[Et seq]

Wind power sounds so good. It's free, just put up a wind turbine...receive state and federal tax breaks, and you can produce electricity for 2 to 3 times the cost of a coal burning plant.
The power company can also receive pollution credits for their existing coal burners. If they build enough wind energy they can even shut down some of their base-load coal burners. Heck I'm sure no one will mind if the lights go out when it is 100 degrees or 20 below zero and the wind stops blowing. Yup, let's put one up every mile or two.
Let's put the first one up in Teddy Kennedy's back yard on Martha's Vineyard, then all the way across our country with the final one sitting alongside Barbara Streisand's California beach front property.

[Young Werther]

When windpower was first proposed the windmills produced electricity at about $.10 per kilowatt hour. Today's turbines are more efficient and the cost is $.03-.04 per kilowatt hour which is cost competitive with coal fired plants without the stack gases!!!

In 1978 when I received my MBA this was the major topic in our business school. At that point oil and gas prices were such that coal gasification and liquification plants were planned for North Dakota. In goes the lignite out comes natural gas and gasoline. OPEC recognized the challenge and oil prices fell. Only one gasification plant was built and my nephew, a 4.0 Chem Eng has worked their for almost 20 years. About 30 percent of the lignite fires the chemical process. Imagine if windmills were built and 100% of the lignite could be converted.

I'm sorry but I'm a cock eyed optimist and believe that if we depend on "that old Yankee Ingenuity" we can take control of our energy future and not leave it in the hands of OPEC et al.

BTW, if we were to build and give these windmills to third world countries they could enhance their economic futuries. That's what happened with cell phones. These countries didn't have to go through the telephone poles and outside wire plants to have phone service and Internet access.