From hydro's perspective, we've done a similar process. Strategically, we look at in two pieces. Because the island portion of the province is not connected to the Labrador portion, we have to look at two different problems here.
I like to refer to the island as the only other isolated system in North America other than North America, because we have to run a separate system on the island. So on the island I think you're finding, like in many jurisdictions across the country, we are limited as to what we can incorporate into the current system on wind. There are voltage regulation issues, issues of location. The way we are on the island, we have a spider system. We have a central large core of generation in some of our large hydro deep in the island, and it comes out and spreads out like that to various jurisdictions. Most of our best wind is on the tips of those legs, so pushing power back in causes a lot of system limitations. That limits us right now to about 75 megawatts of wind on the island. So we have 50 in the works right now and we're considering moving ahead with more.
If you look at the Labrador situation, provided we stay not connected, the wind resource there is in the many thousands, but strategically we've looked at that and said that we have to be realistic. I mean, I could sit here and say we have tens of thousands of megawatts of wind up there, but to be realistic, we've pulled back and said no, we need to maximize the value of this wind for the province, because after we satisfy the province's needs there are still going to be large amounts available for export.
So we've tailored that back to a point where we're looking at some staged developments. We haven't landed on the number, but in a range you're talking about 1,500 to 2,500 over a longer period of time, maybe in 200- or 300-megawatt increments. We want to marry that up, as I mentioned, with the hydro and resources we have to make sure we firm that up. That's how you're going to maximize the value of this wind over the long run.
Where is it in the queue? It's behind lower Churchill. The lower Churchill is reliable. Environmentally, greenhouse gas emissions are extremely friendly, and the cost of it is significantly less than wind. So it's a very natural first, but we are planning in behind that in terms of how we're going to do a sequential development. You'll see one coming after the other in staged perspectives.
That's a broad overview. Naturally there are lots of questions in terms of how that is intended to be developed. There are lots of interesting developers in the country active in Labrador. We have deferred that decision until the energy plan of the province comes out, because that tends to be more of a policy discussion of government, more so than a Newfoundland and Labrador hydro issue, but we are not sitting back. We're doing the analysis. We're putting the plans together. Whichever way the province decides to go, we're going to be ready to execute that.