MORALITY SPACE AND THE POWER OF WIND ENE

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MORALITY, SPACE, AND THE POWER OF
WIND-ENERGY LANDSCAPES
MARTIN J. PASQUALETTI

Most of us have not known-or cared-where our electricity comes from. Our
attitude is changing, however, as we turn toward wind energy, now the fastest-growing renewable energy resource in the world. Because we cannot extract and transport the raw energy of the wind, reaping its many environmental benefits requires that we cope with the
landscape presence of its development wherever it occurs. Sometimes this interferes with the
value of open space, and sometimes it may be close to subdivisions. It is the immobility and
very visibility of wind power that makes its presence unavoidable. In that regard it cannot be
hidden underground, stored in tanks, or moved by trains. It is an energy resource that reminds us that our electricity comes from somewhere. The more we wish to tap the power of
the wind, the less we will be able to avoid the responsibilities that our demand for energy
brings. This necessary bargain, first evident near Palm Springs, California, is now being experienced wherever wind power is being developed. Keywords: California, energy, landscape,
morality, wind.
ABSTRACT.

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O w i n g to the sheer scale of today’s urban places, escaping the congestion that has
become their signature feature can be difficult. Reaching the solace of open spaces
commonly requires a long journey, and sometimes the trip is punctuated by the
unexpected. Heading east from Los Angeles on Interstate 10, for example, you
drive as much as 150 kilometers before traffic thins. But just when you start to
relax your grip on the steering wheel, you sense a strong and even disconcerting
buffeting. As you struggle for control, blasts of sand etch your windshield, obscuring your vision. Once you begin to exit this gauntlet, chaotic apparitions appear out of the clouds of beige dust: thousands of glinting, whirling machines
bordering the highway and crowning every visible ridge, at highway speeds a seeming reversal of Don Quixote’s famous confrontation. As if passing into a new dimension, you have entered a fascinating and challenging modern world, that of
wind power (Figure 1).
This route has taken you through San Gorgonio Pass, a low, topographic “pinch

point” that is vital as a corridor for aqueducts, power lines, railroads, and highways,
whose geographical and economic importance is not new (Figure 2). Long before
San Gorgonio Pass was trenched and scraped and paved by modern society, Native
Americans used it as the most convenient travel route between the cool Southern
California coast and the searing Colorado Desert. During their treks they became
acquainted with the strong winds and their invisible irritations. Today the wind is
even more obvious because thousands of turbines march across the entire width of
the pass and on up the hillsides, becoming the dominant feature. So striking is this
scene that it is used as a backdrop for advertisements, music videos, and motion
pictures. It has become America’s most famous landscape of power.

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46 DR.PASQUALETTI
is a professor of geography at Arizona State University, Tempe, Arizona 85287-0104.
The GeographicaiReview 90 (3): 381-394, luly 2000
Copyright 0 zoo1 by the American Geographical Soclety of New York


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FIG. 1-Phalanxes of wind turbines obscure the view of Mount San Gorgonio, California, in the
winter of 1997.(Photograph courtesy of Paul Gipe)

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The pass doubles as the stage for a morality play, pitting vocal public support
for renewable energy against the visible realities such advocacy can produce. It
prompts questions: Which is it going to be, fossil/nuclear fuels and their consequences, or renewable resources and their costs? Are the advocates of wind energy
willing to reaffirm their backing, or have the landscapes that wind power produces
given them second thoughts? These questions have become relevant in the United
States as the public becomes spoiled by a widening physical distance between consumers and their energy sources. The wider the gap, the greater the effect that distance has had on buffering consumers from the environmental costs of energy. The
recent rise of wind power is shrinking that distance once again, and this contraction
is reminding us afresh of the responsibilities we have for the energy we use.
The San Gorgonio Pass experience is not unique. Globally, the generating capacity of commercial wind turbines now exceeds 14,000 megawatts (MW) (Figure
3), and it is increasing more rapidly than any other renewable energy resource. Various forms and strata of government support have aided this expansion, but its principal attraction is wind power’s inherent environmental attributes. Producing no
global warming, wind power floods no canyons, demands no water, contaminates
no soil, and leaves no permanent and dangerous waste. Wind generators can be
installed and removed quickly; they are well suited to isolated, off-grid locations;
and the cost of the electricity they produce is now comparable with that from conventional sources. In short, wind power is too good to ignore.


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FIG. 2-View of San Gorgonio Pass from Edom Hill, California, looking west, in the winter of 1995.
The white objects in the background are wind turbines. Tamarisk trees that shield railroad tracks
from blowing sand form the horizontal dark streak in the center. (Photograph by the author)

Despite the benefits of wind power and even its acceptance in rural communities where the transcontinental power grid is a distant and uneconomic thought,
the more vocal public reaction is one of hesitation and resistance to the distinctive
landscape signature of wind power (Thayer 1994;Nielsen 1996; Righter 1996; Elliott
1997).As I suggest in more detail below, such landscape imprints can be softened
and possibly even put to good use. First, however, we need to appreciate more fully
that the degree of success that wind power achieves will depend on how well we
understand and accept the fundamental spatial costs it imposes.

THESPATIAL
COSTSOF ENERGY
Generation of electricity, unique among all industrial enterprises, places environmental demands on water, air, and space while delivering a product that is pure,
invisible,and completely clean. It is also unique in the variety of resources, processing, and spatial commitment it employs to produce the same commodity.
The earmark that most completely distinguishes conventional resources from
renewable ones is whether the fuel chain is separated or concentrated. Fossil and
nuclear fuels that currently provide 85-90 percent of our electricity are all on lengthy
and dispersed fuel chains. Coal and uranium are obtained from mines; oil and gas
resources are brought to the surface through wells. Although some fuels, such as oil,
can be used right out of the ground, for best use each is processed. This refining can


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Yearly Additions t o Global
Wind-Power Generating Capacity

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1500
1250

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INorthAmerica

1000

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5
2

750

500
250
0

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1980 81 82 83 84 85 86 87 88 89 90 91 92 93 94 95 96 97 98 99 2000

Year

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FIG. 3-Wind-power generating capacity in Europe, North America, and Asia, showing the quick
rise in generating capacity in recent years and the displacement of U.S. dominance by Europe. Source:
Gipe 1999. (Adapted by Barbara Trapido-Lurie)

be extensive and complicated, especially for uranium, and usually requires separate
locations and, therefore, transportation links. Water is essential for transferring heat,
but it is expensive to move, so all other processing steps accede to the location of its
adequate availability. This results in a tendency for power plants to concentrate along
rivers, lakes, seas, and oceans.
One of the most important spatial consequences of the dispersed processing
that characterizes most generation of electricity is the resulting visual and absolute
dilution of the aggregate impacts that result. It is the reward of such dilution that no
single place must absorb or suffer cumulative environmental-including aestheticinsults. Unfortunately, this “out of sight, out of mind” pattern misleads the public
by suggesting that the environmental costs of electricity are less than they actually
are.
Dispersed fuel chains presently supply most of our electricity-indeed, most of
all types of energy-and for this reason it has become easier to evade many an impact of supplying our needs. But if renewable energy continues to grow in significance, we will become increasingly aware of the sources we tap to supply the energy
we demand because several types of renewable-energy resources have limited spatial flexibility. For these resources, most of the stages between production and consumption are spatially concentrated and immobile. This characteristic erases the
potential for locational flexibility in the event that land-use conflicts are identified.’
Examples of such limitations abound. The value of raw geothermal steam, for
instance, is usually insufficient to allow its transport even a few kilometers, providing developers no choice but to locate power plants near production wells. Simi-


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385

larly, it would make no sense to build a hydroelectricity dam away from a river or to
put wind turbines in isolated and windless places just to keep them out of view.
The inescapable accessory of renewable-resourceimmobility is the spatial intensification of the impacts of its development. Realizing this helps us understand
why renewable-energy developments encounter public resistance, especially where
land is sacred, protected, scenic, or otherwise sensitive. It explains the battle that
erupted over geothermal energy development when hydrogen sulfide odors wafted
over resorts in California (Pasqualetti and Dellinger 1989), when plans for a tidal
barrage across the Severn Estuary in Great Britain were shelved because of the ecological damage it would create (Clare i992), when calls were made to breach Glen
Canyon Dam because it had flooded picturesque terrain upstream,’ or when developments in San Gorgonio Pass incited debate over local landscape costs of wind power
(Pasqualetti and Butler 1987). Such spatial realities, even if amplified by only a few
vocal objectors, can rob momentum and dull enthusiasm for renewable energy.

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TURNING
BACKTHE CLOCK
When the primary fuel of Europe was wood, the consequences of its use were immediate and local. Not only did pollution shroud cities wherever households burned
it, but the forests that once defined the landscapes were felled faster than they regrew and were soon replaced by grass. The more the expansive woodlands were
whittled away, the more the search for substitute fuels sharpened. It was at this historical confluence of technology and need that the shift to “king coal” began. The
emergence of coal as a substitute for wood produced substantial changes in the
spatial arrangement of energy impacts. As coal rose to prominence, there was a
change from the rather uniform, distributed impacts of the ubiquitous use of wood

to the nodal, intensified impacts of coal, the use of which was concentrated in relatively few places.
A case study of the change in the spatial character of impacts comes from the
transport of coal to London from the Midlands and northeastern regions of England, a practice that persisted for centuries. Although coal mining reshaped the
countryside everywhere, people in nearby cities breathed few of the sulfurous fumes
that resulted from its use because virtually all of the coal was sent south. In contrast,
Londoners suffered nothing of the landscape devastation or the personal privations
common in the mining lands of the northeast. Neither place experienced the intensity of the other’s fate. This was a change in a centuries-old pattern, a result of the
transition from low-value, widely available resources such as wood to a spatially
more concentrated resource such as coal.
Other changes in impact followed wherever radically new fuels gained popularity. As oil was changing the energy industry in the first half of the twentieth century,
supply chains and impacts spatially stretched out, and the aggregate impact, substantial and different as it was, became concentrated in more widely spaced locations. Oil was easier and less expensive to transport long distances because it was
abundant in fewer places than was coal. In the last third of the twentieth century


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uranium became significant in the generation of electricity, but the visible expression of its development was relatively small overall because the energy was concentrated in the physics of its use. The separation was as much psychological as literal,
because the invisible and insidious risks of uranium encouraged further separation
of people from their energy resources, often a simple matter because uranium supplies tend to be in areas of low population concentration.
Today, as population rises and wind power becomes viable, the distances between supply and demand are shrinking once again. We are also, at the same time,
experiencing a curious transposition: Whereas many of the impacts of coal-such
as air pollution and mercury deposition-are invisible and regional, those of wind
are apparent and local, just as those of wood once were. In a spatial sense, we are
resolutely turning back the clock.
OF IMPACTS
COMPRESSION

As distance, technology, and our urbanized lifestyle came to cushion us from the
direct environmental costs of energy, we became increasingly less aware and eventually less tolerant of the intrusions of energy development on our personal space.
With some resources, such as wind, that was not always the case. Humanity became
accustomed to wind machines snatching energy from the sky, and, as they labored
for the pleasure and needs of surrounding citizens, they became permanent landscape fixtures. In places they came to represent technical accomplishment and increasing dominion over nature (Cosgrove and Daniels 1988). Eventually, wind
machines took on such a benign, even romantic, charm that, in places like the Netherlands, centuries-old windmills once used to drain the polders still attract tourists.
Such reverence is not manifested simply in the Old World: In Lubbock, Shattuck,
and other Great Plains towns, citizens proudly erect wind museums to help recall
an earlier, simpler time when water pumpers dotted the millions of acres of countryside and gave verticality to an otherwise horizontal land (Figure 4). With wind
turbines again rising from the land,3we are beginning to reconnect with the energy
that supports us.
The modern age of wind power was founded on the assumption that everyone
would want to leap aboard the renewable-energy boat: After all, the history of use
and familiarity is long and rich. But developers forgot that “at the perceptual level,
the less conspicuous the technological landscape, the more it is likely to be valued
by the general public” (Thayer 1994,128).As it turn outs, the public appears to like
the idea of not seeing the sources of the supplies it uses, of not being “responsible”
for the source of its energy. Ignoring this important perceptual predilection, and
seduced by the presumed close ties between people and wind machines, developers
conveniently, if tacitly, counted on public fondness for low-tech solutions. But they
came up against strong feelings largely unmoved by appeals to whatever “green”
inclinations citizens possessed, against a public that had forgotten that there is more
to keeping homes supplied with energy than simply paying for it. Because conventional networks of power are confusingly complex and-more important-scat-


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FIG. 4-The American Wind Power Center in Lubbock, Texas, July1999. In this center, and in others
such as the one in Shattuck, Oklahoma, water pumpers have been collected to commemorate the
variety of designs and the important role they played in the settlement of the Great Plains. (Photograph by the author)

tered, the environmental costs of energy gradually had receded from the public’s
mind. In a flush of enthusiasm for what wind power seemed to offer, the fact that
most renewable-energy resources involve a compressed and noticeable fuel chain
was often lost. This vital spatial difference from conventional energy resources has
been neither adequately recognized nor adequately employed by the wind industry
to explain why people often oppose wind-energy developments. Nor has it been
used to catalyze an appropriately framed or scaled program to educate those outside the wind-power industry. The public, especially in the American West, has become used to receiving its versatile electricity from a static switch on the wall and
not a turbine that spins in plain view outside the kitchen window. This condition
seems likely to pass through at least a mild reversal as part of the ongoing restructuring of the utilities industry. With the increasingly informed consumer has also
come the rise of competitive “green” generators: Some customers are already paying a premium for their electricity in order to support alternative suppliers. In Arizona, and elsewhere, such offerings are swiftly oversubscribed.

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Too MUCHLAND?
In addition to, and as a part of, the aesthetic arguments against wind power, it is
said to take up too much space. But is that true? The answer depends on one’s point
of view. For example, North Dakota alone has enough wind energy at class 4 and


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FIG.5-Wind electric potential as a percentage of total electricity consumption in the contiguous United States in 1990. Specifications: wind resources greater than class 4 at 30 meters (that is,
320 W/m2),30-meter hub height, ioD x 5D spacing, 25 percent efficiency, 25 percent losses. Source:
Elliott and Schwartz 1993. (Adapted by Barbara Trapido-Lurie)

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above ( 6 m / ~ e cto
) ~supply 36 percent of the electricity used in the lower forty-eight
states (Figure 5). Only 0.6 percent of the contiguous United States-that is, almost
50,000 km2,or an area about the size of New Jersey-could satisfy 20 percent of the
nation’s demand for electricity. Although that is a substantial land requirement,
only 5 percent of it-an area about three-quarters the size of Rhode Island-would
be occupied by the turbines, electrical equipment, and access roads. Many uses,
such as grazing, could remain with little interruption (Elliott and Schwartz 1993).
A similar argument for low-intensity use can be made for other places. In the
densely settled United Kingdom, for example, 100 30-MW wind farms could generate the same amount of electricity as a 1.5-GWconventional power-generating power
plant.5 Each of these 30-MW wind farms would cover an area of 9 km2,with the
base of the turbine towers perhaps occupying 1 percent of this area, or some 90 m2.
Six gigawatts, or about 10 percent of the conventional generating capacity of the
United Kingdom, would require 400 30-MW wind farms occupying 3,600 km2about the size of Long Island-in total and 36 km2-about half the size of Bermuda
-for the towers (Elliott 1997).The larger figure is somewhat less than 1.5 percent of
the land area of the United Kingdom, albeit the range of visual impact is much
larger.
In order to give these numbers a more concrete sense, one can compare them
with the land requirements of conventional generation. By one estimate for coal-

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fired power plants, 8,072 GWh are produced per square kilometer of impacted land
over the thirty-five-year life of the plant (Pasqualetti and Miller 1984). Wind turbines would generate 157 GWh over the same time period and land area. The land at
a coal plant is usually unavailable for other purposes, however, whereas only 1-5
percent of the land in a deployment of wind turbines is physically occupied by the
equipment itself (Wilshire and Prose 1987). Using the 1 percent figure, we can extrapolate that 15,680 GWh are generated per square kilometer over a period of thirtyfive years for wind. Thus, when it comes to land actually withdrawn from other
uses, wind power is twice as efficient as coal-and without coal’s emissions or disruptions. Even assuming that the results could vary substantially according to underlying assumptions, these figures suggest that wind energy’s space commitment
alone is a questionable basis for opposing its development.
A further element of the land question revolves around the potential for multipurpose use that wind allows. When private land is leased for wind turbines, payments typically at 2-10 percent of the gross revenues are paid on an annual basis,
depending on use options. For example, in Altamont Pass, 80 kilometers southeast
of San Francisco, the lease payments are relatively high, owing to the competitive
pressure from housing developments. Lease payments in the more remote Midwest
are usually lower. Landowners are the beneficiaries of these arrangements. A 20MW wind plant, operating at 25 percent capacity, with an average energy payment
of $0.05 per kWh, would produce gross revenue of $2,190,000. If the landowner’s
lease is for 2 percent of the gross, this amounts to $43,800 (NWCC 1997). In effect, this
is like ranchers and farmers finding a resource on their property that fetches almost
$5,000 extra per hectare.
THE“UGLY”
LABEL

Another common public complaint about wind power is that arrays of turbines
degrade the quality of the landscape in which they are found. The most colorful

invectives in this regard come from England, where the modern development of
wind power has been called “a new way to rape the countryside” (Economist 1994).
When some people tried to contrast wind’s benign reputation with that of nuclear
power and the scars of coal mining, the debate was called the “battle of the green
giants” (Western Mail 1993). Others derisively refer to wind turbines as “lavatory
brushes in the air” (Sir Bernard Ingham, quoted in Elliott 1997, 161-162). Similar
sentiments have greeted wind-power developments in Germany, Denmark, Sweden, Spain, and several parts of the United States. These epithets suggest that the
public is concerned with the appearance of the turbines as much as with the actual
area of land affected.
Why are feelings about the visual impact of wind power so intense? I offer three
reasons. First, people expect “permanence” in their landscapes, a belief that has
developed with an understanding of nature’s slow work from the time of the earliest humans. This perception is rudely violated when abrupt and fundamental landscape change occurs, such as when a road gashes through a wilderness or a housing


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tract rises along an isolated beach. Such change can be fundamentally disturbing,
perhaps because we are not biologically evolved enough to cope with the modern
speed of change. Change-especially that which is abrupt, conspicuous, or unfamiliar-is, at some basic level, threatening.
Second, especially in the western United States, wind-power developments challenge the somewhat worn yet lingering image of “Big Sky Country.” Open space
remains the West’s greatest attribute and attraction, the inalienable right of all those
with the luck to have been born there or-as some believe-the sense to have moved
there.
Third, in the western United States spatial separation buffers the places of energy development from the places of resource use. Consequently, electricity seems
to come not from the earth but from a switch, the elaborate and almost omnipresent industrial equivalent of magic.
WINDPOWERI N AN OASIS
We have been using wind from prehistoric times, but its application for the generation of commercial electricity is recent, having begun in earnest only in the mid1980s in three areas of California, including San Gorgonio Pass. Attracted by the

rising cost of fossil fuel, lulled by years of public support for renewable energy, and
thinking that the windswept land of the pass had no public value, wind-power developers expected public encouragement, if not outright praise, for their initiative.
Instead, they encountered strong disapproval, especially from people living in the
nearby resort city of Palm Springs.
Soon after the wind turbines were installed, the city claimed that they were industrializing and thereby desecrating the principal gateway to the resorts. Worried
Palm Springs leaders directed that a suit be filed against the managers of the land-the
U.S. Department of the Interior’s Bureau of Land Management and the County of
Riverside-claiming that the two bureaucracies had failed to follow proper environmental procedures when they permitted the public land in the pass to be developed
for wind power. Many local residents thought-correctly-that the turbines rarely
worked and that the economic incentives designed to stimulate wind power also
had tax advantages. At a minimum, city leaders asserted, any electricity that was
generated was not worth the landscape changes the wind turbines produced. And,
of course, the city was not receiving any direct benefit.
THEGREATEST
POWEROF WINDLANDSCAPES
Although wind-power developments have been blamed for everything from bad
television reception to bird deaths, it is the imprimatur of wind generators on
the land that figures most prominently in the public consciousness. One group
wants to use the land for the generation of electricity; another group wants it
for something else, possibly just for its scenery. Land-use competition is the
core argument for those who consider wind power the rotten apple on the alternative energy tree.


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FIG. 6-Wind energy in Kappel, Denmark, illustrating how symmetry, placement, and attention to
existing landforms can work together to reduce the objectionable clutter that has characterized other
wind developments. These twenty-four turbines, commissioned in August 1990, have a capacity of 9.6
MW. (Photograph courtesy of Jens Bygholm)

The first two steps along the path to a fresher fruit seem clear. First, the windpower industry must incorporate all reasonable technical improvements to mitigate impacts and assuage public unrest. Some progress has been made in these
respects: Equipment is now more efficient, more powerful, increasingly aerodynamic, quieter, safer, and more reliable. This means that fewer turbines are needed
to generate an equal amount of electricity. Wind-power developments also tend to
glint and reflect less noticeably, to look less cluttered, and to be more uniform in
design and arrangement. All of these improvements have reduced the targets of
public objection, even those that focus expressly on wind-turbine visibility.
Second, industry must strive to intelligently and carefully integrate turbines
within individual landscapes in which they work. Several generic steps can be taken,
including attention to scale, symmetry of design, careful road construction and site
preparation, and equipment maintenance. Such care can yield positive results, as
the Danes-long pioneers in wind-power technology-have demonstrated (Nielsen
1996) (Figure 6).
No matter how much we do to reduce the impact of wind turbines on landscapes, nothing can render them invisible. The most sensible remaining step, then,
is to embrace wind's visibility not as a problem but as an asset. If one concedes that
the essential first step in communication is attracting initial audience attention, wind's


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TABLE
I-UNAVOIDABLE
CHARACTERISTICS

OF WIND-POWER
GENERATION
AND REACTIONS
TO THEM
CHARACTERISTICS

MITIGATION MEASURES IN PLACE

FUTURE DIRECTIONS A N D NEEDS

Diffuse resource
Site specificity
Intrusiveness
Compact fuel chain
Rotational movement
Existing natural features

Local planning ordinances
Neutral paint and finishes
Safety and visibility setbacks
Retiring bonds
Noise reduction and muffling
Underground lines
Slim monopolies
Finding alternate sources
( repowering)

Continued repowering
Continued technical gains
Site evaluation and planning

Economic education
Environmental education

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intrinsic visibility is the most logical foundation for a program of public education
that highlights environmental advantages of wind over other sources of electricity.
Actually harmonizing wind machines with host landscapes will then rely on the
interplay of social and physical geography.
These steps are summarized in Table I. The first column lists the characteristics
of wind power from which we cannot escape. The second identifies the mitigation
measures that have already been implemented. And the third highlights steps, such
as planning and education, that we seem ready to address more completely and
creatively.
SUMMARY
A N D CONCLUSIONS
Civilization grew up with wind power. It was used to move boats along the Nile River
5,000 years ago and to pump water in China several centuries before the beginning of

the Christian era. For better or for worse, European exploration could not have occurred without it. We are familiar with wind power, so it holds none of the mystery of
fission or fusion or even standard fossil-fueled power generation. Its total environmental impacts are approximated by its landscape expression. Most important, its
physical presence reminds us that our supply of electricity has environmental costs,
regardless of whether they are nearby or too distant or camouflaged to see.
If wind energy is to expand, so too will wind-energy landscapes and the attention paid to them by the public. If developers are to cultivate the promise of wind
power, they should not intrude on favored (or even conspicuous) landscapes, regardless of the technical temptations these spots may offer. Had this been an accepted admonition twenty years ago, the potential of the San Gorgonio Pass might
have carried with it the threat of public backlash sufficient to cause more farsighted
developers to hesitate. This argues for a more careful melding of land use, scenic
values, public opinion, and environmental regulations with the technical considerations of each site.
The benefits of wind energy are as apparent as are the challenges of the rapid

and dramatic landscape changes that wind power creates. A balance between costs

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and benefits is achievable, however, if the public does more-in classrooms, visitor
centers, tours, signs, and the like-to consider the full case before it. The best first
step in assessing this case is to realize that just because wind-power generation is
visible, it is not necessarily harmful. The second is to value wind-power landscapes
as benign reminders that the conveniences we enjoy and the lifestyles we lead have
attendant costs, costs that we are unwise to hide and foolish to forget. This may be,
after all is said and done, the most important reason to develop wind energy.
NOTES
1. In Foote Creek Rim, Wyoming, for example, opponents asked why U.S. Windpower-the original
developeraid not simply move to a similar topographical area, apparently not grasping the issue of
the cube law for wind and the need to place plants at the windiest sites. (My thanks to Tom Gray for
this example.)
2. The mission statement of the Glen Canyon Institute reads: “The Glen Canyon Institute’s mission is to provide leadership in re-establishing the free flow of the Colorado River through a restored
Glen Canyon” [ ].
3. The use of the shallow North Sea by several wind developers is an example of one way to
increase separation, to provide unobstructed access to the wind, and to make wind-power generation
less visible to the public.
4. That is, those areas at class 4 and above are considered suitable for development. Class 4 winds
can annually produce 11.65 million kwhlkrn’. Areas with class 4 winds and above total approximately

460,000 kmz, or about 6 percent of the total land area in the contiguous United States. The potential
average generation from areas with class 4 (6 m/sec) and higher, which are suitable for development
using advanced wind-turbine technology, is estimated at 500,000 MW. If future-generation technology is utilized to take advantage of areas with wind resources of class 3 and higher, then the amount of
windy land available is more than 1,000,ooo km’,or almost 14 percent of the land area in the contiguous United States. A group of twelve states in the midsection of the nation has enough wind-energy
potential to produce nearly four times the amount of electricity consumed by the entire country in
1990 (Elliott and Schwartz 1993).
5. Population density in the United Kingdom (240/km2)is nine times greater than that in the
United States (27/km2).

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