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Wind power booming in Iowa

By Staff | Aug 19, 2011

Windmills once dotted the Iowa landscape. Converting the energy of the wind into mechanical energy helped run pumps and other machinery on Iowa farms, and elsewhere, long before electrical power made its appearance.

A high-tech, 21st-century cousin of those windmills, so important in years gone by, could be one of the key ingredients to energy self-sufficiency for the United States.

Wind-based generation of electricity is a technology that offers the promise of vast amounts of electric power produced with few environmental downsides.

Our society has a voracious appetite for energy, and the demand for even more energy is growing fast. That makes overreliance on those energy resources that once used are gone forever both short-sighted and, ultimately, catastrophically foolish.

As our nation seeks energy sources that have long-term viability, concern about renewability has grown. The booming ethanol industry offers part of the answer to how energy needs can be met using resources that can be replenished. Wind power also has the potential to be a major part of tomorrow’s energy picture.

Making use of wind to generate electricity has enormous implications for the United States. The goal of generating 20 percent of the nation’s electricity from wind power by 2030 appears highly achievable.

Turning wind power into electric power is already a reality in many parts of the world, including the United States. In 2010, according to data from the American Wind Power Association, 2.3 percent of U.S. electricity was produced from wind turbines. Iowa is a national leader in this regard. In 2010, 15 percent of the Hawkeye State’s electricity was wind-generated. Iowa led the nation in the percentage of its electricity produced from this technology at 15 percent. That already-impressive statistic grew to 20 percent during the first quarter of this year.

Clearly, Iowa is showing other states how to make this new energy source viable.

A wind power initiative in Webster County is a big part of that story. The enXco Development Corp., based in Minneapolis, Minn., is developing what it calls the Lundgren Project south of Fort Dodge. If all goes as planned, this major investment could bring 157 wind turbines online by the end 2012. Elsewhere in northern Iowa, MidAmerican already has operational wind turbines in Calhoun and Pocahontas counties.

Energy can be produced in perpetuity from our fields and the gentle winds that blow across them.

It’s not too hard to imagine a day – perhaps not so many decades hence – when people will think of Iowa not just as the breadbasket of the nation, but also as a critical source of the energy that makes our way of life possible.