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Virginia Beach Mayor Will Sessoms in his "State of the City" speech yesterday announced that 3 new businesses were moving to the Beach. One of them, The Carraro Group, an Italian manufacturer of gears and axles for earth-moving equipment, will move its North American headquarters to the Beach and eventually begin producing turbines for wind energy farms.
"We're very excited to see this happening," Sessoms said. "If you look along the East Coast, there's very little of wind energy occurring. We need to make it happen here on the East Coast, and preferably off the coast of Virginia Beach."
Proximity to the port of Hampton Roads and one of the company's biggest customers, Caterpillar Inc., which has facilities in North Carolina, played a role in the company 's decision to move its North American headquarters to Virginia Beach, said Tiziana Votta, Carraro's senior vice president of worldwide marketing and sales.
"There is so much interest right now in alternative energy," Votta said. "We believe the industry is going to grow relatively quickly. Our type of products are well suited for off-shore applications."
Carraro plans to begin production of the wind turbines in the next two years after adding a new building to its site, also near Lynnhaven Mall.
"Virginia Beach is one of the best places on the East Coast to manufacture wind energy," Votta said. "It makes perfect sense to expand our operations to include manufacturing components for wind turbines here." (Source)
Yes, congrats to the City, but also big congrats go out to VCERC (Virginia Coast Energy Research Consortium), specifically Neil Rondorf with SAIC. The VCERC crew has slowly but surely been winning the hearts of many Virginians to all the glorious potential held with offshore wind.
The Virginia Coastal Energy Research Consortium (VCERC) continues to explore the potential of Virginia to supply a major portion of our electricity with offshore wind farms. Put in perspective, consider that a wind farm using available technologies that covers an area equal to that of Virginia Beach could satisfy 20% of the electricity demand of the Commonwealth.
Very exciting stuff! Beats the hell out of energy production from dirty fossil fuels from offshore drilling and Surry coal plants.
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Virginia Beach Mayor Will Sessoms in his "State of the City" speech yesterday announced that 3 new businesses were moving to the Beach. One of them, The Carraro Group, an Italian manufacturer of gears and axles for earth-moving equipment, will move its North American headquarters to the Beach and eventually begin producing turbines for wind energy farms.
