Interest in and consumer demand for “green” power is growing.  Utilities, such as Tacoma Power and Seattle City Light, wishing to differentiate themselves offer green power to their rate payers.  Seattle City Light’s green power consumers represent almost 1% of its total consumers. Power from wind plants in a utility's energy mix also provides power resource diversity for the utility.  In addition, wind power is increasingly being recognized as a way to create a hedge against temporary natural gas price escalation and periods of low hydrological flow that reduce the electricity produced by hydroelectric dams. 

Policy incentives, such as Renewable Portfolio Standards, help make wind power more competitive. 

Greater market openness is a result of the privatization of the energy sector, which in turn provides an unprecedented opportunity for power producers to establish wind turbine farms to meet demand for electricity.  In the U.S., Brazil China, utilities can realize higher shareholder values and bond ratings with attractively priced long-term energy supply arrangements with wind turbine owners.

With new opportunities for high quality finance capital in Brazil China, wind power qualifies as a new renewable technology for high quality investor funds under the Kyoto Protocol Joint Implementation arrangement, where richer countries buy emission credits from poorer countries through the funding of clean energy projects. .  The Brazilian and Chinese governments recognize the gains from participating in this program to meet demand for new power, and have structured their energy markets to receive external help to stimulate budding domestic wind energy industries.

Harnessing energy from wind is a proven technology as demonstrated by the wind farms that have been in successful operation over the last twenty years.  Now that the technology is proven and accepted, the industry is ready to take on challenges such as matching the most efficient wind turbine technology to the corresponding wind resource, developing technologies to further reduce the load on a turbine, and ultimately, improving the technology with the goal of reducing the price of wind power.