An organization promoting clean, renewable energy has expressed interest in studying if wind energy may be viable in the Johnson City area, a proposal officials from one of Tennessee's leading "green" cities couldn't pass up.

On Thursday, the Johnson City Commission approved a license agreement with the Southern Alliance for Clean Energy and Integration Technology to allow the installation of a wind-monitoring device to be installed on the tower at Buffalo Mountain.

Johnson City Manager Pete Peterson said city officials were approached by SACE, and the device would be used to measure and observe things such as wind speed and frequency.

"It would be one of the very first steps in analyzing the potential of wind power in this area and, more specifically, on Buffalo Mountain," he said.

The 18-month agreement gives authorization for SACE to install the device on the tower and monitor the results. Peterson said the city is not charging SACE anything for the device's installation but has asked that the data collected be shared with the city.

While the device will be useful in determining if wind power is viable in the area, Peterson said there are no immediate plans to install a wind turbine following the results of the information collection.

"Wind power can be a very emotional issue on both sides," Peterson said. "I want to emphasize to everybody at this point we are not contemplating putting windmills on Buffalo Mountain, but there is some real value in collecting the data to determine what type of winds are occurring."

Peterson said the data collected may be useful to people in surrounding areas and the use of wind energy would fall in line with the city's "green" initiatives.

"It's not to say data collected now won't result in some sort of enhanced technology down the road to where you can collect wind energy from something other than a wind turbine that is taller than Neyland Stadium's press box," he said.