Editorials: Where does the profit go?

A horse stands in a field near Alta, with a windmill in the background. (Photo by Jake Kurtz)

All of Iowa, and especially the flatlands surrounding Storm Lake along Buffalo Ridge, will benefit tremendously from a new energy economy built around renewable generation — wind, solar and biomass. We have plenty of wind, no doubt, and ample solar capacity with room to spare, as do the vast expanses of the Great Plains and Upper Midwest.

Already over half our electricity is generated by wind, and we have just scratched the surface. The main impediment to expansion is storing and shipping that power where it is needed — from Storm Lake to Chicago. Developing transmission capacity gets more difficult as local opposition builds to allowing right-of-way through private property. Locals become more jaundiced with pitches for potentially dangerous pipelines, and that skepticism spreads to transmission lines.

The main problem is that people don’t see a local economic return. Property owners are forced to take what they can get. It’s that sort of resentment for eminent domain that even keeps recreational trails from being laid in Iowa. We have to build a system that returns clearly understood benefits to local communities.

More solar would be installed if energy could be sold back into the grid, controlled by huge power companies and regulators. Support for transmission capacity would grow if customers in Iowa saw rebates for energy revenue as citizens in Alaska have. Here, when a pipeline gets built the profits flow first to corporations capturing carbon tax credits. People would think those windmills are prettier against the horizon if they got a rebate on their electric bill for it. Iowa has relatively low electric rates thanks to wind, but clearly customers do not feel it.

Political support grows when everyone feels like they have a stake in the improvement.

It will be felt eventually. Demand for power is growing faster than the grid can get smart. That suggests more power will be consumed where it is produced. Already, urban areas of Iowa are hotspots for juice-gobbling data centers near rivers. With the onset of artificial intelligence, immensely more electricity will be needed. If rural residents see all the benefits flow away and not home, their resentment and resistance to new energy development will stiffen.

Meatpacking left the cities for the countryside because that’s where the corn and the critters are. Likewise, Storm Lake and Schaller and Pomeroy are where the wind blows pretty much all the time. The only thing holding us back is a system trying to figure out how to keep more for itself and not cutting the rest of us in. Marginally lower electric rates are not doing the trick. How about locating some of that economic promise in Storm Lake, Estherville or Pocahontas? That’s where the power of the future is.

Iowa should be the richest place on Earth if we could only figure out a way to keep the money here. If we could, imagine how cooperative we could be. Iowa will be at the center of this new energy economy. We should take care not to give away the franchise. If we have to put up with this wind all the time, we should get a little something for helping to harness it.

Stay and fight for Iowa

We were prospecting for a reporter and a sharp senior Beaver caught our eye. We dangled a job and he politely declined because he wants to get out of Iowa, or at least the western half. Can’t say we blame him given the huge backwards strides the state has taken, trying to chase off Latinos, gays, Blacks and others who don’t fit our frame. The most polluted rivers in America are not a selling point.

We wanted to tell him to stay and fight for a better Iowa. It would have been too familiar and presumptuous. It’s what we would like to tell all the spring graduates: We need you and your educated good sense. Rural Iowa especially. We need your ideas. We need your commitment to all the Iowa values teachers have tried to instill: hard work, honesty, fairness and compassion. To the extent you spread those values elsewhere, bon voyage. We cannot prosper without young people applying those values here, and investing in the place that fostered them.

There are worse places to plant your flag than right here. The State of Iowa is doing its level best to chase them off with high student debt, an outright hostile attitude to people who are different, and a relentless attempt to pervert all the wholesome values upon which we built an educational powerhouse. We need young people who want to stay and change the dynamic. We need people who want to fight for Iowa. It’s worth the old college try. Give us a thought before you load the U-Haul.