Don’t you just love alternative energy stories? I think I get off on them like teen girls do on Jonas Brothers interviews.

The Utah Association of Municipal Power Systems has none other than a wind farm planned for a current farm in Idaho. The farm is supposed to be complete in about 90 days, and will generate between 40 and 60 megawatts of power.

This project is actually part of the UAMPS big plan to foster more renewable energy in the area, and fits right in with their energy conservation campaign. And that’s not even all—they’re even thinking about creating a natural-gas-powered generator as well.

Considering that this association powers multiple cities from Utah to Idaho, Wyoming to California, this is a huge step forward in renewable energy.

Wind power is such an excellent source of renewable energy. Since it doesn’t generate any emissions or hazardous waste, deplete any natural resources or require a bunch of transportation or other wasteful resources, it’s almost like getting free, harmless energy right from the air… well, it is pretty much just that, actually!

In fact, did you know that developing wind energy at just 10% of its capability in the top 10 windy cities of the United States would create more than enough energy to displace all of the emissions from the country’s coal plants—thereby getting rid of acid rain and cutting carbon dioxide emissions by about thirty percent? You’d think with incentives like those, we’d all have windmills in our yards.

Hey… that’s not a bad idea.

And if we used wind energy to power just 20% of our electricity—a mere fraction of what Al Gore suggests!—we would displace more than a third of coal emissions as well. And it would save us tons of money—as well as lives.

According to the Harvard School of Public Health, air pollution in just two power plants can cause up to 159 premature deaths, 1,710 trips to the emergency room, and over 43,000 asthma attacks. (Why the hell aren’t we charging these plants for these crimes?) Wind power wouldn’t cause any of this “collateral damage.”

Seeing as 80% of people are in favor of wind power, there shouldn’t be anything stopping its development, today or any day—not even lobbyists. I say we all take a page out of the UAMPS new conservation book and start implementing such programs nationwide.