The American Renewable Energy Day (AREDAY) conference opened Thursday in Aspen, Colorado, with leaders from the sectors of government, industry, activism and science engaging on questions about how the United States can wean itself from dependency on fossil fuels.

In an early keynote speech, Lester Brown, founder and president of the Earth Policy Institute, offered 10 succinct reasons why wind power is desirable:

Brown cited Denmark, Spain, Germany and India as having significant portions of energy sourced from wind. But wind still represents only a small fraction of worldwide power generation (in the United States, it’s around 2 percent), and like other renewable energy sources struggling to gain on the fossil-fuel behemoths,