Wyoming lawmakers will soon take up the thorny issue of whether to impose new taxes on wind energy development, a proposal that developers say could stunt the fledgling industry's growth in Wyoming. Supporters of a new tax say it's only fair for wind projects to contribute to state and local governments equal to other energy industries. Opponents say Wyoming taxes are already high compared to surrounding states and any new tax would be premature. The Joint Revenue Committee will consider two proposals to tax wind electricity generation at a Wednesday meeting in Cheyenne.

Wyoming's Wind Energy Task Force has delivered a 78-page report to state lawmakers outlining how the state and counties might regulate the fledgling wind energy industry. One of the toughest policy decisions for lawmakers may be how to offer counties some measure of control over wind development without superseding the authority of the state. "This is a matter of expressed powers.

The Wyoming Legislature might soon consider creating minimum standards for wind development statewide, a move that might have implications for future Cowboy State wind farms that could supply power to Colorado utilities. ...A Wyoming legislative task force on wind energy has recommended regulating wind development across the state because a lack of regulation could impact both quality of life and the environment, according to a task force report issued Nov. 1.

The Albany County Commission approved in its first meeting of the month on Tuesday part of a wind farm that will straddle the Albany County-Carbon County line. The commissioners approved a permit for 28 1.5-megawatt wind turbines for the North Rim Wind Energy Conversion System, which will be owned and operated by AES Wind Generation ...In addition to the permit for 28 turbines in Albany County, AES plans to install nine turbines on the Carbon County portion of the project for a total generating capacity of 55.5 megawatts of electricity.

The Northern Laramie Range Alliance announced it will establish a tax-exempt corporation to buy up state leases in order to prevent the development of wind energy. The effort is aimed at "preserving the agricultural, historic, recreational and natural heritage of central Wyoming's Northern Laramie Range," according to the alliance.

In an effort to slow the winds of change, the Converse County Planning and Zoning Commission voted Oct. 20 to recommend that the county commissioners consider a 90-day county-wide "freeze" on all large scale industrial development. "From my personal perspective, this says that we want to do business, but we want to do business in a very logical and orderly fashion," said P&Z member David Pellatz. "It's a very different message in my mind. We're not talking bans. We're not talking never can do it."

Western states seem to have a wide portfolio of energy resources and the consumer markets to better meet the ambitions of both energy-producing states and energy-importing states. What's missing is a strategy for beefing up and modernizing the Western electrical grid to make those connections, according to industry officials. "We can't even connect the dots on a piece of paper. It's like the weather -- everybody talks about it, but nobody ever does anything about it," said Richard Walje, president of Rocky Mountain Power.

Wind developers are bracing against draft legislation that would impose a tax on the generation of wind energy in the state ...Rather than creating a tax specifically on wind energy, lawmakers are considering a tax on all electrical generation, then providing tax credits or exemptions to all other forms of generation but wind. The purpose for this strategy is to fit within the state's constitution, which prohibits singling out a particular industry for exclusive taxation.

As developers pursue the construction of wind farms in Wyoming, some questions linger about the nature of wind rights and how they relate to land ownership. Wyoming lawyers generally agree that whoever owns the surface of the land also owns the rights to develop wind resources. But the Wyoming Legislature has not addressed whether landowners can sever wind resources from their property, as state law allows for mineral resources.

A Canadian company is seeking wind power developers to move electricity along a pair of $3 billion transmission lines in Montana and Wyoming -- potentially spurring a major increase in renewable power exported from the Rockies to the Southwest. The two lines would move 3,000 megawatts of power from each state. That's more than three times as much wind power as Wyoming currently produces and eight times what Montana has.

Amendments to Natrona County's wind energy regulations should avoid the disputes between landowners and developers that erupted earlier this year, county Development Department Director Blair Leist said Tuesday. "We have done what we could to make sure that doesn't happen (again)," Leist said.

Rocky Mountain Power is progressing with plans to build a 74-turbine wind farm north of Medicine Bow and aims to begin producing electricity by November of next year, a company official said Wednesday. Representatives of the Utah-based utility presented plans for the 111-megawatt Dunlap I wind project to Wyoming Public Service Commission staff members.

Not much is certain about the future of sage grouse in Wyoming - including the birds' undecided status as a potentially endangered species and their possible role in curbing oil, gas and even wind energy development. But based on a number of sage grouse habitat improvement projects in development across the Bighorn Basin, one thing is certain: Boosting the bird's prospects is a slow and painstaking process.

The Power Company of Wyoming is moving forward with plans to build a 1,000-turbine wind farm that overlaps with areas identified by the state as critical sage grouse habitat, the company's president said. More than half of the company's Chokecherry and Sierra Madre project is proposed for land identified by the state as "core population area" in Carbon County.

Brian Rutledge, executive director of Audubon Wyoming out of Laramie, said golden eagles, along with other raptors, are struggling in light of the energy development around the state. Power poles are being erected in areas of the sagebrush sea ...and now raptors can perch there and pick off sage grouse. ...He said a rise in wind energy also threatens the bird.

Wyoming wind power, if reasonably developed, would more than double the amount of electricity produced by all other sources in the state, a representative of the Wyoming Infrastructure Authority said Wednesday. Wyoming wind ultimately could produce about 15,000 megawatts a year, Steve Ellenbecker told the Wind Energy Task Force at the McMurry Training Center. "Fifteen-thousand megawatts is a threshold we could accomplish," Ellenbecker said.

PacifiCorp was granted a conditional use permit for its Dunlap Ranch Wind Energy Project by the Carbon County Planning Commission on Monday. The Planning Commission voted unanimously, after a public hearing, to grant the permit to allow PacifiCorp to build the wind farm on mostly private land about eight miles north of Medicine Bow.

Kenneth G. Lay, a founder of the group, said its members aren't opposed to industrial scale wind development in places such as Wyoming's eastern plains, where landowners are actively marketing their land to wind developers. But the group doesn't want a big wind farm in an area it describes as "scenic, multiple-use landscapes." The group is also concerned about developers quietly negotiating with individual landowners. "We think there needs to be a responsible siting process that is going to balance a lot of interests that everybody has," said Lay.

Some at last week's Wyoming Wind Symposium proffered what seemed to be a good idea: bury the hundreds of miles of transmission lines needed to send wind-generated electricity to market. But underground transmission has two basic problems: -- It's very expensive. -- It apparently won't work.

Transmitting electricity over hundreds of miles to market constrains wind energy development, speakers told 600 participants at a conference at the University of Wyoming last week. So do local, state and federal regulation; and taxation issues, they said. But Laura Ladd, energy economics advisor to Gov. Dave Freudenthal, noted a major omission to that list. "Nowhere in here did we hear of economics as a constraint," Ladd said.