A new conservation paradigm (Kareiva and Marvier, 2012) emphasizes the need for scientists to embrace a holistic approach taking into account the social and natural dimensions of conservation in human-dominated landscapes. While there is heavy debate over the new approach (Tallis and Lubchenco, 2014), most conservation scientists seem to agree on to the need to cooperate with corporations when such interaction can benefit people and the environment (Miller et al., 2014; Tallis and Lubchenco, 2014). Cooperation can be most productive when established in the early phases of development, but this requires a high capacity for forward looking pre-emptive action (i.e., anticipating potential forthcoming issues before they arise; Sutherland and Woodroof, 2009). This framework is particularly salient for rapidly developing and expanding technologies such as those for harvesting renewable energy sources. Here the stakes are very high, as they concern mitigating negative consequences to global climate while generating energy without impacting wildlife. In this vein, past experience is instructional. The environmental impacts of biofuels and wind, among others, have been identified and evaluated rather late (Sutherland and Woodroof, 2009), so that implementation of best management practices on existing facilities is now often prohibitively expensive. Here we call scientists to focus specific attention on a rarely deployed yet recently emerging technology, the vertical axis wind turbine model, which has potential to dominate the wind energy technology in the future (Islam et al., 2013). We identify in this particular type of technology a gap in scientific knowledge with regards to its associated environmental impacts. We also point out the instructional value of past experience with horizontal axis wind turbines, which were assumed to be wholly environmentally friendly and are now seen as valuable but accompanied by risk to wildlife and habitat.We urge that this knowledge gap be filled rapidly in order to exploit potential economic and energy-provisioning opportunities that this technology could offer.