Puffing up wind energy

From rolling midwestern plains to the Manhattan skyline, wind energy has been marketed as a renewable goldmine. Still, as wind picks up momentum, politics and economic tensions are clouding the horizon for the rapidly commercializing energy source.

On Long Island, LIPA's plan to establish an offshore wind farm ran into various political and regulatory snares and finally collapsed when authorities found that it would cost far more than originally anticipated.

Meanwhile, a $2 billion wind-power investment upstate is meeting some resistance from Albany regulators, as it is tied to a sticky deal for a major utility takeover by a foreign company.

In some upstate communities, skeptical residents say wind energy firms are using insidious tactics to stake out land and score local deals with officials.

Is the wind boom becoming a bubble?

T. Boone Pickens' grand plan to make the country run on wind and natural gas is attracting scrutiny over the Texas oil mogul's economic motives. Mayor Michael Bloomberg's new wind development scheme has generated doubts among experts, who say the city's landscape isn't gusty or roomy enough to house a viable turbine infrastructure. And as the embattled Cape Wind project revealed, windmills are ripe targets for community backlash based on potential environmental and aesthetic hazards, both real and perceived.

One industry insider, Mick Sagrillo of the American Wind Energy Association, warned in an interview in Renewable Energy World that the some companies may try to exploit the concerned public's inflated hopes:

“It's great that people are looking for alternatives, but it's amazing how little people know when they seek them out. That leaves people open to purchasing a product that is less-than-reliable. We are a very gullible culture, we're always looking for the magic bullet."

Confronting climate change is an imperative for all communities, but one early lesson to be learned is that while new industries are drifting into our backyards, the old principle of buyer beware still applies.