Noble Environmental Power Inc, a wind energy company, said on Friday it plans to sell 23.4 million shares in a planned initial public offering. The Essex, Connecticut-based company did not determine a price range for the shares, according to an amended offering document filed with the Securities and Exchange Commission.

Many US residents are passionate about a future propelled by wind. "The promotion of renewable power such as home-grown wind-generated power in New York is essential," said Ed Bennett, president of New York Interfaith Power and Light, a church group that backs renewable sources of energy. "New York has a tangible renewable resource in wind power that could supply 10 per cent of New York's electrical consumption in the very near future." ..."But the industry faces all kinds of hurdles, from right of way issues to groups opposed to the aesthetic intrusion of giant wind turbines. There are a lot of [people] that are going to have to be convinced before we get to something like 300,000 megawatts of electricity from wind."

Expecting oil prices to stay high, investors have been flocking to exchange-traded funds based on renewable energy sources such as wind power. ETFs, which trade throughout the day on exchanges, are based on indexes that aim to replicate the performance of groups of stocks. Some are designed to allow people to bet on hot market niches. But creating an ETF index that faithfully tracks a fledgling industry like wind isn't easy. ...Wind ETFs aren't aimed at "do-it-yourselfers," says Dan Waldron, head of First Trust's ETF business. "They are for the adviser who understands his client's risk tolerance and goals and uses them in the context of a much broader, diversified portfolio," he says.

First Wind Holdings Inc., an independent North American wind energy company, announced its plan to raise up to $450 million of proceeds through initial public offering of Class A common shares. ...The company said it intends to use this offering net proceeds to repay outstanding indebtedness ...First Wind Holdings LLC posted net loss of $68.07 million in 2007, $26.01 million in 2006 and $18.62 million in 2005. For the quarter ended March 31, 2008, the company incurred a net loss of $18.52 million, versus a net loss of $13.91 million in the same period last year.

The Minerals Management Service (MMS) announced today that it is proceeding with the consultation and analyses necessary to move toward the issuance of limited leases under its interim policy for authorizing alternative energy data collection and technology testing activities on the Outer Continental Shelf (OCS).

One of the big challenges with using wind to replace natural gas is that, unlike the steady flame from natural gas, the wind doesn't blow all the time. To make sure enough power is available when the wind isn't blowing, back up generators would be needed, said Paul Fremont, an electric-utility analyst at the investment bank Jefferies & Co. That could mean maintaining those natural gas plants in case of emergency, or implementing even more novel ideas like systems in Europe that use excess wind electricity to pump water uphill when the wind is blowing, then release it through hydro dams when the wind stops. Either way, any type of back up system comes with a price. "It's very costly, and very inefficient for society as a whole," said Fremont. "Policy makers will have to decide if the benefits are worth it."

"Everything he is outlining in this plan will pad his already ample bank account," said Jerry Taylor, senior fellow at the Cato Institute, who likened the plan to corporate welfare, since it calls for $1 trillion in government investment and an extension of tax credits for wind companies that are set to expire at the end of 2008. ...Ed Legge, a spokesman for the Edison Electric Institute, a Washington-based trade association for electric-utility companies, including Duke and Exelon, said he expects consumers to eventually get a reality check on wind's shortcomings. "You can't depend on wind," Mr. Legge said. "Our customers are trained to expect the power is available and on. An intermittent source is automatically problematic, and that's what wind is right now. Wind stops blowing."

Texas now leads the nation in wind generation capacity, as entrepreneurs including billionaire oil investor T. Boone Pickens join others in a rush to build turbines on the state's vast, wind-swept prairies. But for the nation's power grid operators, channeling these new supplies can be a headache, because wind supplies are as changeable and unpredictable as the weather itself. Plants powered by natural gas can be switched on and off at a moment's notice to respond to the demands of the grid, but wind cannot.

"You're building, typically the projects way out in the middle of nowhere, long distances from the load centers," said Lisa Linowes of WindAction.org.

Indeed, the flat Midwest is where the country's wind blows the most - the so-called "wind alley."

But cities along the coast are where the majority of people live. So getting that power to the people would mean a massive, multi-billion-dollar grid restructuring.

Plus, winds die down in the summer, when demand is the highest. Some turbines have been known to kill migratory birds. And, not everyone welcomes such a sight in their backyard.

Suzlon Energy Ltd., the world's fifth-biggest wind-turbine maker, has set aside 5.9 billion rupees ($139 million) to compensate customers for cracked blades. Suzlon will pay John Deere Wind Energy and Edison Mission Energy for output losses resulting from defective turbine blades, Chief Financial Officer Kirti Vagadia told investors in Singapore today. About 6 percent of its 1,251 V-2 series, 2.1-megawatt blades are cracked, he said. Ahmedabad, India-based company's shares have fallen 46 percent this year because of concerns that blade defects may prompt customers to cancel orders.

Suzlon Energy, one of the top-five wind power equipment makers in the world, is planning to set aside Rs 590 crore for paying damages to its US cients who are facing output losses due to defective blades installed by the company. Suzlon will compensate customers John Deere Wind Energy and Edison Mission Energy for output losses because of cracked turbine blades, news agency Bloomberg said today, quoting Chief Financial Officer Kirti Vagadia of the Nomura Asia Equity Forum in Singapore.

Texas oilman T. Boone Pickens, saying the US' dependence on imported oil has reached the level of a national crisis, on July 7 unveiled a plan he said would cut imports by one-third within five to 10 years. The scope and scale of the plan is daunting, however, and some analysts have questioned its feasibility. ...In terms of cost alone, the "Pickens Plan" is a tall order. Pickens puts the price tag for building a series of wind farms that would stretch from North Dakota to the Texas Panhandle at $1trillion with another $200 billion for the power lines to transmit all that new wind power. From a generation point of view one obvious problem with the plan is scalability, said Art Holland, a director at Pace Global Energy Services. The average gas turbine is 600 MW to 800 MW. The average wind turbine is 2 MW. Even if the wind were blowing constantly it would take a tremendous number of wind turbines to replace an equivalent amount of gas-fired capacity.

Today, Pickens will take the wraps off what he's calling the Pickens Plan for cutting the USA's demand for foreign oil by more than a third in less than a decade. To promote it, he is bankrolling what his aides say will be the biggest public policy ad campaign ever. The website, www.pickensplan.com, goes live today. ...Of course, Pickens also has a particular solution in mind. Wind. And natural gas.

Even as more Americans look to shrink their carbon footprints, relatively few have switched to providers of electricity generated by wind, water and sun. ...many consumers aren't aware of programs designed to reduce their reliance on fossil fuels. Or how they work. Or even if they work. "They don't think wind and solar power can keep the lights on at night, keep the heat on the winter and keep the air conditioning on in the summer," said Brian F. Keane, president of Smart Power, a not-for-profit clean energy marketing group. "It conjures up all of the worst caricatures of the environmental movement ... They must wear hemp, they must buy organic, they must live in a cold, dark house."

Truescape makes three-dimensional (3D) video simulations to show people what proposed projects like wind farms would look like on the landscape before they were built. It has already worked on a number of New Zealand's wind energy projects, including Meridian Energy's White Hill in Southland and Te Apiti near Palmerston North. The US contract will see it working on wind projects being built by Bluewater Wind off the coasts of New Jersey and Maryland.

A company that wants to build a floating wind farm off the coast of Martha's Vineyard has received a boost from the state's congressional delegation. In a letter dated June 26, the entire Massachusetts delegation asked the U.S. Minerals Management Service to review an application by Blue H USA LLC for a lease to test floating platform technology and collect data at the site for the proposed wind farm. The company announced the congressional support for its application at its U.S. headquarters in Boston yesterday.

The grand U.S. ambitions of Indian wind-turbine manufacturer Suzlon Energy Ltd. are facing mounting problems. The Indian company -- the world's fifth-largest wind-turbine maker by sales -- earlier this year acknowledged that 65 giant blades on turbines it had sold in the U.S. Midwest were cracking because of the extreme gusts in the region. The company is reinforcing 1,251 blades, almost the total it has sold in the U.S. Now, other problems are emerging, in part because the company quickly ramped up U.S. sales to meet burgeoning demand for alternative energy. ...

Suzlon, the world's fifth-largest maker of wind turbines, promises customers its turbines will be available to generate power at least 95% of the occasions when there is wind, and that they need only a limited amount of time for repair and maintenance, the newspapers said. The so-called availability rate has been lower in some cases, exposing Suzlon to the risk of penalties, it said. Deere has 250 Suzlon turbines, making it one of the company's largest customers in the U.S. customers.

Conglomerate Siemens AG, wracked by a wide-ranging corruption scandal, will cut up to 4 percent of its work force worldwide, or about 17,200 jobs, a pair of newspapers reported Saturday. The Sueddeutsche Zeitung reported that the Munich-based company was set to shed the jobs -- mostly white-collar and administrative -- without citing any sources. ...The warning was a surprise for the conglomerate, whose diverse products include trams, turbines and telecommunications equipment, given that it had said in January that sales were expected to double the pace of the global economy.

Wind farms are springing up in Midwestern fields, along Appalachian ridgelines, and even in Texas backyards. They're everywhere, it seems, except in the windy coastal waters that lap at some of America's largest, most power-hungry cities. That's partly because the first large-scale effort to harness sea breezes in the U.S. hit resistance from an army led by the rich and famous, waging a not-on-my-beach campaign. For almost eight years the critics have stalled the project, called Cape Wind, which aims to place 130 turbines in Nantucket Sound about five miles south of Cape Cod.