The losers in the GOP candidate brigade will be heading for what they hope are...uh...greener pastures after Iowa caucus-goers make their choices Tuesday. In all the hot air that has been expended in what one person rightly called a glorified straw poll, hardly anything has been said about one of the state's major accomplishments, getting roughly 20 percent of its electricity from 2800 wind turbines across the state.
There's a good reason for that: Many Republicans seem to view wind power, and fossil-fuel alternatives in general, as a socialist plot. Not surprising when so many in the party think climate change science is a hoax. Cue George Will.
While the Republican candidates pretend to care about jobs and pretend that Democratic efforts to create more of them have been utter failures instead of just not enough, wind power has generated more than $5 billion in private investment in Iowa, some 4000 jobs with a payroll of $70 million. Landowners are bringing in about $12.6 million from leases. The installed generating capacity is now 4375 megawatts, second only behind Texas, and way ahead of the one-time leader, California, which now generates about 3.3 percent of its electricity from wind turbines. Some 500 additional megawatts are in the Iowa pipeline. The Hawkeye State's goal: 20,000 installed megawatts of wind power by 2030, much of it for export to other Midwestern states along the Green Power Express, a 3000-mile, seven-state network of new high-voltage power lines now being reviewed by the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission.
One nearly completed Iowa wind project is the Rolling Hills Wind Farm, near Massena, population 350. At 193 turbines with a maximum capacity of 444 megawatts, it will be the biggest such operation in the state, but certainly not the last.
Property owners with turbines on their land are poised to see their incomes go up by tens of thousands of dollars. The town itself could see a significant jump in population, thanks to the workers and their families who stay after the project is fully operational. Higher property tax rolls could mean money for upgrades at the local school district.
“If you looked at Massena this year, and that’s all you looked at in the U.S. economy, you would think the times were booming in America,” said Mike Cormack, the mayor of Massena.
Iowa's success didn't happen by accident. Back in 1983, when GOP icon Ronald Reagan was busy wrecking most of the nation's nascent renewable-energy programs, Iowans chose to go a different direction by being the first state to enact a renewable electricity standard requiring utilities to purchase some of their electricity from generators using renewable sources. Iowa has never upgraded its standard since then, even though it now has 40 times the renewable capacity its RES requires. Since then other states have enacted their own standards. Next door Minnesota has passed an RES of 25 percent by 2025. California's is 33 percent by 2020. And Maine, the leader, has set its RES at 40 percent by 2017.
But only 24 states have mandated renewable electricity standards, with an additional five states having imposed "voluntary" standards, with the rest, where half the nation's electricity is generated, resisting any standard at all. That speaks to the need for a national standard. In 2007, a handful of House Republicans backed a 15 percent renewable standard in a bill that never made it to the President's desk. But they've hardened their stance since then and the GOP presidential candidates have said bupkis about it. The chances for an RES passing this year are precisely nil. Come 2013, it will greatly depend on what happens next November.
Iowa might have been the place where the GOP candidates made some hay by voicing strong support for another policy that has helped the wind-power boom: the production tax credit. Currently, the PTC provides a subsidy of 2.2 cents per kilowatt-hour of electricity generated by wind, geothermal or certain biomass sources.
The problem with the PTC is that since its passage in 1992 it has had to be renewed several times, and that often has happened close to the deadline. This makes it hard on investors who are unsure the credit will still be there when they need it. And that makes for unsteady growth in wind projects. The PTC is once again set to expire, this time at the end of 2012. Since a wind project takes 12 to 18 months to complete, the pinch is already being felt.
Given that a House bill to renew the credit beyond 2012 has 36 co-sponsors, including 11 Republicans, you would have thought the candidates would have spoken up repeatedly during their campaigning in a state where so many make money off the wind and the state's U.S. Republican Sen. Chuck Grassley and Republican Gov. Terry Branstad are fans of renewal. Instead, even Rick Perry, whose state has benefited greatly from the PTC, does not favor its renewal. Among the candidates still in the race, only Newt Gingrich has supported the renewal. By the end of next week, he could be out of the race.
Blast from the Past. At Daily Kos on this date in 2005:
I have argued repeatedly that we must oppose the Gonzales appointment as Attorney General. I also endorse Digby's take:
THE DAOU REPORT says:
Coalition to stop torture organizing advertising and public relations push against Gonzales nomination (includes MoveOn, True Majority, others) - plans to hit CNN, New York Times this week . . .
I'll bet Al From is just frothing at the mouth over this one. Why, the Republicans are going to say that the Democratic Party is soft on terrorism, oh my gawd! Peter Beinert will caution that we are giving up the moral high ground by failing to show that we are serious about fighting islamic fundamentalism. Oh heck!
But then, others might think that SOMEBODY SHOULD STAND UP FOR THE CONSTITUTION OF THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA, goddamnit. Apparently that isn't popular these days, but sometimes you just have to bite the bullet and do the right thing. This is the right thing.
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