The answer is blowing in the wind ... or maybe not.

Sure. Wind power may be the fastest growing energy source but it has a long way to go considering that it only generates about 1% of the world's electricity. A hundred percent increase still only takes it to 2%.

Nevertheless, believers in its potential point out that unlike coal, the leading source of electricity today, wind power produces no health-damaging air pollution or acid rain. Nor does it produce poisonous carbon dioxide.

An article in World Watch magazine in 1996 used the north German state of Schleswig-Holstein as an example of how important wind power can become: in 1990 wind power provided less than 1% of the state's electricity but it reached 8% by 1995. The article went on to say that wind power alone is unlikely to replace all fossil fuels, but it has the potential to produce more than 20% of the world's electricity.

Together with other renewable sources such as solar power some suggest that it could replace coal and nuclear power, which supply two-thirds of the world's electricity now. More modest predictions estimate that by 2030 wind power could provide more than 10% of the world's electricity.