Anyone who has spent time in Wyoming knows the wind. It howls across the high plains, rattles windows, and pushes trucks around on the interstate. Now that same relentless wind is being recognized as one of the state's most valuable resources.

Wyoming boasts some of the best wind resources in the nation, strong and consistent, and developers have taken notice. Major wind projects have risen across the state, their turbines turning steadily above the sagebrush, generating electricity destined for markets as far away as the population centers of the West Coast.

The potential is enormous, but so are the obstacles. Getting Wyoming's wind power to distant cities requires massive new transmission lines, expensive and slow to build across long distances. The state has also taken the unusual step of taxing wind generation, a reflection of the political complexities of embracing a resource that competes with its beloved coal.

For a state grappling with the decline of fossil fuels, wind offers a tantalizing opportunity to remain an energy exporter in a changing world. Landowners earn lease payments, counties gain tax revenue, and the projects bring construction jobs. Turning the wind that residents have long cursed into a source of prosperity may prove one of Wyoming's most important energy transitions.