On the note of "innovation", looking for the term for vertical turbines, I came across this article from 2011:

"Changing Winds: The Evolving Wind Turbine": http://www.powermag.com/changing-winds-the-evolving-wind-tur...

It has (what appears to my untrained eye to be) a quick overview of various designs. To me it seems that vertical turbines makes a lot of sense - if for no other reason than it would seem like most of those designs get you more "turbine" for your build-costs/materials (and less "inert tower").