Wind farm costs rise

We've heard about rising costs of oil and coal. But apparently the cost of building wind turbines is also skyrocketing.

The blog Treehugger reports that the cost of building new land-based turbines has shot up 74 percent over the last three years, in part because demand is rising rapidly. Offshore wind turbine prices are up 48 percent, according to the news article.

It will be interesting to see how these higher prices impact proposals to build wind turbines off the beaches of Ocean City, Md., and in the mountains of Western Maryland. As wind turbines become more expensive, how competitive will their electricity be compared to power produced by burning coal or natural gas?

"The price of offshore turbines rose 48 percent to 2.23 million euros ($3.45 million) per megawatt in the past three years, according to BTM Consult APS, a Danish wind power consultant....

"As we reported recently, GE can't make wind turbines fast enough and there's certainly no recession going on for the wind power industry. The fact that demand is so high pushes prices upward, but that will only serve to attract more players; investors will see that there's money to be made with wind power and large industrial companies might shift more resources to their wind power divisions. In fact, demand has been high for long enough to show the market that wind power is not simply a passing fad," the Treehugger article reports.