We continue our energy series, the Switch, with a look at the one renewable source of energy that started booming a decade ago: wind power. Companies like GE and Seimens make turbines; the federal government offers utilities big financial incentives to build wind farms; and as Kristian Foden-Vencil reports, hundreds of windmills have gone up in Oregon alone.

The announcements are coming faster than the jobs can be created, much less counted. Though the stimulus is moving projects through the pipeline unusually quickly, only a handful of the roughly 6,000 transportation projects announced nationwide are under contract. Even fewer have broken ground. ...Compounding the problem, Davis said, is that Obama has invented a new standard to measure success: Jobs saved. Measuring job creation is complicated but possible. Counting jobs saved by the stimulus is, if not impossible, murky.

James Dehlsen has spent decades trying to build a bigger and better machine to convert a breeze into electricity. As much as anyone, he helped create the modern wind-power business, riding waves of interest in alternative energy and weathering downturns when that enthusiasm died down. At this point in the cycle, he doesn't exactly have the wind at his back. "The industry has been impacted pretty heavily," says Mr. Dehlsen, chairman of Clipper Windpower, one of a few U.S. wind-turbine makers. Asked about the demand for turbines, he says: "It's not up."

President Obama's pick to head the Federal Aviation Administration will remove himself from decisions involving his former consulting firm's clients, who include opponents of the nation's first offshore wind-energy project, off Cape Cod, the White House confirmed Friday. ...As FAA administrator, he could be instrumental in killing the Cape Wind Project and other wind farms if the agency determines they pose a threat to aviation.

A westward dash to power electricity-hungry cities by cashing in on the desert's most abundant resource - sunshine - is clashing with efforts to protect the tiny pupfish and desert tortoise and stinginess over the region's rarest resource: water. ..."It is not in the public interest for BLM to approve plans of development for water-cooled solar energy projects in the arid basins of southern Nevada, some of which are already over-appropriated," Jon Jarvis, director of the Park Service's Pacific West Region, wrote to the BLM director in Nevada.

In 2008, the U.S. wind industry hit a new record, installing 8,358 megawatts of new wind-energy capacity at a price tag of $17 billion, according to the American Wind Energy Association, a national trade association. But the news for wind enthusiasts isn't all good: Investments fell heavily at the end of 2008 as the economy ground to a halt.

All the glitters is not gold, the saying goes. Take that wind turbine someone wants to install on your land. It will deliver energy; we know that. But will your wind energy contract deliver you the big bucks they say it will? Are you and your family protected in case of trouble? After all, this is a first-time deal for you; just one of many for the guy across the table, and he's negotiating rights to your land for decades, not months.

As the nation rushes to add renewable energy to its power portfolio, a growing chorus of homeowners and others are expressing concerns about how industrial wind projects are affecting health, safety, lifestyle and property values.

With a boost of billions in the economic stimulus plan, the White House plans to double the nation's supply of renewable energy in the next three years. There's big talk in Congress of creating a national renewable-energy standard, which would mandate that utilities get a chunk of their power from green sources like solar, wind and geothermal. So long dirty energy, hello green future. ...Not all environmentalists, though, are buzzing about the expansion. To critics, the U.S. is needlessly industrializing the remote American landscape at the expense of local residents.

The call for economic stimulus is having an unintended side effect in places like Montana, where environmental protections are on the verge of being repealed in the name of jobs. One bill gets straight to the issue promising to exempt hundreds of millions in economic stimulus projects from the state's landmark environmental policies. Environmentalists are ramping up lobbying efforts as a wave of measures eroding regulatory rules gain serious traction in the face of a recession and shrinking state coffers.

Superior, Erie, Huron and parts of Ontario - are particularly prone to freezing over in the winter months, meaning that ice pack and ice floes could potentially damage turbine bases and towers. A feasibility report released in January by Wisconsin's Public Service Commission notes that freshwater ice is harder than sea ice and warns of the risk of thick ice floes striking the turbine bases.

Nevada needs billions of dollars in new transmission lines if it is to capitalize on its renewable energy potential and become a net exporter of clean energy, Gov. Jim Gibbons said in a statement. He and other Western governors have called for changes in tax laws to further stimulate transmission line development.

At the urging of the federal Department of Energy, the regional transmission organizations also looked at what transmission investments would be necessary if the region increased its renewable power goals to 20 percent of electricity generated. They found that 15,000 miles of new extra-high-voltage lines costing $80 billion would be needed by 2024. Generating 20 percent of the electricity for the eastern power grid from renewable sources would require an additional $1.1 trillion in infrastructure investment.

Vestas Wind Systems AS, the world's leading wind-turbine maker, may reduce jobs if the rate of new orders doesn't improve in the next 11 weeks, Chief Executive Ditlev Engel said. Orders from the U.S., the largest wind-turbine market, "came to a standstill" after the collapse of Lehman Brothers Holdings Inc. in September tightened credit for wind-farm developers, Engel said Wednesday in New York after announcing that fourth-quarter profit doubled.

Constructing new power lines to handle a huge increase in wind power in the Eastern half of the United States would cost $50 billion to $80 billion over the next 15 years, according to a study released on Monday by power grid operators. That cost would be on top of the $700 billion to $1.1 trillion it would cost power plant developers to build the wind turbines that would produce the power, according to the study.

A few years ago, residents and environmentalists rarely objected to clean energy development in their hometowns. But as the country prepares for massive growth in the number of renewable energy installations, environmental lawyers say there are rumblings from various groups about where these electric plants are located and whether the benefit of the emission-free electricity is worth the environmental price.

Cape Wind could begin to set up financing for its plan to build 130 wind turbines in Nantucket Sound as early as this spring, according to a company official. The U.S. Minerals Management Service issued a largely positive environmental report for the project last month and a formal approval of a lease for the project could come as soon as two weeks. Combined with several permits already issued by the state and a pending decision on all other local and state permits, the federal lease could clear the way for Cape Wind to pursue investors and loans for the project.