Due to the global acceptance of the reality of global warming and the imperative of changing energy patterns, ever more countries are in the process of implementing alternative energies such as wind power. In this article, we focus on the transformation of space as a consequence of these newly established alternative energy policies. We analyse the deployment of wind power in three European countries, France, Germany and Portugal through the lens of ethnographic landscape studies. Landscapes are the level at which political visions and policy decisions endorse (or not) their very materiality. With this comparative approach to local realities, we highlight the differences, commonalities and potentials for the production of wind energy in different national contexts. We argue that the global demand for low carbon futures and its successful implementation is highly dependent on the respective national cultures of administration as well as on local practices, initiatives and perceptions of space at the local level. The ethnographic focus on landscape gives an insight into the practice of the implementation of new energy policies. It directs the attention to people's relations with their environment in concrete places as being crucial for the potential to transform rural spaces into alternative energy landscapes. We analyze the way in which wind power and landscape issues are framed in each of the three countries under scrutiny, we point at potential tensions and explore how there are overcome (or not) at the local level so as to give way for the emergence of (new) wind power landscapes. We then bring the case studies and local landscape processes into the perspective of the energy transition, by comparing the role played by landscape cultures, institutions or practices in the development and resolution of tensions over the deployment of wind energy.