Here’s a scenario OPEC would kill for: Your product gets pricier and pricier, and yet demand grows relentlessly. That’s the rosy picture facing the world’s wind-turbine makers.

Denmark’s Vestas, the world’s biggest turbine maker, reported a big jump in profits today—and a $10 billion order book for more. With a global thirst for clean energy, some companies stand to clean up. Turbine prices have risen 74% in the last three years—and yet countries from the U.S. to China can’t get enough of them.

Wind may be free. But wind energy isn’t. Turbines are getting more expensive because everybody wants them, but the companies making the 8,000 components inside a wind turbine still can’t keep pace. That’s important, because unlike traditional power sources like coal or natural gas, most of the cost of wind energy is upfront—the turbines themselves. Vestas figures tight supplies and rising prices will continue “for some years.”

Who cares? Lots of people other than T. Boone Pickens and Al Gore. Power companies around the world are diving into wind power. The U.S. Department of Energy figures wind power can be a big part of America’s energy mix by 2030 if everything falls into place; analysts said yesterday the U.S. could have 150 gigawatts of wind power by 2020. That’s more wind power than the whole world has now. But aside from all the other hurdles, from congressional foot-dragging to the need for new transmission networks, that can only happen if wind turbines are available.

Then there’s China. Beijing’s unofficial goal is to have 100 gigawatts of wind power by 2020, a ten-fold increase from today. And China’s clean-energy push doesn’t have to wait for Congress. It’s already on track to become the world’s biggest maker of wind turbines next year, the Global Wind Energy Council says.

Granted, China’s voracious domestic appetite means its wind-turbine makers have yet to jump into the export game—that, and stiff competition from savvy rivals like Vestas who still dominate a technology-heavy industry.

But it would be ironic if China’s top-down clean-energy push, including the overnight creation of a massive wind-turbine industry, sowed the seeds for America to meet its own clean-energy goals.