COLUMBUS: Environmental advocates are seeing dollar signs in the hundreds of windmills they envision sprouting on the Ohio landscape, thanks to the commitment to renewable resources in the state's new energy plan.

Gov. Ted Strickland proposed that Ohio utilities be required to have 12.5 percent of their power come from renewable resources, such as wind, solar and water, by 2025. The House version of Strickland's bill spells out the percentages each utility must achieve each year, beginning in 2009, when they must draw 0.25 percent from renewables.

The Senate on Wednesday unanimously approved changes the House made, sending it to Strickland, who probably will sign it next week.

The 12.5 percent requirement translates into an investment of at least $12 billion in wind energy installations, according to the American Wind Energy Association, an industry trade group. Most of the wind farms would be in Ohio, a key to Strickland's desire for homegrown power sources, the association said.

A study last year by the advocacy group Environment Ohio found that if the state's utilities' use of wind power
jumped to 20 percent by 2020, it would create the equivalent of 3,100 jobs and would put about $8.2 billion into Ohio's economy. Property owners also would profit by leasing their land for wind farms, the group said.

Renewable energy delivery systems could be made in abandoned factories, closed because of the slide in Ohio's manufacturing economy, Environment Ohio Director Erin Bowser said.

''We basically looked at what would happen if we met our need for electricity with wind energy rather than stay the course,'' Bowser said. ''There are already more than 100 companies based in Ohio that in some way, shape or form are creating (energy) jobs.''

Ohio currently has just one working wind farm, which consists of four turbines in Bowling Green. It generates enough electricity to power 3,000 homes, the city says.

However, wind is on the move. Ohio becomes the 25th state, along with the District of Columbia, to enact mandatory renewable energy policies. Last year, wind generation accounted for 30 percent of all new generating capacity, with an investment of $9 billion, the association said. Wind trailed only natural gas as the leading source of new capacity.

Wind power has a drawback in Ohio: a lack of steady winds outside the relatively flat northwest part of the state and Lake Erie. But solar power also is likely to take off, Bowser said. It's another fledgling industry in the United States but is flowering in such countries as Germany, she said.

''We may have more wind turbines going up, but the whole northwestern part of the state is in position to manufacture solar panels,'' Bowser said.