Wind power in VT

GMD had an interesting post and good following discussion On Wind Power and "Destroying Vermont".  What's simple is that the large-scale wind farms appear less destructive than mountaintop removal.  What's missing from the discussion, and not clear at all to me, are the relative amounts of energy obtained by each method per area "destroyed", plus the costs of obtaining that energy.  I also suspect, but have no proof, that distributed wind and solar systems are cheaper and more efficient, but don't bring profit to "big energy" like large-scale installments, and so there's little will to pursue distributed systems.