States with renewable portfolio standards have generated growth in the renewable energy sector, but many of the Appalachian states don't have one. Pennsylvania, Delaware, Maryland and New York all have some fairly progressive goals, but West Virginia, Kentucky, Virginia and Tennessee don't have a state RPS and wind projects often ignite battles.

OLIVER SPRINGS, TENN. - When Martha Walls gives tours of her town’s small museum, she points to framed photographs of coal-blackened faces next to those of 400-foot wind turbines that stand on a reclaimed strip mine just outside town. The Southeast’s first commercial wind farm was built here on Windrock Mountain on the site of an old coal mine after people in North Carolina fought a proposal to place it within view of Watauga County. In Oliver Springs, the new environmentally-friendly energy came without a fuss. “I don’t hear anybody complain about our windmills, and I don’t know why anybody would,” Walls said. But in North Carolina, where a proposal to build a wind farm in Ashe County has run up against opposition from longtime residents and newcomers, the road to renewable energy is not so certain.