Thursday, May 5, 2016

Energy and irony in the Waukesha County wind

Screaming irony alert:

The Journal Sentinel has a nice feature on a successful wind energy business in Waukesha County - - where Scott Walker's gets his largest county voter turnout - - which was founded about the same time Walker was first elected (2011) and immediately began stalling wind energy expansion in Wisconsin.

Wisconsin Realtors prompted Walker’s wind restrictions
Which put hundreds of millions of dollars investment dollars at risk:
"We shouldn't have the Realtors Association dictating energy policy in this state," said [Dan] Ebert, senior vice president at WPPI Energy in Sun Prairie. "This puts a stake through the heart of wind development in the state of Wisconsin."
Though one wind farm looks like it will get off the ground in a year to join several modest developments, the overall policy failure during Walker's tenure been noted by national business media:
Scott Walker's Record on Wind and Solar Power Leaves Renewables Industry Fuming


2 comments:

Jake formerly of the LP said...

Walker's wind restriction? Now they are going to outlaw farts too? What am I suppose to blog about now?

Anonymous said...

The chart underestimates how far Wisconsin is lagging. In each of the years 2013, 2014 and 2015, wind power installations in Iowa were about 500 megawatts, a number equal to the total of all installations in Wisconsin in its entire history. Nearly all of the towers, vanes and transformers installed in Iowa were manufactured there--three billion dollars worth of manufacturing output in those three years.