A bare-knuckle brawl has developed at the Iowa Utilities Board between MidAmerican Energy and NextEra (Florida Power and Light) over the right to develop wind energy in Iowa. MidAmerican has already installed over 1,000 megawatts of wind-power capacity in Iowa. and NextEra has vast holdings of wind energy and nuclear power across the country. Lost in this fight over wind-farm development is a discussion about other options for Iowa.

Locally owned wind energy can be competitively installed at the same (or lower) price estimated by MidAmerican in the utilities board docket testimony. The “distributed wind” model used by farmers spreads turbines across the state using existing power lines. Wider adoption of this model would delay the need for expensive new transmission lines and save ratepayers additional money. Farmer-owned wind also insulates the ratepayer from the cost and risks of operating a utility-owned wind farm. Unfortunately, as it currently stands, both MidAmerican and NextEra appear to want to pay themselves more than local farmers for the same wind power.

An additional benefit of locally owned wind is the increased local economic impact it provides. The current utility-owned wind farms we have in Iowa leave as little as 2 percent of gross wind-farm profits in the local economy. We can do better. The Iowa Legislature understands the value of Iowa’s citizens and businesses owning and profiting from renewable energy, but so far lawmakers have only dealt with this issue in piecemeal fashion with tax incentives. Recent legislative policy still favors utility ownership of wind energy, and the utility lobby strongly defends the status quo. Our elected officials need to adopt a long-range plan for independent ownership of wind energy. This will benefit our economy and Iowa’s ratepayers.

The Iowa Farmers Union recognized this, and in 2006 negotiated an agreement with MidAmerican to facilitate the development of locally owned wind energy. While the utility clearly wants more wind energy on its system, it has yet to implement the agreement with farmers that is beneficial to its customers, while allowing a larger portion of the profits to stay with the state’s farmers and communities.

The current path we are on will result in most of Iowa’s wind resources controlled and extracted from our state economy by a few huge players. Iowa has an amazing opportunity available with renewable energy. A few years from now, with the benefit of hindsight, we may realize we produced a mediocre result.

This article was written by Gregg Heide, Iowa Farmers Union board member and farmer from Pomeroy, Iowa.