Wind Farming May Save The Farm
When the federal government announced half a billion dollars in grants last week to help develop wind-energy projects, more than a few land investors and farm owners around the country probably picked up the sweet scent of cash. That’s because wind farming is the hot new sideline source of income shaping up for potentially thousands of landowners whose acreage happens to be in the right place. Wind projects are high on the Obama administration’s list of renewable energy to encourage — even subsidize — in the coming two decades.
Wind energy generation companies are on the prowl for acreage where they can install turbines, ideally in locations that have average year-round wind speeds of eleven to thirteen miles per hour. If the acreage also happens to be in the general vicinity of existing high-power electrical transmission lines, and not too remote from population centers, that’s all the better.