Wind-energy dreams gain altitude

Wind turbines fill the horizon along Interstate 70 west of Salina, Kan. The state is said to have the third-best wind of any state for such projects, and that is raising the hopes of renewable-energy advocates.

That breeze you’re feeling may be the sudden gust of news about wind energy, until now almost a boutique producer of power in America.

Oilman T. Boone Pickens began flooding the media this month with a $58 million campaign to sell a plan to build thousands of wind turbines. He wants wind to grow from supplying 1 percent of the nation’s electricity to 20 percent in a decade.

This week, global-warming guru Al Gore announced a plan to spend at least a trillion dollars in the next 10 years on renewable energy, including wind, to break the nation’s fossil-fuel addiction cold turkey.

And we’re smack in the middle of those plans.

Kansas has the third-best wind of any state, and Missouri’s tiny Rock Port is winning national attention as the first town in America to operate solely on wind power.

Pickens’ plan could be wind-spun gold for the wind-tunnel corridor, stretching from central Texas to the Canadian border, as many thousands of jobs are created to build turbines, erect wind farms and string transmission lines to the East and the West Coasts.

“I’m over the moon about it,” said Nancy Jackson, executive director of the Lawrence-based Climate and Energy Project, a nonprofit climate-research group.

“This gives Kansans a chance to stay home and have jobs where they have grown up, which is great,” Jackson said.

Of course, everyone agrees Pickens’ and Gore’s plans are darned ambitious, and some are questioning whether they can be accomplished so quickly.

“This is not business as usual,” said Christine Real de Azua, a spokeswoman for the American Wind Energy Association, the national trade association for the industry. “To make this work, clearly we would need a different set of policies in place.”

Real de Azua said it is exciting that the energy crisis is suddenly up front and center in America, but Washington does not usually move fast on energy issues.

Both Pickens and Gore believe the energy crisis should be the No. 1 issue of the election — one reason for the timing of their own energy campaigns.

Pickens has said that to implement his plan within 10 years, both Congress and the White House must treat the current energy situation as “a national emergency and take immediate action.”

That goes beyond what either presidential candidate has said, but both expressed support this week.

“Pickens’ proposal to break our addiction to foreign oil and significantly ramp up our investments in renewable energy is precisely in line with what Obama has proposed in his comprehensive energy plan,” said Debbie Mesloh, communications director for Sen. Barack Obama’s campaign in Missouri.

In a statement Thursday, Obama said he strongly agreed with Gore that “we cannot drill our way to energy independence, but must fast-track investments in renewable sources of energy. … It’s a strategy that will create millions of new jobs that pay well and cannot be outsourced.”

Sen. John McCain said in an interview with The Star on Thursday that moving to renewable energy is a “good idea” that should be studied. To move away from coal-fired power plants, he said, he favors building at least 45 nuclear power plants by 2030.