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When it comes to developing alternative energy sources, and wind power in particular, Maryland is a national laggard.

Maryland ranks No. 29 in renewable energy. In the list of states utilizing wind power, Pennsylvania stands at No. 16, West Virginia No. 17 and Maryland is not even mentioned.

Why? Because politicians and local foes have blocked all efforts to build modern-day windmills in Maryland.

Gov. Martin O'Malley has been the ultimate waffling politician — he's blown one way and then the other, depending on the velocity of local resistance to various wind projects.

Two years ago, he was all for a $400 million western Maryland wind farm — until local opponents stirred up a tornado of angry protests. Then he swung to the other side and banned all wind farms in state forests. That won him wide praise in Garrett and Alleghany counties and among environmentalists, which was precisely what he sought.

O'Malley was ambivalent about a proposed offshore wind farm east of Ocean City two years ago in part because locals railed about the aesthetic damage to their sightlines. Recently, though, he endorsed a similar wind farm off the Delaware coast near Rehoboth Beach.

The difference? Delawareans don't vote in Maryland elections.

Barack Obama's election in 2008 played a big role in the governor's new-found affection for turning wind into electricity. Obama is a forceful advocate for alternative energy sources. Since O'Malley wants to impress Obama, he was quick to praise plans for wind farms on private land in Western Maryland and even that Delaware offshore project.

He also joined his Delaware and Virginia counterparts in signing a cooperative agreement that promotes offshore wind farms. Maryland's offshore project is the least advanced of the three, which means O'Malley will be out of office when that political controversy hits Ocean City.

To cement his image as an environmental governor, O'Malley proposed and helped pass a law mandating that by 2022 power companies must purchase 20 percent of their electricity from clean energy sources.

But that could be difficult for utilities to achieve. There are only two Maryland regions where wind power is viable — the mountains of its far western counties and the Atlantic Coast.

Yet O'Malley has declared vast stretches of Garrett and Alleghany counties off-limits —120,000 acres of state forests in those two counties. Unfortunately, this is prime terrain for capturing energy from strong winds.

Meanwhile, an Ocean City offshore wind farm is a long way off.

In contrast, Pennsylvania and West Virginia have given wind power more welcoming receptions. Pennsylvania has 595 megawatts of installed wind power capacity and West Virginia 330 megawatts. Another 253 megawatts of wind power is under construction.

Compare that to Maryland's two puny projects totaling 120 megawatts, enough to light, at most, 40,000 homes.

While Maryland dawdles, other states are pushing ahead so vigorously to boost wind power that the United States is the world leader in this "green" energy category. Last year, the rest of the country installed 8,500 megawatts of new generating power from wind turbines — enough to serve 2 million homes. So far in 2009, 5,800 megawatts of new power has come online. Another 5,000 megawatts of wind power is under construction.

Thanks to stimulus funds aimed at fostering the wind power industry, those numbers could jump in the next few years. Technology advances and increased production of these massive wind turbines are lowering operating and construction costs. This makes wind power quite appealing to power companies.

That explains why Constellation Energy jumped at the chance to purchase a planned 70 megawatt wind farm on Garrett County's Backbone Mountain for $140 million. It fits neatly with Constellation's push to become a leader in renewable energy — especially the next generation of nuclear power plants.

Maryland will never be a power-producing leader in renewable energy. It lacks the intense, year-round sunshine that makes Southwestern states ideal for vast fields of solar panels. It lacks the wide-open, wind-blown plains of the Midwest and Southwest that are perfect for miles of wind turbines.

But the lack of consistent support for alternative energy from Maryland's elected leaders, particularly its governor, makes it even more difficult to develop non-polluting energy sources. For instance, O'Malley conducted a bitter, off-again, on-again effort to block Constellation's plans for a new nuclear power plant at Calvert Cliffs.

This month, he's all for this enormous "green" project. But next month, who knows?

He has vowed to seek re-regulation of the power industry next year, a hostile move opposed by electric companies. Yet that's the very group the governor wants to see spending money on "green" energy projects.

So don't look for windmills and solar farms to dominate Maryland's landscape anytime soon. Whenever local protests are loud enough to worry the governor, or his environmental allies take up arms against a supposedly "green" project, O'Malley is likely to forget about alternative energy and instead please the folks who can help get him re-elected.

Barry Rascovar is a longtime State House columnist and a strategic communications

consultant. His e-mail address is brascovar@hotmail.com.