Green Energy Alternatives: The Theme Park -- It's Happening, on Ward's Island

You must be this tall to ride the wind turbine? Lines of be-fanny-packed tourists shuffling sadly for 45 minutes to see the photovoltaic panels? Lou Gramm sans Foreigner playing the bummer amphitheater by the wind farm? Anything's possible, but the idea of a Green Energy Theme Park doesn't necessarily sound like a winner off the bat, at least if the idea is to make money on licensed merchandise and overpriced snacks. That isn't what the Bloomberg administration has in mind with its Renewable Energy Park project on Ward's Island, though -- this project is really more about demonstrating the possibly transformative power of alternative energy for life in New York. The planned park, designed by Natural Currents Energy Group, is finally going forward after years of wrangling over funding and rights to the space on the southern tip of Ward's Island. There's more than one way to green a metropolis, of course, and while Renewable Energy Park isn't ever going to power Manhattan by itself it's still worth a look.

The city put up $1.4 million dollars for the project and the Department of Energy $990,000, but the potential benefits of Renewable Energy Park are probably still several years away from being realized. While the park itself won't be fully operational for two years, its real purpose -- leaving aside the two small wind turbines and some solar panels that NCEG's Roger Bason acknowledges are largely for show -- is to test the viability of tidal power generation in the East River by way of the four 100-kilowatt tidal turbines that NCEG is installing there. Earlier attempts at harnessing the ultra-turbulent current coursing through Hell Gate have not been successful, although a tidal turbine installed by Verdant Power currently keeps the lights on at Roosevelt Island's Gristede's and the island's ugly-even-by-parking-lot-standards parking facility. Despite the challenges of building turbines that can hang with Hell Gate's powerful current, the potential for tidal power generation there -- estimates have suggested that tidal power could provide three to five percent of the entire city's energy -- has kept the idea on the table. For now, the plan is to pump the power generated at Renewable Energy Park back into the Con Ed grid.

The visitor's kiosk is a nice touch, of course, but the tidal turbines are the real show, here. Well, those and the potential green jobs -- better-paying than brown jobs (eww, sorry), if you hadn't heard -- that a Hell Gate tidal project and the possible Fresh Kills wind power project could provide. No, it's not real estate-related, but there's a certain bottom-line logic to this -- while obviously we all cheer buildings that make better use of energy, it's worth saluting the prospect of buildings using better (that is, more responsibly-generated) energy, too.