As I remarked in an earlier post, rising oil prices are a driver for alternative energy. So I feel vindicated when John Rice, CEO of GE Energy, the world's 2nd largest manufacturer of wind turbines says

“We’ve had some large wind customers tell us that at a natural gas price of $5 per (million Btus), that wind is competitive without the production tax credit . . .That’s always a function of the actual project. But at $5, you’re in the hunt, no question.”

So windpower is already cost competitive in parts of the United States, depending on the price of electricity in that state. A recent Financial Times article mentioned that the cost of the most efficient US windpower was $48 a megawatt hour and the cost of a megawatt hour of gas was between $36 and $72.

GE of course, is a massive New York Stock Exchange listed company, so its wind turbine division, despite making $2 Billion of annual sales don't actually amount to much out of their enormous total - over $130 Billion in 2003 alone. Still, their purchase of Enron Wind in 2002 for just $325m looks smarter every day.