Hey, remember that time when wind energy was cheaper than natural gas? Sure, it happened in Brazil, and only for a little bit, and only because of government-sponsored energy auctions that shifted prices a noticeable degree. But it was a hopeful sign--a sign that if we kept developing wind technology, if we made a breakthrough or two in the efficiency of turbines, we might actually see cheap windmills in our lifetimes.

It's almost like someone heard my speculations back there, because we might just have hit upon the secret to ultra-cheap wind power. Researchers in Japan are developing what they call the "wind lens"--a new structure of windmill that would triple the output power of the structures. The specially shaped windmills would be built to focus the airflow and direct it from the blade zone. Sort of like a regular lens, but with air instead of light.

But would tripling the output power of windmills even be enough? We are awfully dependent on natural gas and coal here in the states. Let's play in the hypothetical realm for a few minutes. Let's assume these wind lenses actually get built and are actually effective to the degree scientists are claiming as of now. Then, let's look at a few numbers. The United States may not have tons of oil under our land, but we're not exactly energy-poor--especially when you take into consideration just how windy we get. We're a big country with lots of open space. We've got all sorts of terrain, from high mountains to low valleys to deserts to forests. Air has a lot of space to move around from high to low places. All told, we've got approximately 850,000 square miles of land that are extremely wind-fertile. That's a lot of land that could reap high levels of wind energy. If we developed just a fifth of that total land--which would be about the quarter the size of Alaska, but spread out over the country, presumably--we could raise enough energy to power a third of our country's energy needs. We use about 26.6 billion megawatt hours per year, and 20% of our potential wind lands would give us 8.7 billion. That means there is more potential wind energy to be harvested in America than we could even use at this point.

Think about what that means. That's nothing to tilt at. Combined with new advances in electric cars, we could phase out oil entirely. We could all plug out cars in at night and drive them fully charged and pollution-free to work in the morning. We wouldn't need coal anymore. We'd get all our energy from vast fields of focused windmills. They'd dot the landscape like sentinels, easing the tax on our air and allowing us to live without the burdens of paying for nonrenewable resources.

Will this sort of energy upheaval happen soon enough to see it? Depends on how quickly these wind lenses reach the end of their development--and how willing our country is to start introducing them when they do. But I believe in science, and I'm trying to believe in the government more, so I'll stay cautiously optimistic.