Fields of opportunity wind machines return to the plains

Great Plains Quarterly

Volumn 26, Issue 2, 2006, Pages 99-112

  Sowers, Jacob ^a  

^a KANSAS STATE UNIVERSITY   (United States)

Author keywords

Farming; Great Plains; Iowa; NIMBY; PIMBY; Wind energy

Indexed keywords

AGRICULTURAL DEVELOPMENT; RURAL AREA; SOCIAL IMPACT; STAKEHOLDER; WIND FARM; WIND POWER;

GREAT PLAINS; IOWA; NORTH AMERICA; UNITED STATES;

EID: 33745543988     PISSN: 02757664     EISSN: None     Source Type: Journal    
DOI: None     Document Type: Article

References (52)

1. "Wind farm" is a common term for an array of wind turbines. There is no historical evidence that documents when or where this term originated. Possible explanations are that the term "farm" is used because the blades are seen as "harvesting" the wind, or that wind machines were historically associated with rural agricultural landscapes. Those opposed to wind turbine arrays in their area usually refer to them as wind factories.
2. Wind energy's NIMBY problem is a popular issue that has been written about extensively. See Robert Thayer, Gray World, Green Heart (New York: John Wiley & Sons, 1994);
3. Maarten Wolsink, "Wind Power and the NIMBY Myth: Institutional Capacity and the Limited Significance of Public Support," Renewable Energy 21, no. 1 (2000): 49-64;
4. Paul Gipe, Wind Energy Comes of Age (New York: John Wiley & Sons, 1995);
5. Robert Righter, Wind Energy in America (Norman: University of Oklahoma Press, 1996);
6. and Lester Brown, Eco-Economy: Building an Economy for the Earth (New York: W. W. Norton, 2001).
7. Perhaps no one has written more about NIMBY as it relates to wind energy landscapes than Martin Pasqualetti. See Pasqualetti, "Wind Power: Obstacles and Opportunities," Environment 46, no. 7 (2004): 22-38;
8. "Living with Wind Power in a Hostile Landscape," in Wind Power in View, ed. Martin Pasqualetti, Paul Gipe, and Robert Righter, 153-72 (San Diego: Academic Press, 2002);
9. "Wind Energy Landscapes: Society and Technology in the California Desert," Society and Natural Resources 14, no. 8 (2001): 689-99;
10. "Morality, Space, and the Power of Wind Energy Landscapes," Geographical Review 90, no. 3 (2000): 381-94.
11. American Wind Energy Association, "Wind Energy Projects," http://www.awea.org/projects/index.html (accessed July 2005).
12. With a federal tax credit of 1.9 cents per kwh wind is a profitable energy source. This tax credit is essential for wind energy. The years in which this credit is not authorized see a dramatic decline in wind turbine construction. For more information, see American Wind Energy Association, "Energy Bill Extends Wind Power Incentive through 2007," http://www.awea.org/news/ energy_bill_extends_wind_power_072905.html (accessed July 2005).
13. The economics of wind energy are methodically described in Gipe, Wind Energy Comes of Age;
14. Brown, Eco-Economy;
15. and Robert Redlinger, Dannemand Anderson, and Poul Erik Morthorst, Wind Energy in the Twenty-First Century: Economics, Policy, Technology, and the Changing Electricity Industry (New York: Palgrave/UNEP, 2002).
16. Gipe, Wind Energy Comes of Age.
17. Robert Righter, "Exoskeletal Outer-Space Creations," in Wind Power in View, 19-41;
18. Pasqualetti, "Wind Power: Obstacles and Opportunities";
19. and Gipe, Wind Energy Comes of Age.
20. Gordon G. Brittan, "The Wind in One's Sails: A Philosophy," in Wind Power in View, 59-79;
21. Gipe, Wind Energy Comes of Age;
22. Pasqualetti, "Morality, Space, and the Power of Wind Energy Landscapes";
23. Pasqualetti, "Wind Power: Obstacles and Opportunities";
24. Righter, Wind Energy in America;
25. Thayer, Gray World, Green Heart;
26. Wolsink, "Wind Power and the NIMBY Myth";
27. and Wolsink, "Attitudes and Experiences about Wind Turbines and Wind Farms," Wind Engineering 13, no. 4 (1989): 196-206.
28. John Donelan, associate director, Alliance to Protect Nantucket Sound, telephone interviews by author, April 2003;
29. Larry Patton, president, Protect the Flint Hills, telephone interviews by author, April 2003;
30. Geoff Saunders, organizer, Kittitas County, Washington, wind farm protest group, phone interview by author, May 2003;
31. Chris Taylor, project director, Zilkha Energy, telephone interview by author, May 2003.
32. John Dunlop, Great Plains representative, American Wind Energy Association, telephone interviews with author, August and September 2002;
33. Tom Factor, director, Iowa Wind Energy Institute, telephone interviews with author, August 2002;
34. Lawrence Flowers, National Renewable Energy Laboratory (NREL), e-mail correspondence with author, August 2002.
35. Gipe, Wind Energy Comes of Age.
36. Brown, Eco-Economy.
37. Lester Brown, "U.S. Farmers Double Cropping Corn and Wind Energy," Earth Policy Institute, http://earth-policy.org/Alerts/ Alert3.htm (accessed July 2003).
38. Sonja Rossum and Stephen Lavin, "Where Are the Great Plains? A Cartographic Analysis," Professional Geographer 52, no. 3 (2000): 543-52. The authors analyzed the varying boundaries and found that thirty-two of the fifty maps based on cultural characteristics of the Great Plains included Iowa.
39. U.S. Department of Agriculture, 2002 Agricultural Census, http://www. nass.usda.gov/census/census02/profiles/ia/cp99019.PDF (accessed July 2005).
40. Richard Lampe, professor of biology, Buena Vista University, phone interview with author, April 2003.
41. Ibid.
42. Different wind energy companies will pay landowners different amounts for the land they are leasing for the wind farm. However, in the case of Iowa the landowners receive a guaranteed minimum amount. Any additional payment depends on how much electricity is produced from the turbines. Most Iowa landowners reported that they receive between $2,000 and $2,400 per turbine per year.
43. Tad Miller, operator, Cerro Gordo wind farm, interview with author, September 2002.
44. Steve Dryden, assistant wind energy developer, Cerro Gordo wind farm, and primary wind energy developer for Top of Iowa wind farm, interview with author, September 2002.
45. American Wind Energy Association, "Wind Energy Projects."
46. The names of the public officials have not been altered, but the names of residents and farmers mentioned in this article have been changed to pseudonyms.
47. I interviewed the mayors of Alta and Storm Lake. In Clear Lake I spoke with members of the chamber of commerce and a city public relations employee.
48. I spoke with dozens of citizens in various types of encounters and had the chance to formally interview fourteen residents from Storm Lake, Clear Lake, Alta, and Joice.
49. I interviewed fourteen of the 115 landowners leasing land to the three wind farms and thirteen farmers who lived next to land with wind turbines in operation.
50. Steve Dryden, the lead developer for the Top of Iowa wind farm, did pay a small amount to farmers who lived near wind turbines within the Top of Iowa wind farm. He did not think the adjacent landowners would oppose the project, but after experiencing disastrous local protests in suburban Wisconsin, he just wanted to make sure.
51. Righter, Wind Energy in America.
52. Although I propose that the Great Plains is full of small-town residents, farmers, and ranchers who could be aided by wind farm development, some places will not be seen as adequate locations. Development in sacred places and landscapes, avian sanctuaries, or pristine landscapes such as the Flint Hills of Kansas are bound to create NIMBY opposition and thus should be avoided. Moreover, since this research focuses entirely on farming communities, future research needs to be done concerning ranchers and ranching communities and their reasons for accepting wind energy landscapes.