IOWA CITY, Iowa (KWQC) – The University of Iowa College of Law held a panel discussion on the use of solar energy in Iowa on Tuesday.
Experts from across the state gathered at the Boyd Law Building to discuss how solar energy could impact the state at the municipal, county, and state levels.
Nick Boeyink, the Executive Director of the Iowa Conservative Energy forum says that solar energy is something Iowa lawmakers are working on.
“We’ve had long-standing Iowa bipartisan support for clean energy,” Boeyink said. “Conservative leadership, like you don’t always expect, especially in these days of [former governor] Terry Branstad and Senator Grassley. was the first to establish a global portfolio standard. And since then our state legislature has really observed green energy as a bipartisan success story.
One question at the center of the conversation is why communities want to pursue solar energy. According to Andy Johnson, the Executive Director of Clean Energy Districts of Iowa, the list ranges from economic impacts to sustainability to others.
“There is an interest in stability through local clean energy generation, so that if we have another derecho or the grid that falls in the communities, even if they don’t have that, even if they are not affected a kind of thinking like of, what would it look like if something like that happened in our community,” Johnson said during the panel discussion.
Some solar farms are facing backlash, especially in Scott County where a few weeks ago, the Scott County Board of Supervisors passed an ordinance limiting the number of solar acres on a farm based on the quality of the land. .
However, other counties such as Linn County, have a different approach to solar farms and have some projects in the works.
“The first project was submitted in July 2021,” Charles Nichols, the Director of Planning and Development for Linn County said. “It’s about 750 acres of panels of 100 megawatt generation capacity. For those of you who don’t know, there’s currently a utility scale solar project being built in the state of Iowa and it’s being built in Wapelo. It’s very similar to size, about 750 hectares.”
The panel series concluded with a discussion about solar at the statewide level and how it can be stored and used across the state.
The Hubbell Environmental Law initiative hosts the event and strives to engage Iowans on environmental issues statewide and nationally.
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