On Monday, a day the winds blew fiercely in St. Louis, Interior Secretary Ken Salazar said, “The idea that wind energy has the potential to replace most of our coal-burning power today is a very real possibility. It is not technology that is pie-in-the sky; it is here and now.”

Could you ever imagine a statement so progressive and bold coming from the Bush Administration? Hell no. A country without coal? Could it really happen? Probably not in the short term but it’s nice to dream.

In an article published yesterday:

Salazar said ocean winds along the East Coast can generate 1 million megawatts of power, roughly the equivalent of 3,000 medium-sized coal-fired power plants, or nearly five times the number of coal plants now operating in the United States, according to the Energy Department.

Five times people! A renewable energy future for this country and the rest of the world looks more likely every day. Combined with wave generation technology, solar farms and the continued development of more efficient technologies for appliances, automobiles, lighting, etc . . . we could be free of our dependence on oil and coal and all other polluting, environmentally unfriendly sources of energy forever.

Mark Rodgers, a spokesman for Cape Wind, which wants to build a wind farm off Cape Cod, Mass., estimates it would take hundreds of thousands of windmills. The average wind turbine today generates 2 to 5 megawatts per unit, he said.

“It would take a number of years to build out, but we’ve got to get going in this country with the first few projects,” he said.

No one said the task would be easy, and coal companies are critiquing the idea as expected. But, as Rodgers mentions, we have to start somewhere. And just because the average wind turbine today generates 2 to 5 megawatts, who’s to say the turbines of tomorrow won’t be able to do twice that?