Despite what certain politicians would lead us to believe, we're likely to see some significant benefits both to our energy efficiency and to the environment if wind energy takes a more expansive role in the world's energy production.
According to the U.S. Energy Information Administration, this is because they don't produce emissions in the air or water except in rare malfunction cases and don't require water to cool them. The more they can take on the burden of electricity production compared to systems that rely on fossil fuels, the fewer carbon dioxide emissions we're likely to release into the atmosphere.
However, this doesn't mean that they're entirely without negative environmental impacts and one study outlines both their biggest problem and a potentially effective way to mitigate it.