October 21, 2021 — Before he worked for American Clean Power, Jeff Danielson was an Iowa state senator for 15 years, representing Black Hawk County, the state’s fourth most populous region, and a Democratic stronghold. But most of Iowa is rural and Republican. In 2020 residents voted wholesale for former President Donald Trump, an outspoken opponent of clean energy.
So it was a surprise, Danielson said, that in a 2017 vote on a redesign of the state license plate, the public chose to include an increasingly familiar feature on Iowa’s rural landscape.
“The license plate that won was a landscaped picture with silos, smokestacks — traditional manufacturing strength and farming — right alongside a wind turbine,” Danielson said. “If you drive around Iowa today, that is the license plate you see.”
What was once controversial has now become an accepted feature in the heartland. In 2019, wind energy generated more electricity than coal-fired plants for the first time in Iowa state history and now accounts for 57% of the state’s electric power generation, according to the U.S. Energy Information Administration (EIA).
It is the highest percentage of electrical production by wind power of any state and it happened fast. Five years ago coal-fired plants generated 53% of the state’s electricity, according to EIA, but as of 2020 only accounted for 24%.
It’s a matter of economics, wind power advocates say, not politics.
The U.S. is second only to China in terms of installed wind power. China has 288 gigawatts compared to the U.S., which has 122. But China is way ahead of the U.S. when it comes to offshore wind installations. This year, China displaced the U.K. as the top offshore wind country with 11.1 gigawatts of power installed. The U.S. has only one, a 55-megawatt, five-turbine offshore wind installation off Block Island, Rhode Island.
Last year, the Biden administration set a goal of generating 30 gigawatts of offshore power along the East Coast by 2030 as part of its strategy to dramatically reduce greenhouse gas emissions in the energy sector. Massachusetts’ recent update of its climate change plan set a goal of 5.6 gigawatts of offshore wind as an integral part of its plan to achieve a 50% emissions reduction target by 2030, and net-zero emissions from the energy sector by 2050.
Read the full story at the Cape Cod Times