Wind power is immensely attractive in more than a few ways. Like tidal power, it's seemingly benign and non polluting, and doesn't involve exporting our energy dollars abroad year after year.

But wind power isn't all that simple. For example, it doesn't work just anywhere. Despite the best intentions of the city of Keene, which is known widely for environmental innovation, two studies have found that local wind patterns aren't strong or steady enough to justify investments in turbines.

Separately, last March, the voters of Roxbury okayed looking into setting up a town-owned commercial wind power operation on its ridge lines. The project has been slowed by a number of factors, including failure to win grant money for a feasibility study and to find a U.S. supplier of the kind of turbine the town's wind power committee wants.

Still, there is one wind operation up and running in the region - a 12-turbine facility in Lempster, about 30 miles north of Keene, that just celebrated its initial year as New Hampshire's first commercial wind farm. As the Valley News recently reported, there are differences over the virtues of the unit, which is said to be able to produce 24 megawatts, enough to supply electricity to 10,000 households a year. Supporters say the facility's 256-foot tall towers are doing their job; the Valley News quoted one critic as saying the wind is lacking.

It's hard to tell who's right because the plant's owner, Iberdrola Renewables, won't publicly report its output (though its does file data with state regulators on a confidential basis). The company, which is a subsidiary of a Spanish energy giant, bases its silence on competitive reasons.

Under ordinary circumstances, such a claim might make sense, but this is an enterprise that's benefited from huge taxpayer subsidies. Iberdrola has reportedly received nearly half a billion dollars in federal stimulus money this year alone. A spokesman says that none of that money went to the Lempster project. So? The stimulus grants, along with whatever other government supports Iberdrola has received, have surely had a positive impact on the balance sheet of the owner of the Lempster operation.

None of this is to say that alternative energy in general and wind power in particular shouldn't receive public support. The nation's energy sector needs innovation of the green sort. But you'd think the federal government would try harder to convince the public of the merits of wind. Why not do so with more fulsome disclosure requirements by beneficiaries of its taxpayers' investments?