Wind Energy is one of the few energy technologies that doesn't blow...

20% Wind Energy by 2030 -U.S.DoE Report It's tempting to consider replacing one carbon producing energy resource with another carbon producing product. The temptation to tell the big oil companies to stuff it sometimes leads well meaning activists to leave the science out of our energy policy. Ethanol and nuclear power are two examples of sophisticated manipulation by companies who stand to make fortunes rivaling Exxon* by creating a perception shift: damn the reality. You can't save the planet by burning more carbon producing stuff. Remember, that the corn products of ethanol would eventually become oil/gas/coal. Nuclear power - even without an accident - still leaves a byproduct that last 10,000 years. We have to look for truly green power sources that are renewable, sustainable and have almost no carbon footprint. Wind power is working today. The technology is ready for large scale implementation. The only thing holding wind power back is the political will to make it happen and the unfortunate reality that there aren't trillions of dollars of commodity obviously waiting to be harvested or drilled or stored. Wind isn't a single solution for almost any community. The utilities using it today are combining the resource with other technologies from hydro to diesel. There are parts of the U.S. that have enough power that could be sold into the grid that the net tradeoff would immediately reduce our dependance on dirty, dangerous and expensive foreign fossil fuels. If you live in an area with Class 4 winds or better, you may not need to wait for your utility to be progressive. We'll be posting information on home sized systems as we vet them with our resident EE. To find out more about the feasibility of wind power in your community or back yard here are a few resources online: MAPS http://rredc.nrel.gov/wind/pubs/atlas/maps.html http://www.nrel.gov/gis/wind.html http://www.builditsolar.com/Projects/Wind/WindResource.htm *Assuming that one of the big oil companies hasn't bought out all the companies that will be producing the energy from ethanol and nuclear power plants.