The wind turbines tower above the rolling landscape, icons of the renewable age, eerily white and whispering with each rotation of the huge blades. And swirling around the arms of these futuristic giants are the winds of the west, swift and relentless, buffeting the skyline of Portland and whistling past the Bridge of the Gods through the portal of the Columbia Gorge. Reaching skyward from farmland tended in the highlands, the answer is found – “blowin’ in the wind”.

For a map of Northwest Renewable Energy Projects, visit rnp.org.

And click here for a recently updated list of renewable projects totalling 1732.5 MegaWatts.

Here’s a picture of the Klondike Wind Farm (phase I) not far from Wasco, Oregon, just outside the Columbia Gorge Scenic Area. The project is currently in phase III, working toward 375 MW capacity.

The modern wind turbine, streamlined and computer controlled, owes its ancestry to one nation uniquely affected by global warming, where 60% of the land is below mean sea level, the Netherlands. Long adapted to flood control and committed to controlling climate change, the Dutch have in development the largest offshore wind farm plan in the world. The old Dutch windmills you may remember, were used for pumping water and grinding grains and cereals. Approximately 1000 of the mills remain and many are still in use.

The development of the water-pumping windmill in the U.S. was a major factor in early ranching and farming of North America. Rising energy prices and environmental concerns have led to a rediscovery of wind power and renewed interest in the restoration of windmills.

This entry was posted on Sunday, December 9th, 2007 at 10:08 pm and is filed under Energy Future. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.