constraints that had led the Europeans to look offshore: high-energy costs, population density, and a lack of land sites with sufficient wind. A few miles offshore, however, wind resources improved dramatically, often in shallow waters close to the urban centers.
The potential wind resources off the United States are vast. One analysis by the National Renewable Energy Laboratory estimated offshore wind potential of the lower 48 states at 1,000 gigawatts -- more than the current total U.S. electrical consumption. The trick is reaping this harvest. Only 10 percent of these sites lie in waters of 30 meters or less, the limit of most current technology; the remaining 90 percent will require innovations such as floating platforms or tripods.
Gordon saw himself as a pioneer who would open the door. In 2000, EMI began examining 17 sites around New England before picking an area in the middle of Nantucket Sound called Horseshoe Shoal. Massachusetts's law prohibits power generation facilities in state waters but Horseshoe Shoal lies in a patch of federal water completely surrounded by state water. According to studies by the U.S. Department of Energy, it also happened to have some of the best wind in the region. His choice was seconded a few years later when Boston developer Jay Cashman began searching for his own wind farm site. "He picked the best spot on the east coast of the United States," says Cashman. "If Jim Gordon wasn't there, I would have chosen that spot."
Gordon dreamed big: 130 turbines, each standing more than 400 feet above the waves, higher than the tallest living redwood. The diameter of the blades would be roughly equivalent to a football field. The foundation piles would be driven 80 feet into the sandy sea floor. His project was bigger than any project in operation at the time (many larger ones are under development). All told, the wind farm would have a capacity of 454 megawatts and generate an average of 170 megawatts per year (turbines usually operate at a fraction of their capacity because wind blows intermittently). One state agency concluded that the added electricity would result in a $25 million savings for customers.
And the energy would be clean. It would offset emissions by 802 tons of sulfer dioxide, 197 tons of nitrous oxide, and 734,000 tons of carbon dioxide -- the equivalent of removing 175,000 cars from the road. The area was served by an aging oil-fired power plant along Cape Cod Canal. (Gordon hasn't completely sworn off fossil fuels: EMI also is developing a diesel-powered peaking plant in Chelsea, Mass.)
Gordon says the wind project will be financed entirely with private capital through a yet-to-be determined combination of debt and equity. "We're confident it can be done," says Ted Roosevelt IV, a Lehman Brothers executive who is arranging financing for Cape Wind. Cape Wind would benefit from several government incentives: federal production tax credits for renewable energy (which can provide one to two thirds of revenue for many wind projects), a Massachusetts program for renewables, and accelerated depreciation allowing capital investments to be written off in five years. New England relies heavily on natural gas, which has tripled in price since 2000. "The economics for him are extremely positive in the present market," says Harvard's Lee. "If gas prices remain high, he's coming in with a very cost-competitive form of power."
Still, even some allies within the wind industry express skepticism about Gordon's grand vision for inspiring a huge offshore industry. "No pun intended, it has a lot of wind in its face from a momentum point of view," says Mike O'Sullivan, senior vice president of development for FPL Energy, the largest wind power generator in the U.S. "First, the construction costs are triple of an onshore project." O'Sullivan speaks from experience: His company is developing another offshore wind project in Long Island. "I believe it's a limited business in the U.S.," he says. "It's not the answer to all the issues everybody is trying to address with a silver bullet."
Gordon was willing to bite the bullet. He expected to be welcomed as an environmental hero and envisioned kayaking around his towers with environmentalist Robert Kennedy, Jr. That part of his vision soon proved to be a mirage.
The Perfect Storm
The offshore site had power all right -- the power of rich and influential opponents. Wayne Kurker was one of the first to raise the alarm. Kurker owns the Hyannis Marina, and in the summer of 2001, he rented dock space to a barge that kept making trips into Nantucket Sound. One day he inquired about their business and the crew told him they were boring into the sea floor to take samples for building windmills. Windmills? Kurker thought that sounded like a fine idea until they showed him the site on a map. "I asked them if they were out of their minds," he says.
"Nobody comes to Cape Cod to see our industry," says Kurker as he overlooks his docks. "They come for its natural beauty. Many people come to the Cape by water and to pass all that machinery, which I think is a big boondoggle anyway, is not what the Cape is about."
Kurker recounts the story as he sits near a sign that says, "Nantucket Sound Not For Sale." He's a scrappy and voluble former boat mechanic who purchased the rundown marina 30 years ago and built it into a 180-slip complex for smallcraft to megayachts. Across the harbor, ferries glide along the channel on their way to Martha's Vineyard and Nantucket and the shores are lined with large beachfront homes. A yachtsman from Nantucket stops to chat and soon both are blowing a gale about Gordon and his wind farm.
"He cloaks this project in a green blanket, pretending it's all about doing good for the environment," fumes Kurker. "And that's baloney."
Shortly after the barge episode, Kurker founded the Alliance to Protect Nantucket Sound and the battle was joined. Unlike a typical grassroots organization, the Alliance had the funds to turn itself into a powerful special interest group with lawyers, flaks, and Washington lobbyists. The Alliance claims more than 4,000 donors -- some of whom are very generous. A consultant accidentally posted a copy of an alliance fundraising guide on the Web. According to the document, the Alliance raised $8.5 million between 2004 and 2005 -- 94 percent from 93 major donors who each contributed at least $20,000. "If it is a token gift of $5,000," the guide instructed, "you should delay acceptance."
Gordon had faced opposition before but nothing like this. Opponents sent out mass mailings and took out newspaper advertisements condemning his project. The local paper, the Cape Cod Times editorialized against the project repeatedly and vehemently. The Cape's two ferry lines and the local Chamber of Commerce opposed it. Author David McCullough, the well-known voice of many PBS documentaries, and retired newscaster Walter Cronkite recorded radio ads against Cape Wind. A pantheon of elected leaders lined up against Cape Wind, including Governor Mitt Romney, Attorney General Tom Reilly, local congressman William Delahunt, and Senator Ted Kennedy, whose family compound is located about seven miles from the site. Instead of kayaking with Gordon, RFK Jr. paddled him in the op-ed pages of the New York Times for trying to privatize the commons.
Opponents feared the towers would imperil navigation and aviation, disrupt fishing, chase away tourists and destroy their views (the towers would be less than half an inch on the horizon when seen from shore). They objected to Gordon trying to lock up the site without a competitive bidding process. They compared Nantucket Sound to national treasures like Yellowstone and Yosemite. "If this is the only good site for wind energy, and he's looked up and down the east coast, what does that say about the future of offshore wind in New England and the U.S. East Coast?" asks Charles Vinick, president and CEO of the Alliance to Protect Nantucket Sound. "If there is a great future, there can't be one site."
Gordon, the old salesman, tried to get his foot in the door at some of the seaside estates. He paid $1,000 to attend a fundraiser at the Kennedy Compound, he says, but his check was returned. Once, Gordon called on Bill Koch, a businessman and yachtsman who owns a house on Nantucket Sound. Koch is founder and chairman of the Oxbow Group, a conglomerate of more than two dozen companies with nearly $1 billion in annual sales of coal, natural gas, petroleum coke, and power generation. Koch also knows something about wind: He is a sailor, and in 1992 he won the America's cup. "He was such as advocate I thought he was an evangelist," Koch recalls of his meeting with Gordon. "I even said to him, 'Now Jim, cut this B.S. out…Well, he kept going on. I finally said, 'Jim, just shut up, let's talk about the economics.'" Koch later became one of the most prominent opponents and co-chair of the Alliance. In an op-ed in the Wall Street Journal, he branded Cape Wind "nonsensical, a giant boondoggle for the benefit of one developer."
Back in his office, Gordon stands at the map and runs his finger along the coast. He traces his opposition to an oligarchy of seaside barons who are bankrolling the opposition. "They love renewable energy as long as it's in someone else's backyard," he says. "This is a very small group of opposition. They're very wealthy and very politically influential. A lot of these people are so successful, they have a sense of dominion."
But he must give them this: They have slowed him down. The Alliance has filed two lawsuits, and although Cape Wind has prevailed, the controversy has slowed the permitting process and substantially increased his costs. Under the most optimistic scenario, Gordon will get a permit no earlier than late 2008 -- three years after his original target to produce power. The cost of the project has risen from $700 million to a figure that Gordon will only describe as "north of one billion."
"If it goes well, it will make it possible for others to follow," says Ted Roosevelt, great grandson of the conservationist president, who owns a house on Martha's Vineyard. "If it gets killed, that's going to send a signal that offshore wind is very difficult and it will retard the development of these kinds of projects for a decade, if not a generation."
Senator, Can You Help Me?
"It's a war of attrition," says Gordon. "They're trying to wear us down and make us run out of money."
Gordon has spent millions on lawyers, lobbyists and consultants, but two of his most powerful weapons are his own determination and salesmanship. When Walter Cronkite, a longtime resident of Martha's Vineyard, recorded radio ads against the wind farm, Gordon picked up the phone. "We're renting a summer house in Nantucket and he gets on the phone and cold calls Walter Cronkite," recalls Gordon's wife Meg. "The next thing I know, I'm out buying a box of candy for Jim to bring to his house." He convinced Cronkite to keep an open mind, and the newsman asked the alliance to pull his ads.
Gordon also has proven to be a savvy political operator. When the Democratic convention came to Boston in 2004, somebody distributed a bogus press release claiming that a contractor had refused to work with Cape Wind. Gordon hired a forensic computer expert from Kroll Security who, armed with two court orders, traced the phony release to the home of a staff member of the Alliance to Protect Nantucket Sound. Gordon sued the staffer and won a $15,000 judgment, which Cape Wind -- not to let a good publicity opportunity slip by -- donated to a charity that helps needy families pay energy bills.
Gordon's strategy includes another unorthodox business tactic: grassroots organizing. The Cape Wind web site, with calls for action and warnings of global warming, resembles that of an environmental organization more than a private utility. One of the ironies of the Cape Wind debate is that a power plant tycoon has allied with environmentalists who normally are more accustomed to suing utilities. Those allies include Greenpeace, the Sierra Club, and the Natural Resources Defense Council. "We can dance with corporations or we can dance on them," says Kate Smolski of Greenpeace. "We do not support Cape Wind Associates or Jim Gordon -- we support the project they are building because of the clean renewable energy it will produce."
Such alliances raise an interesting question: Is Gordon the environmentalist he claims to be? Or the opportunist portrayed by his opponents? "My personal opinion is the challenge alone is what keeps him at it," says Cochran, the engineer who helped Gordon develop power plants. "He wants to beat the odds. He has waaaayyy to much personal money into it for it to be anything else, in my opinion. He certainly has passion for cleaning up the environment and all that good stuff, but I would argue it's because it seems an impossible task -- and he's going to prove that it isn't."
Certainly Gordon could find easier ways to make money. "This may sound corny to you," says Gordon, "but I'm kind of a patriotic person, and I think that if we don't get away from importing most of our energy, we're in trouble. Yeah, I'll be upset if this whole thing is flushed down the toilet, all the money we've invested. But if it's all lost, then I'm glad I tried."
There was a point last year when it did seem all might be lost. A Senate-House conference committee approved an amendment to a Coast Guard budget bill that would effectively kill Cape Wind by giving veto power on navigational issues to the governor of "the adjacent state" -- at the time, that governor was wind farm opponent Mitt Romney. Gordon read his own political obituary. "Cape Cod Wind Farm Project May Be Headed for Pasture," said a headline in the Los Angeles Times. The amendment was inserted by committee chairman Sen. Ted Stevens of Alaska. Shortly thereafter, it was revealed that Stevens had discussed it with Ted Kennedy.
"Jimmy went to Washington and literally stood in the hallway of the congressional building and flagged people down in between sessions," says Meg Gordon. "He pounded the pavement in Washington for four months straight until he was able to turn around what Kennedy was trying to do."
Even a vacation turned into a lobbying trip. On the first morning of a long-delayed visit to his mother in Florida, Gordon learned that Senator John McCain would be signing books at a nearby bookstore. He spent two hours waiting in line, handed McCain his book, and pleaded, "Senator, Can you help me?" A few days later, McCain announced his support for Cape Wind.
The controversy elevated Cape Wind into rallying point for green energy and Congressional reform. Editorials from coast to coast decried the backroom politics. Even as the project's political fate became more perilous, its public support grew. By last fall, Cape Wind had become a wedge issue in the Bay State elections. Says Gordon, "What doesn't kill you makes you stronger."
Climate Change!
Fast forward eight months. A winter ice storm has turned Boston into a huge skating rink. It's 7 a.m., and Gordon sits in the backseat of a taxi with a copy of the Wall Street Journal folded across his lap. He wears a heavy overcoat over his suit and big leather boots. Of course, nasty weather makes the wind blow -- 32 knots today, according to his data tower out in Nantucket Sound. Today his turbines would be churning out 422 megawatt hours of electricity -- if only they existed.
But maybe they still will. Gordon has survived long enough to see a political climate change. There's a new Democratic Congress in Washington with a strong interest in renewables. The voters of Massachusetts have elected a new governor, Deval Patrick, who championed Cape Wind as just the sort of clean innovation the state should be encouraging. Everybody is talking about global warming.
One day earlier, Cape Wind had filed its final environmental impact report with the state. On this frigid morning, Gordon is on his way to hear the man who will decide its fate. Ian Bowles, the state's new Secretary of Energy and Environment, is giving a breakfast talk to an energy business group. Gordon rides the elevator up to the 26th floor of a skyscraper in Boston's financial district near the waterfront. Outside the windows, a single wind turbine is just visible on the horizon -- an experimental project on the shore of the town of Hull -- like a distant dream.
The introductory speaker presents Bowles with a wish list on behalf of the local energy industry. Number three: approve Cape Wind. Bowles's speech outlines a vision for clean energy and technological innovation that seems to describe Gordon's project all but in name. (A few weeks later, the state gives Gordon a green light by certifying his environmental studies and Bowles rules that the environmental impacts of the wind farm "pale in comparison" to the benefits of reducing emission.)
After the breakfast talk, Gordon is back in the old neighborhood, a few doors down from his father's former store, lunching on a plate of pasta. He still has many miles to go: another environmental report from the feds, approval from the U.S. Minerals Management Service, power purchase agreements, and almost certainly more litigation. But he can see his vision inching closer, as surely as he can see the espresso in front of him. "It's right there," he says, hand grasping the air. "This is what drives me nuts. We don't have to worry about storing nuclear waste for a thousand years or what the Ayatollahs in Iran are going to do. It's right there -- so close."
10 Questions with Wind Power Entrepreneur Jim Gordon
This former fossil fuel power plant tycoon wants to pioneer a new era in renewable energy. His $1 billion Cape Wind project would be America's first offshore wind farm, with 130 turbines, each higher than a 40-story building, turning the inexhaustible ocean breezes into clean energy.
From: FastCompany.com | July 2007 | By: Kermit Pattison
FC: What's the worst job you ever had?
Gordon: Baling recycled newspapers in a junkyard.
FC: Why did you become an entrepreneur?
Gordon: Probably because I like the free flow of ideas, creative atmosphere and being my own boss. And no big corporation would have me.
FC: The scariest moment I've had running a company was the day .
Gordon: I'm still waiting for that day.
FC: Who gives you the best advice in your business?
Gordon: The customers. If you listen to them, it helps you understand trends and where things are going.
FC: If you weren't in this field, what would you do?
Gordon: I'd be filmmaker, a director. Blockbusters, extravaganzas! Either that or independent films -- two extremes.
FC: Finish this sentence: George W. Bush is .
Gordon: President of the United States. He was helpful in unleashing the windpower boom in Texas.
FC: What's the simplest thing you never learned how to do?
Gordon: Type. I try to pick up the phone. Since everybody else is on email now, I'm forced to hunt and peck.
FC: What's your ideal day away from the office?
Gordon: Spending it with my family.
FC: How often do you actually do that?
Gordon: Every weekend. Sometimes I take a day off here and there to do it. Tomorrow I'm taking my three-and-a-half year old daughter to her swim class.
FC: Will there ever be a cartel of windpower-exporting states that we will have to invade?
Gordon: No, because we're all anarchists and we wouldn't have our own states. And not unless you want to fight states that fix the price of wind at zero.
SLIDESHOW: http://www.fastcompany.com/slideshow/slideviewer.cgi?list=windfarms&refresh=15
Wednesday, July 18, 2007
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