But then a wrinkle. Suddenly local opposition to the project springs up.

The company is owned by foreigners, they say. Shouldn't the benefits of exploiting the community's natural resources stay in the community rather than on the bottom line of some greedy capitalists?

Now imagine that the dreaded foreign energy company is Irish. And the populist local opposition are Americans.

Shell had the Rossport Five. Now, out of some parallel universe behindthe-looking-glass corporate nightmare, clean, green, good-guy Airtricity faces the Hartsville 500.

Plus one populist local billionaire. It's enough to take the wind out of anybody's turbine.

On a Thursday night earlier this month in the gymnasium of a rural school near Rochester, New York, some 200 area residents came out to hear Tom Golisano speak. Some had already signed 25-year contracts with Airtricity, with the prospect of making up to $1 million on the deal.

The stocky, silver-haired billionaire is an unlikely candidate to become the Hugo Chavez of wind, but then there is little about Golisano that is likely.

He founded the company Paychex in 1971 as an outsourcing operation providing payroll processing for businesses too small for larger payroll companies to take on. By the late 1990s the company had gone through 10 solid years of growth and 40% annual growth in market capitalisation, joining the S&P 500 by the end of the decade.

Golisano got into politics, running three times for governor of New York as a Republican. In January he rebuffed calls from his supporters to run again, and was promptly courted by politicians from both parties for support. He owns an upstate New York professional hockey team. Nothing on the CV that screams economic populist.

But there he was, up at the podium, telling the local residents that they should be developing a community wind farm scheme instead of signing up with foreigners.

Steve Dombert, an organiser of Hartsville Citizens for Responsible Windfarm Development, was among the interested and curious who turned out. When contacted by the Sunday Tribune he was suspicious at first that this reporter was secretly working for the company Airtricity.

Once bona fides were established we was willing to talk.

"We have nothing against Airtricity, " he began. "They've been courteous and professional. We'd rather just do it ourselves."

"We would like to change from a forprofit windfarm to a communitybased plan, using a public-benefit corporation, and distribute the profits for the people of the town."

Airtricity is in the midst of a major expansion project in the US, constructing wind farms in several states, including Texas, Colorado, New Jersey and New York. According to Declan Flanagan, who heads up the company's five-man North American operation, the company is in the process of raising $700 million for 40 megawatt in new build next year.

He also notes that siting windfarms in western US states is a lot easier, with fewer landowners to deal with over a wide area.

Hartsville has just over 500 taxpayers in its jurisdiction. Many of them in aren't even resident in the heavily-forested area, the highest point of Stueben County with an elevation of 2,404 feet above sea level, with a lot of wind. It's a rural spot in the otherwise densely populated Northeastern US, in a state with high electricity costs and a ready market.

In a loophole among the crazy-quilt of federal, state and local governance, Hartsville had two other things to offer that must have seemed incredible to the company. It had no zoning laws, meaning that no arduous planning permission process was required. And New York State offers a tax exemption for 15 years for wind or solar energy projects. But it also allows local authorities to opt out of the exemption and impose a levy on projects at their own discretion.

Dombert isn't happy with how the local authorities have handled the situation. "We feel the town board is operating in the interests of Airtricity and wind farmers and neglecting the rest of the town, " he said.

Airtricity's Flanagan counters that the company has been welcomed by the landowners with which it's made agreements, and very much wants to get on with its new neighbours. He also stressed that all local regulations were being scrupulously followed, and said the project had the support of the current governor, George Pataki.

In the end, with deals already signed, it seems unlikely that Dombert and his disgruntled fellow activists will get their way.

But it must be a sobering lesson for Airtricity's management that even