by Bradley Wilson

Created on: August 01, 2009   Last Updated: August 04, 2009

Fortunately we've learned a few things over the past hundred fifty years about our resources, about electric power, economics and our environment. America is in a great position to make a favorable shift in power generation. Whether electricity is generated with coal, hydropower, natural gas or wind, the end result is reliable power to homes and businesses nationwide.

With recent advances in turbine and blade design, wind has the potential to supply much needed power generation not only for the growing demands of our nation, but worldwide. Like any large capital investment, wind energy investment will directly benefit industries affiliated with manufacturing and installation of hardware, the construction industry and land owners who lease land for wind farms.

An additional direct benefit to the communities hosting wind farms will be a considerable boost to the tax base from capital investment and power generation. After the initial economic upswing from development, hiring of operation and maintenance personnel will be required to keep the system running and efficiently managed. These will be technical jobs making long term contributions to local economies.

Local business will benefit from ongoing operations. Although not directly involved with operations, hardware merchants, bankers who finance capital investment, mechanical and electronic component suppliers, and personnel to install and maintain upgrades will benefit from the wind investment in their community. This investment in capital and operations will support increased economic activity for local businesses like restaurants, retail and consumer services.

Aside from these obvious economic benefits to industry and communities, power generation will be more diversified. Consumers will benefit from more predictable power prices due to less dependence on global fuel markets. Diversified investment across wind wealthy states has the potential to make power delivery more reliable as well as keeping the money here at home.

Among the environmental benefits from reliance on wind for extending capacity is positive control over excess release of greenhouse gases such as carbon dioxide (CO2). Excess CO2 is well known to be a contributor to human induced climate change. Direct replacement of coal generation with wind power offsets CO2, SO2 and mercury emissions into our atmosphere.

Wind power generates electricity without combustion unlike coal and natural gas powered facilities which add these harmful gases

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