NEWBURYPORT - Foreseeing an increase in demand for the development of wind turbines - and wanting to encourage them - city officials plan to create an ordinance to guide the construction of the alternative energy source.

During the past year, Nancy Colbert, the city's planning director, said her office has received several phone calls inquiring about what is needed in terms of permits and city approval to build a wind turbine.

Colbert said there is nothing specific on the city's books.

To meet the potential demand, the Planning Board has created a three-person subcommittee charged with writing an ordinance to set the parameters for wind turbine construction in the city.

"As energy prices increase people are increasingly seeking alternative sources of energy and I think wind energy is a viable alternative for energy, especially in Newburyport, where we have good steady supply of wind from being along the coast," Colbert said. "In thinking about this and thinking about alternative energy ... we prefer to have an ordinance in place."

Hailed for their energy efficiency, wind turbines aren't always welcomed in communities, as seen on Cape Cod, where residents have fought the construction of an offshore wind farm that would be made up of 130 turbines and stretch 25 miles, saying the structures would destroy their ocean views. In Amesbury, wind turbines erected at Cider Hill Farm also drew some opponents who expressed similar concerns.

The structures can be obtrusive, Colbert admits, and that is why it is even more important for the city to weigh in. A city ordinance can help set standards for height, locations, footprint size and many other factors officials may decide are important.

Mayor John Moak said coming up with an ordinance will help avoid a similar mistake the city made when it failed to come up with zoning ordinances before cell phone towers started to pop up. The city eventually created a control ordinance, but the mayor said it was rushed.

"I think it is really positive that the Planning Board is being proactive and looking at zoning," he said.

Colbert said the new ordinance will address only commercial entities looking to build wind turbines.

One of the first to build one may be Mark Richey. The owner of Mark Richey Woodworking, which already uses a biomass furnace to burn waste, Richey got a $474,340 grant from the Massachusetts Technology Collaborative, which will help pay for a third of cost of the 600 kilowatt turbine.

"With so much talk of alternative energy, if we want to create a real change in the world economically, environmentally and politically, we have to somehow find a way to wean ourselves off our addiction to forcing oil," Richey said in a previous interview.

Colbert said the Planning Board subcommittee, which has met just once so far, will work on developing residential-based zoning for wind turbines at a later date.

"That is a little more complicated in terms of Newburyport being so dense," Colbert said.

Many city leaders - Colbert, Moak and others included - expect more than an ordinance: they see the possibility of wind turbines as an important part of energy production for the city.

"We all find it very exciting to talk about," Colbert said of her planning office and the Planning Board.

James Shanley, the city council president, said it is a great idea to welcome and help guide the development of windmills in the city.

"I feel that wind turbines are going to be part of our future," he said. "I am fundamentally in favor of wind turbines. It is inappropriate of us to talk about global warming (and of oil dependence and its geopolitical consequences) and then have a resistance to something that is truly going to help us get away from those issues."

Moak said he also supports the building of wind turbines in the city

"Not to embrace them as a means of alternative energy would be counter productive to what I think we should be doing," the mayor said.

Daniel Bowie, chairman of the Planning Board, said there is at least one landowner in the city who wants to build a wind turbine "sooner rather than later" - something he thinks is good for the city.

"It is an exciting opportunity," he said.