Climate Changed
California Is Plenty Green But Iowa Has the Cleanest Power
- Iowa gets 40% of its power from wind and solar farms
- Economics, geography are both key to developing renewables
A technician enters a wind turbine in Iowa.
Photographer: Daniel Acker/BloombergThis article is for subscribers only.
California may be America’s clean-energy capital, but let’s give Iowa and North Dakota some credit too.
Aggressive environmental polices under Governor Jerry Brown have given rise to vast wind and solar farms, allowing California to generate almost one-third of its electricity from renewable sources. Meanwhile, Iowa has one of the nation’s least ambitious clean-energy targets and gets as much as 40 percent of its power from wind and solar farms.