Friday, July 1, 2016

Windmills in Iowa

Iowa generates about 30% of its electricity from wind energy, mostly from very large windmills of the type proposed for Penn Forest Township.  As I noted in an earlier post, I think we should be turning to renewable soft energy such as backyard windmills or solar panels on the garage roof.  The next best thing is renewable hard energy, which takes a large capital investment, is centralized and needs a distribution system. 

The Iowa windmills, which you can see from I-80, are definitely a hard energy source, but they do use renewable energy (the wind is always blowing there), they are non-polluting, and they don’t add to climate change.

Incidentally, we also saw quite an array of huge windmills in Wyoming, a state where the strip mining of coal is a major source of economic activity.  Change is coming.


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