December 22, 2008

Grain farmer Mike Doyle has grown to love the big, spindly wind turbines that rise from his central Illinois prairie.Their blades, many more than 100 feet, cut the wind with a low, rhythmic whooshing noise. Not too long ago, he admired a rainbow arching over them.

Doyle's a little embarrassed when he describes the scene, but he's sincere. "If that wasn't the most beautiful sight I've ever seen."The money's not bad either.Doyle is paid just over $35,000 a month for the seven wind turbines in his soybean and corn fields. Those turbines and thousands others across the Midwest the past few years were part of an unprecedented build-out for the wind-power industry.

That expansion is now drastically slowing as financing dries up for many projects because of the global economic crisis. Companies that bankrolled much of the boom -- the insurer AIG, now-bankrupt financial service company Lehman Brothers and Wachovia Corp. -- are among the meltdown's biggest losers."There's definitely a lot of, obviously, upheaval," said Ric O'Connell, a renewable energy consultant with Black & Veatch Corp., an Overland Park, Kan.-based engineering and construction company. "I would definitely think in 2009 there are going to be projects that are going to be delayed."