A study released Wednesday by the Environment Iowa Research Policy Center shows that Iowa’s wind energy industry is now averting more than 8.4 million metric tons of carbon pollution each year — the equivalent of taking 1.7 million cars off the road, according to the report. Additionally, since wind power does not require water cooling infrastructure like other nonrenewable energy sources, Iowa wind power now saves approximately 3.8 billion gallons of water each year.
Currently, 24.5 percent of Iowa’s electricity is generated by wind energy — the highest in the nation.
American wind power production has quadrupled since 2007, according to the report, growing from 34,500 gigawatt-hours to 140,000 gigawatt-hours. In 2012, wind energy was the largest source of new electricity for the United States power grid, accounting for 44 percent of the nation’s added capacity for the year (including both renewable and nonrenewable energy sources). Currently, nine states supply more than 12 percent of their electricity from wind power, with Iowa, South Dakota and Kansas exceeding 20 percent.
Along with the added energy production come added jobs as well, the report notes. The wind industry directly employed 24,300 people in 2003, nationwide. Today, the wind industry employs more than 80,000.
The report attributes Iowa’s growth in wind energy production to federal tax incentives like the federal renewable electricity production tax credit (PTC) and the investment tax credit (ITC). The PTC provides an income tax credit of 2.3 cents per kilowatt-hour for utility-scale wind producers. The ITC, meanwhile, covers a certain percentage of capital costs (up to 30 percent) associated with new renewable energy investments.
Both the ITC and PTC are set to expire on December 31, 2013 unless Congress takes action.
The report strongly encourages more Congressional consistency when it comes to implementing these incentives, criticizing the “here today, gone tomorrow” approach that has stifled development within the renewable energy sector — a problem exacerbated by interest groups from nonrenewable energy sectors, the report claims.
“When the PTC has been renewed by Congress for only one or two years at a time or even allowed to expire, the ensuing uncertainty has discouraged wind developers from building new capacity, stunting industry growth,” the report says. “For instance, in 2000, 2002 and 2004 — years when the PTC was allowed to expire temporarily — new wind installations dropped by 93 percent, 73 percent and 77 percent, respectively, from the previous year when the PTC had been in force.”
If the United States develops its wind energy industry at the same rate it did from 2007-2012, the report notes that 157 million metric tons of carbon dioxide would be averted each year by 2018. To put that into perspective, that number exceeds the amount of carbon emissions produced by New York state in 2011.
