Windmills

(Newser) - Wyoming is in the midst of a land grab, but this time it's wind farm developers, not oilmen, who are eager to make a deal, the New York Times reports. To deal with the onslaught of offers from out-of-state developers, ranchers are abandoning a culture of self-reliance and pooling their land in wind energy associations to increase their bargaining power. More »

(Newser) - Barack Obama's ambitious plans to use green energy investment to rev up the economy are igniting fierce debate over the math behind them, the Wall Street Journal writes. The president-elect says $150 billion in investment will create five million jobs over the next decade, in construction and installation. Critics charge that the plan doesn’t take into account jobs lost elsewhere in the energy industry. More »

(Newser) - Native Americans own some of America's most wind-rich land, and tribal leaders in South Dakota and elsewhere are working to harness the natural power to cash in on the alternative energy boom, the New York Times reports. If they are successful, the projects could work transformations similar to those casinos did elsewhere. "The same thing that brought the buffalo brings the wind,” said a leader of the Rosebud Sioux. "The wind is a gift." More »

(Newser) - Wind promises a practical source of renewable energy, but if the US doesn’t develop it properly, it’ll face another ethanol-like morass, warns Matthew Quirk in the Atlantic . Efforts like T. Boone Pickens’ $10 billion Texas wind farm are misguided. “Wind power is unlikely to cause a global food crisis,” Quirk writes. “But heedless investment in it may provoke blowback of a different sort.” More »

(Newser) - The Northeast is the most promising region of the US for major development of wind power, the Wall Street Journal reports, with large coastal cities close to strong offshore winds and a shallow continental shelf good for erecting turbines. The federal government is getting ready to lease 10 tracts of the outer shelf to companies primed to build wind farms; construction could start within 5 years. More »

(Newser) - The nation's outdated and congested power grid is putting a damper on plans to expand renewable energy programs, the New York Times reports. Generating power from the wind and sun is becoming easier—but getting the power to consumers who live far from the country's windiest and sunniest places remains a problem. More »