million pounds of nitrogen oxide, sulferdioxide, and particles. It would take a forest of one hundred and seventy five million trees to provide the same air quality.The environment, however, is not the only benefit wind turbines offer. Wind energy is already one of the most cost competitive renewable energy technologies, at about three to five cents per kilowatt-hour. These costs are competitive with the direct operating cost of many conventional forms of electricity. In the future, prices are expected to drop even further. This will provide low cost electricity to homes, businesses, schools and manufacturing plants. Although wind power does have relatively little impact on the environment, there are some drawbacks. For instance, there is concern over the noise produced by the rotator blades and aesthetic impacts. Also, birds have been killed by flying into rotators. Most of these problems have been resolved or greatly reduced through technological development or by properly siting wind plants. Another challenge to using wind as a source of power is that it is intermittent and it does not always blow when electricity is needed. Wind cannot be stored and therefor it cannot be used to meet the timing of all electricity demands. Further, good wind sites are often located in remote locations far from areas of electric power demand. Finally, wind resource development may compete with other uses for the land and those alternative uses may be more highly valued then electricity generation. Wind power has an expansive future according to experts. In the 1990’s wind energy was the fastest growing source of electricity in the world. However, the majority of this growth has been in Europe. This is where government policies and high conventional energy costs favor the use of wind energy. The U.S. Department of energy recently announced that it hopes to power at least 5% of the nation’s electricity with wind by 2020. The departmen...
