Iowa Shows What a “Green New Deal” Could Look Like
The best part of my Monday morning drive to Des Moines runs straight through a recently completed 58-turbine wind farm in Poweshiek County. The slow, elegant blades always fill me with hope and remind me of the task that awaits me in the Iowa Capitol. The turbines are a testament to what government can get done when we get serious about renewable energy. With bipartisan cooperation dating back to 1983, Iowa has shown how to lead on renewable energy, and we’ve managed to improve lives and create thousands of good-paying “green-collar” jobs along the way.
While debate over the Green New Deal has only recently entered the political mainstream, wind energy is old news in Iowa. Anybody wondering what a Green New Deal would look like should come visit. No state generates more electricity from wind as a percentage of its overall electricity portfolio than Iowa — almost 40%. And Iowa ranks second in the nation for gross wind energy output; we’re just behind Texas, with about one-fifth their land mass and one-tenth their population.
The critical lesson here is that Iowa’s wind industry wasn’t built by the invisible hand. Our renewable energy success story is the direct result of proactive government policies that shaped our state’s energy sector. And even though “Cap and Trade” and carbon taxes are often go-to solutions in policy debates, Iowa has thrived with a different approach: a clean energy requirement known as the “renewable portfolio standard.”
In 1983, under the visionary leadership of Democratic lawmaker David Osterberg, Iowa became the first state to adopt a renewable portfolio standard or RPS. The RPS instructed Iowa’s state-regulated utilities to ensure that a certain percentage of their electricity portfolio came from renewable sources.
Policymakers chose the direction they wanted our state to go and steered investment, both public and private, in that direction. The RPS wasn’t Iowa’s only public policy intervention into the energy sector. We also offered utility companies and individuals renewable energy production subsidies, property tax exemptions for renewable energy systems, and consumer rebates for energy efficiency upgrades.
Our investments worked. Coupled with federal incentives, our state policies drove down the costs of production for wind energy and built over 4,000 turbines. If you spend almost any time in Iowa, you’ll see them from the interstates — either off in the distance or up close and personal as the blades and towers are shipped to their final destination. These investments created thousands of good, high-paying jobs for manufacturing, installation, and technician workers. Further, the utility companies pay leases to the folks who own the land on which turbines are built, bringing steady income into rural areas.
Our incentives have worked so well, in fact, that our installed wind capacity now exceeds our government-mandated RPS requirement. That’s why the first bill I introduced as a state senator earlier this year, Senate File 312, would continue to grow our investments with an all-of-the-above plan similar to the RPS. SF312 instructs our Iowa Energy Center to develop a plan to meet 80% of Iowa’s energy needs with renewables by 2030 and to 100% by 2050. The renewable portfolio standard and renewable energy subsidies have worked well in Iowa, we should continue to expand them going forward, and they should be core components of the Green New Deal.
Virtually everybody in Iowa loves our wind energy, Democrats and Republicans alike. Even conservative stalwarts like Senator Chuck Grassley and Representative Steve King can feel which way the wind is blowing. Both of them have written extensively about their support for Iowa’s government-supported wind industry.
Republican support is emblematic of another important lesson from Iowa, and something the Green New Dealers should embrace: progress must include everyone. Here in Iowa, Republicans support government programs they might otherwise denounce as “socialism” because wind turbines create good jobs and substantial income in the rural communities that make up a large part of their political base.
Any serious action on climate change must ensure that all Americans benefit from the economic transformation of decarbonizing our energy system — and that includes farmers. In fact, Iowa farmers already play a role in sequestering carbon (also known as “carbon farming”) and renewable biomass, both of which will grow in importance in the years and decades to come. Further, many farmers in my own senate district have utilized Iowa’s growing solar industry to offset energy bills for farm buildings. The Green New Deal has the potential to benefit all Americans, just like President Roosevelt’s New Deal, and to win political support from sea to shining sea.
For now, much of the conversation surrounding the Green New Deal is highly partisan, with Democrats in support and Republicans in opposition. Iowa shows it doesn’t have to be this way. Unfortunately, Iowa’s greatest strength has been the luxury of time and our ability to slowly grow our RPS over thirty-six years. With the urgency of global climate change, we no longer have that privilege. But Iowa has laid a strong foundation on which our state should continue to build and that the Green New Deal should emulate on a national scale.
