To feel the power of the Wyoming wind, stand in the shadow of a 20-story-high wind turbine in the midst of the rolling sagebrush west of Laramie. Wind slices across the long, tapered blades and roars toward the southeast, cutting at bare faces and hands. Red-tailed hawks hunch atop utility poles, the snow-covered ground is marked with frozen ripples, and some trees have a noticeable and permanent lean. People, too, are accustomed to the gales: Wyomingites joke that if their famous wind ever stops, everyone in their sparsely populated state will fall over. This turbine is one of nearly 800 built in Wyoming during the past dozen years, and together they produce a gigawatt of electricity—enough to power up to 325,000 households. Thanks to high electricity prices, the diminishing costs of wind power production, and rising demand for renewable energy in other states, interest in Wyoming’s wind has soared in the past two years, and at least 20 new wind farms are proposed for private...