Federal Involvement in Wind Siting

The Presidential Advanced Energy Initiative of 2006 (AEI) presented a vision for the future development of wind energy by stating that "areas with good wind resources have the potential to supply up to 20% of the electricity comsumption of the United States." Agencies across the federal government are playing a significant role in making the Advanced Energy Initiative vision and Energy Policy Act of 2005 (EPAct) implementation a reality for our nation.

The Departments of Agriculture, Energy, Commerce, Defense, Homeland Security, Interior, and Transportation each have a mission responsibility related to wind energy siting. These include evaluating and supporting wind technology development and deployment; providing national security/military readiness through radar operations (long, short, and weather); protecting U.S. airspace; managing multiple uses of public land and sea resources; protecting cultural, wildlife, and habitat resources; and stimulating rural economies.

These agencies are collaborating to:

Facilitate communications and the exchange of technical, environmental, market information, regulatory and/or policy requirements related to siting wind turbines on public, private, and tribal lands, within airspace, and offshore, including the Great Lakes;
Continue work already underway to address wind project siting issues between interested/vested federal entities;
Identify and develop recommendations to improve federal agency processes that enable planning, financing, permitting, and siting of wind energy facilities.
Explore future cooperative actions to increase and sustain wind power production for the nation; and
Create a federal agency wind energy information center that provides a one-stop Web site for both public and private sector questions regarding the responsible siting of wind turbines.

Federal collaboration on wind siting is primarily focused on actions that can be taken in real time to address siting concerns while meeting critical agency mission areas. This work is a natural follow-on from the National Energy Policy Plan of 2001 and all interagency efforts since to promote renewable energy development on federal lands. Expanded wind siting interagency actions began immediately following a high-level wind-radar meeting at the Council on Environmental Quality on June 13, 2006. Significant progress has been made with more activities planned and underway.