BP, Shell Put Real Wind Behind Their Rhetoric

Two of the world’s leading oil producers have almost overnight joined some of the biggest players in wind power in the United States, accelerating a trend of large corporations investing in the rapidly growing alternative-energy field. Shell is one of the nation’s top five generators of wind power, while BP‘s Alternative Energy group – launched 16 months ago – aims to develop projects that produce 550 megawatts of electricity this year, one-sixth of the projected US wind energy output in 2007.