Wind power is a reality today. More than 2,000 MW of wind generation – enough to serve more than 600,000 average American homes – were installed in the United States in the past two years alone. With continued government encouragement to accelerate its development, this increasingly competitive source of energy can provide at least six percent of the nation’s electricity by 2020, revitalizing farms and rural communities – without consuming any natural resource or emitting any pollution or greenhouse gases.

While wind generates only a small fraction (about 0.3 percent) of U.S. electricity today, another way of looking at that number gives a different view: to generate the same amount of electricity using coal would require a train of coal cars more than 500 miles long, each year.

Perhaps because of its growing success, wind is increasingly becoming the target of critics within the traditional energy community. They are disturbed by the fact that the wind does not blow all of the time, making a wind plant’s generation highly variable and thus quite different from other utility generating options.