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Drive across northern or western Iowa and one feature of the landscape becomes hard to miss.
There are cornfields, grain elevators, small towns, long straight roads, and, increasingly, enormous white wind turbines turning above all of it.
That would not be especially surprising in a state known for aggressive climate politics.
Iowa is not such a state.
Donald Trump won 55.7 percent of Iowa's presidential vote in 2024. Republicans currently hold large majorities in both chambers of the state legislature. Iowa has moved decisively toward the Republican Party over the past decade. (Iowa Secretary of State)
And yet, in 2024, 62.84 percent of all electricity generated in Iowa came from wind.
Coal supplied about 21 percent. Natural gas supplied about 14 percent.
Wind was not a boutique supplement to Iowa's electrical system. It was the system's dominant source of generation. (Iowa Utilities Commission)
At first glance, there seems to be a political contradiction here.
Renewable energy has become entangled with climate politics in the United States, and climate politics has become sharply partisan. One might therefore expect the country's most wind-dependent states to resemble the country's most environmentally progressive states.
But Iowa suggests that this is the wrong way to think about it.
The more interesting question is not why a Republican state somehow tolerates wind power.
It is how wind power became useful enough that tolerating it ceased to be the point.