VANCOUVER, Wash. - The Port of Vancouver has unveiled a new $3.3 million mobile harbor crane. The crane is capable of lifting 140 metric tons. Port officials say it was purchased in part to unload the blades and hubs of giant wind turbines for Pacific Northwest wind farms.

Energy Northwest this week submitted an application to build a $1 billion coal gasification power plant at the Port of Kalama, kicking off a review by state regulators that could take more than a year. "This is a new technology," Energy Facility Site Evaluation Council manager Allen Fiksdal said Wednesday. "It's a big project, and it's complex." The 600-megawatt Pacific Mountain Energy Center would be the first power plant of its kind in Washington and the first required to comply with a state law that calls on new power plants that use fossil fuels to curb greenhouse gases.

SEATTLE — Voices from both sides of the Cascade mountains were heard Tuesday night at South Seattle Community College on a controversial wind farm proposal to the east in Kittitas County — the 65-turbine Kittitas Valley Wind Power Project. The hearing was the first in a series of sessions by the state Energy Facility Site Evaluation Council, or EFSEC, that will continue next week, beginning Monday in Ellensburg.

The major sticking point surrounding Horizon Wind Energy’s planned wind farm northwest of Ellensburg comes to this: should state government override Kittitas County’s rejection of the Kittitas Valley Wind Power Project and consider approving it? The wind farm developer and project supporters say yes; Kittitas County officials and opponents of the site 12 miles northwest of Ellensburg say no.

RICHLAND, Wash. Energy Northwest plans to add up to 25 more wind turbines to its Nine Canyon Wind Project in southeast Washington.

Denver-based Invenergy Wind LLC has options to lease or buy land 20 to 25 miles east of Ellensburg for a wind farm project, located between Vantage Highway and Interstate 90. The company, part of the larger Chicago-based power-generation company Invenergy, has environmental, wind, habitat and wildlife studies under way at this time at the site, according to Doug Carter, vice president of development for the company's western region. “We have, so far, viewed the location as a good site for wind-power generation,” Carter said. “We intend to keep developing the site.”

Vashon Island isn't the best place to harness wind energy. The wind just doesn't blow as hard in Puget Sound as it does in parts of the state where wind farms have been built. Even so, there's enough breeze to make wind turbines a good investment, says a group of islanders who want to make Vashon "energy independent."

As developers begin to build wind farms in more populous areas, they're running into public opposition. In this part of New York State -- dairy country in the foothills of the Adirondacks -- the town of Malone this year passed a law banning commercial wind farms, though residents and farmers are allowed to install single units for their own use.

Energy consumption: Universities are paying more for renewable energy generated by dams and wind farms. Western Washington University and The Evergreen State College were among the first in the state to go 100 percent green. Colleges are also exploring other energy options, such as biodiesel and solar power.

The new resources involve a large wind farm under development in north-central Oregon, a geothermal facility planned in southern Idaho, three existing natural-gas-fired power plants in Washington, and two purchased-power agreements not tied to specific generating plants.

Cantwell, a member of the Senate Energy Committee, helped push through Congress a two-year extension of a production tax credit for wind energy, which helped seal the current Vestas deal and provide jobs at the Port, Clark said. The credit was to expire on Dec. 31, 2005. The extension provides a 1.9 cent per kilowatt hour tax credit to the wind farm owner -- which passes the savings to ratepayers -- for electricity generated with turbines over the first 10 years of a project -- a break that has been crucial to wind farm development, port officials said. Cantwell said she also has proposed a bill for the development of clean energy that would ensure the tax credit until 2015. The lengthy extension would provide more predictability for investment and allow the wind power industry to grow, she said.

The power of the federal tax code was on display Friday at the Port of Longview for a U.S. senator to see. Wind towers made in China and South Korea were on their sides waiting to be hauled away by truck or rail car to a wind farm somewhere in North America. Thanks in part to a made-in-the-USA tax shelter, importing wind towers from Asia has grown from zero to about 15 percent of the port's business in three years.

Cowlitz PUD commissioners Monday acted to keep the utility's first big venture into wind power on schedule, even if thorny negotiations with private investors stall. Commissioners secured a $78 million line of credit from Bank of America for the first batch of wind turbines for a 200-megawatt wind farm in Klickitat County.

OLYMPIA, Wash. (AP) -- Voters will get to choose whether to require state utility companies to increase renewable energy sources to 15 percent of their supply by 2020.

Currently, only one project is strongly opposed by Blue Mountain because of concerns for birds. It's called Windy Point, in Klickitat County in south-central Washington.

WASHINGTON – The Tacoma Narrows holds “significant promise” as a site for one of the nation’s first projects to generate electricity by tapping the tides, according to a new report.

A series of factors -- including increasing demand for wind farms, rising costs for materials and the weakening U.S. dollar -- have driven up construction prices. At the same time, Northwest dams don't have enough remaining flexibility to supplement and smooth the up and down generation patterns of new wind farms.

If approved, I-937 would require the state's utilities to produce 15 percent of the their electricity from renewable energy sources, such as wind and solar power. Hydroelectric power, which supplies about two-thirds of the state's power, isn't included as a renewable energy source under I-937.

Some of the money PSE's proposal would bring in is already earmarked to help complete a wind-farm project in central Washington.

The tax credit, which is indexed for inflation, now reaches almost two cents per kilowatt hour and those pennies add up. King said a 100-megawatt project would receive about $5.3 million in tax credits during its first year, and the credit would continue for 10 years. "Congress has renewed it in fits and starts, and the industry has responded the same way," he said. "When it's extended, production is up. When it's not in effect, production is about zero. It has led to the current frenzy."