a lot of energy up there , but it 's not as steady as we thought . It 's not going to be the silver bullet that will solve all of our energy problems , but it will have a role . '' For centuries , we 've been using high-density fossil fuels , but peaking oil supplies and climate concerns have given new life to green technologies . Unfortunately , renewable energy is generally diffuse , meaning you need to cover a lot of area to get the energy you want . So engineers look for renewable resources that are as dense as possible . On that score , high-altitude wind looks very promising . Wind 's power -- energy which can be used to do work like spinning magnets to generate electricity -- varies with the cube of its speed . So , a small increase in wind speed can lead to a big increase in the amount of mechanical energy you can harvest . High-altitude wind blows fast , is spread nicely across the globe , and is easier to predict than terrestrial wind . These properties have led inventors and scientists to cast their hopes upward
-LRB- WIRED -RRB- -- The wind blowing through the streets of Manhattan could n't power the city , but wind machines placed thousands of feet above the city theoretically could . A prototype of a high-altitude wind turbine made by Magenn Power . The first rigorous , worldwide study of high-altitude wind power estimates that there is enough wind energy at altitudes of about 1,600 to 40,000 feet to meet global electricity demand a hundred times over . The very best ground-based wind sites have a wind-power density of less than 1 kilowatt per square meter of area swept . Up near the jet stream above New York , the wind power density can reach 16 kilowatts per square meter . The air up there is a vast potential reservoir of energy , if its intermittency can be overcome . Even better , the best high-altitude wind-power resources match up with highly populated areas including North America 's Eastern Seaboard and China 's coastline . `` The resource is really , really phenomenal , '' said Christine Archer of Cal State University-Chico , who co-authored a paper on the work published in the open-access journal Energies . `` There is