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Wind Power in Iowa: Lower Rates, Good Jobs

March 18, 2013

Opponents of expanding renewable energy often claim that new, safe and clean electricity is all very nice but it just costs too much. Let’s look at the data. The Energy Information Administration of the U.S. Department of Energy keeps statistics on retail electric rates by state and for the nation as a whole. The graph below[i] compares the average retail rates (residential, commercial, industrial) in Iowa to the U.S. as a whole starting in 1998 when Iowa began to produce significant amounts of wind electricity. While there are many reasons why a particular state’s electric rates are high or low it is certainly fair to say that our rank as the leader in per-capita wind electricity production (24.5 percent of all electricity in 2011)[ii] has not caused our rates to shoot up dramatically. Even though Iowa produces seven times as much wind power as the U.S. average, its rates continue to be about 2.5 cents per kilowatt hour below the national average.

Basic RGB

Any discussion of prices for electricity must be qualified since the amount of wind electricity produced is not the same as the amount consumed in the state. States around Iowa have requirements that a percentage of electricity sold be from renewable energy. Iowa also has such a requirement and ours was the first in the nation, a fact the governor tends to emphasize, and the requirement was met long ago. Some wind electricity is certainly exported. Thus, while data on wind electricity consumption would be helpful, information is unavailable on what portion of electricity from each fuel source serves retail load and what is sold on the wholesale market. It should also be pointed out that selling at the wholesale level has some benefit to Iowa ratepayers.

 

[i] Energy Information Administration. October 1, 2012. Average Price by State Provider. http://www.eia.gov/electricity/data/state/

[ii]  American Wind Energy Association. “American wind power now generates over 10 percent of electricity in nine states.” Accessed March 15, 2013.  http://www.awea.org/newsroom/pressreleases/wind-generation-2012.cfm

Posted by David Osterberg & Heather Gibney

Categories: Energy & Environment, Organization
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Sound budgeting doesn’t include blanket tax credit

January 28, 2013
Mike Owen

Mike Owen

This session of the Iowa Legislature offers a tremendous opportunity to move the state forward with a balanced approach — including responsible, fair tax reform and investments in critical needs that have gone unmet, in education at all levels, in environmental quality and public safety.

The proposal for a blanket $750 tax credit to couples, regardless of need and blind to the opportunity cost of even more lost investments, does not fit that approach. To compound a penchant to spend money on tax breaks is fiscally irresponsible to the needs of Iowa taxpayers, who will benefit from better services, and to the promise that we would return to proper investments when the economy turned up, as it has. Furthermore, to give away Iowa’s surplus when uncertainty remains about the impact of federal budget decisions on our state’s tax system and services is tremendously short-sighted.

As the Iowa Fiscal Partnership has established, cutbacks in higher education funding have caused costs and debt to rise for students and their families, not only at the Regents institutions but community colleges as well. While Iowa voters, through a statewide referendum, have expressly called for new revenues to go toward better environmental stewardship, lawmakers have not taken action. The surplus we now see should be used responsibly for the future of Iowans, who patiently endured budget austerity for the day when we could once again see support for critical services. This is no time to be forgetting our responsibilities.

Iowa can do better by returning to the basics of good budgeting, crafting budget and tax choices that keep a long-term focus on the needs of young and future generations, whose lives will be shaped by the foundations we leave them.

Posted by Mike Owen, Assistant Director

Categories: Budget and Tax, Economic Opportunity, Energy & Environment, Organization
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Talk is cheap

November 20, 2012
David Osterberg

David Osterberg

There are three principal problems with the Governor’s proposed Nutrient Reduction Strategy, and they can be summed up in three words: Talk is cheap.

Solutions to this problem start with enforcement, and that takes money. The state of Iowa shortchanges water quality, underfunding it even compared to what we did a decade ago. Our March 2012 report, Drops in the Bucket: The Erosion of Iowa Water Quality Funding, found that this water-quality funding decline came despite greater needs for water protection and public willingness to fund it.

Second, inadequate enforcement of environmental rules for Iowa’s livestock industry has resulted in the state’s censure by the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency, and this threatens our ability to write permits and otherwise enforce our obligations under the Clean Water Act. The strategy bases enforcement on voluntary acceptance of state rules. This has not worked.

Finally, it says much about Iowa’s commitment to water quality — or lack of commitment — when the state proposes a major nutrient reduction strategy and offers no new money to get the job done. The strategy proposes nothing to make sure Iowa does better in assuring clean water for its residents, for states downstream, and the future.

In short, we need a strategy that recognizes the serious water quality problem we have and offers a realistic approach to addressing it. This must be more than a goal — but a guarantee to all Iowans.

Posted by David Osterberg, Executive Director

Categories: Budget and Tax, Energy & Environment, Organization
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Does Iowa have the will to govern itself?

November 13, 2012

Does Iowa have the will to govern itself?

How ironic that we have reason to ask that question, a week after a presidential election that capped three-plus years of courting of Iowa voters, and a few days before a potential 2016 candidate visits to start all of it brewing again.

Yet the question is unavoidable. Consider two pieces in today’s Des Moines Register.

First, the Register reports, the federal Environmental Protection Agency may take over water quality enforcement in Iowa due to weak efforts by Iowa’s state Department of Natural Resources (DNR).

As IPP’s David Osterberg recently told EPA officials to hold DNR more accountable because the state is underfunding water protection.

“EPA should help the agency in bargaining with a legislature that has shown itself to be less concerned with water quality protection than tax cuts. … There is no question that if EPA simply accepts the agency’s agreement to try to do better, water quality will not improve in this state.”

If the EPA admonishment of Iowa’s lax environmental enforcement were not enough, we also are waiting for the state to offer its long-overdue decision on how to proceed on health reform. The 2012 election affirms the Affordable Care Act will not be repealed, so the state’s dragging its heels on creating a health insurance exchange no longer makes sense — if it ever did.

Yet, we now have a real question of whether it’s a good idea for the state to move ahead on its own with an exchange, where Iowans can shop for affordable insurance and not be denied coverage, or having the federal government do it for us. As the Register opined in an editorial today, “It is too important for this state to mess up.” Citing problems implementing temporary high-risk pools, and political dealings in previous legislative attempts to create an exchange, the Register noted:

“Iowans need the coming insurance marketplace to work for them in years to come. But state leaders have shown they are not the ones to design it.”

Can we govern ourselves? Apparently national candidates will come calling in Iowa without worrying about that. So maybe we should answer if for ourselves.

Posted by Mike Owen, Assistant Director

Categories: Budget and Tax, Economic Opportunity, Energy & Environment, Organization
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How about that timing of worker pay report?

October 31, 2012
Mike Owen

Mike Owen

Timing is everything.

Consider the announcement Tuesday by the Branstad administration of a new report produced by an outside company to examine whether Iowa state workers are paid too much.

Paid too much?

As the Department of Administrative Services was releasing the report, emergency rescue workers across the Eastern seaboard were putting themselves in harm’s way to help their neighbors in the path of the deadly Hurricane Sandy. And right here in Iowa, within a couple hours of the DAS news conference, bank robbers shot two law enforcement officers — critically wounding the Sumner police chief and injuring a state trooper.

We count on public servants every day, sometimes when lives are at stake, sometimes in enriching life with education, sometimes in just keeping life orderly enough that we can enjoy it without worrying whether the water or food will poison us, or that our job will not put us in danger we did not sign up for.

Oh, and the report? It found that pay scales for Iowa state workers are generally competitive. Where the report cited potential problems, the information provided was too sketchy to delve in and really go through it. And, being produced by a private company that copyrighted the report, we might just never know what our tax dollars produced. This is what happens with privatization, folks. But if you want a quick look at the holes in the report, see the review Tuesday by IPP’s Peter Fisher.

So, for those less inclined toward knee-jerk appeals against public workers, the timing of this report, you might say, wasn’t too bad.

Posted by Mike Owen, Assistant Director

 

Categories: Budget and Tax, Economic Opportunity, Energy & Environment, Organization
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IPP to EPA: Hold DNR Accountable on Water Quality

October 18, 2012

Tonight (October 18) in Des Moines, Environmental Protection Agency Region 7 Administrator Karl Brooks will meet with Iowans to hear comments and concerns about a new work plan by the state Department of Environmental Resources to bring Iowa into compliance with the Clean Water Act.

Below is a letter outlining remarks prepared by IPP Executive Director David Osterberg for tonight’s meeting.

The meeting is at the State Historical Building, 600 East Locust Street, Des Moines, from 7 p.m. to 9 p.m.

——————————

Oct. 17, 2012

Stephen Pollard, Water Enforcement Branch
United States Environmental Protection Agency, Region 7
11201 Renner Blvd
Lenexa, KS 66219

RE: Public comments on Iowa DNR’s response to EPA’s Water Quality findings

Dear Mr. Pollard:

The Iowa Policy Project is a nonprofit research organization located in Iowa City. We wish to make the following comments about the response by the Iowa Department of Natural Resources to your report of inadequacies in the state NPDES program. We limit our remarks to the question of staffing and funding the agency.

  1. The DNR acknowledged that it has given less attention to water quality problems caused by animal feeding operations — see quote below:

“Since 2007, the DNR has had a significant reduction in its animal feeding operations staff. To better meet our responsibilities, the DNR needs both an increase in staffing and to reprioritize workloads.”

While the DNR did not explain to you the extent of the deep reduction in agency field staff they have answered elsewhere.

From a DNR 2011 report on manure on frozen and snow covered ground:

“The scope and complexity of confinement program work increased disproportionately beginning with legislation in the late ’90s. With this, public awareness of environmental issues also grew, resulting in a significant increase in local demand for education, compliance assistance and compliance assurance. To address these needs, animal feeding operations field staffing gradually increased to a high of 23 by SFY 2004. In SFY 2008, four staff people were shifted into a newly established open feedlots program. Then in the fall of 2009, as General Fund expenditures declined, confinement staffing was reduced again. This reduced staff numbers from 19 to 11.5. Further reductions leave the total of field staff for confinement work at 8.75 full time equivalents. This reduction means that the DNR will not be able to maintain an adequate level of compliance and enforcement activity in confinements.”

Thus the 2011 DNR report demonstrates that the envisioned 13 staff-person increase would only bring numbers back to approximately the 2004 staffing levels — before the addition of many more confinement operations.

  1. Underfunding of water quality programs is not limited to animal agriculture. An IPP report from March 2012 demonstrated an overall decrease in water quality funding of $5 million over the decade. Drops in the Bucket: The Erosion of Iowa Water Quality Funding found that this water-quality funding decline came despite greater needs for water protection and public willingness to fund it.
    http://www.iowapolicyproject.org/2012docs/120301-water.pdf
  1. Given this underfunding by the Iowa Legislature, there appears to be no basis for the agency’s belief that it will get approval for 13 more staff members. First, the request must be made in the Governor’s proposed budget that will be drawn up in January of next year. Second, the Legislature must agree to this increase without endangering other water quality programs.
  1. EPA should help the agency in bargaining with a legislature that has shown itself to be less concerned with water quality protection than tax cuts. EPA should tell the DNR that if it fails to get a proposed increase in staff in the Governor’s budget and also to have the request authorized by the General Assembly, there will be consequences. These must be severe consequences commensurate with the funding being sought — that is, EPA should establish a minimum number of staff additions that will be required. Absent that it should state that it will withdraw the authorized NPDES program from DNR. There is no question that if EPA simply accepts the agency’s agreement to try to do better, water quality will not improve in this state.

Thank you for your attention to improving the quality of water in our state.

Sincerely,

David Osterberg, Executive Director, The Iowa Policy Project

Categories: Energy & Environment, Organization
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Why the federal budget debate matters in the states

August 9, 2012

There’s doggone near nobody who isn’t concerned about dealing with the nation’s long-term budget challenges of deficit and debt.

What not enough people will recognize, however, is the danger of diving headlong into a deficit-cutting approach that just digs a deeper hole, both for the economy and for the critical services that federal, state and local government spending supports.

Ryan budget impacts

Center on Budget and Policy Priorities

And that’s the problem with the so-called “Ryan Budget,” named for Congressman Paul Ryan. That approach, passed by the House, makes cuts to funding for state and local services that are far deeper than the cuts many expect to happen with sequestration, the automatic cut process demanded by last year’s Budget Control Act compromise.

A new report from the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities outlines the challenge for states generally with the Ryan approach:

  • Federal cuts of 34 percent by 2022 to Medicaid compared to current law, and by steadily larger amounts after that.
  • Federal cuts of 22 percent in 2014 and in later years to non-defense “discretionary” spending — which leaves Medicare and Social Security alone but hits local and state services in education, infrastructure such as roads and bridges, and public health and safety including law enforcement.

For Iowa, the non-defense “discretionary” cuts are projected at $237 million in 2014 alone, and $2.1 billion from 2013 through 2021.

Want clean water? If you live in Iowa, where the state routinely shortchanges environmental enforcement, how bad do you think things might get when the federal funds are cut as well? Concerned about the quality of your food? Or your kids’ schools? Maybe the safety of the bridge you’re approaching on the way to work?

Well, folks, you get what you pay for.

Posted by Mike Owen, Assistant Director

Categories: Budget and Tax, Economic Opportunity, Energy & Environment, Organization
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Policy and pollution: We have options

July 19, 2012

Iowa’s deteriorating water quality is a lingering problem that never seems to make it to the front burner of political campaigns or elected leaders’ agendas in the State Capitol. The Des Moines Register’s editorial today asks — and answers — the fundamental questions:

Why is our water so dirty? The state’s agricultural businesses, including 7,000 animal feeding operations, is a significant reason. Why do they do so much damage to the environment? Elected officials let them.

David Osterberg

David Osterberg

It’s not like we don’t have options. We do. Public policy can make a difference in protecting the environment, through tough and effective regulations that recognize the air and water belong to all of us, and by helping folks do a better job with targeted incentives.

Unfortunately, as the Register suggests, elected officials in Iowa have passed up opportunities in both the regulatory and incentive arenas to enhance Iowa’s water quality. The Iowa Policy Project through the years has noted many of the issues and presented constructive policy options. Here is a selection of those reports:

IPP also showed this year how environmental protection funding has waned in Iowa — even when voters specifically told lawmakers with a referendum in 2010 that environmental protection is an area where they want to see funding directed. As we found:

While legislators and other elected officials will always proclaim their commitment to clean water, they have not over the past decade demonstrated that commitment through the state budget. In fact, once inflation is taken into account, funding for many programs the state relies upon to monitor, protect and improve waterways has dropped by 25 percent or more. …

Over time, this slow erosion in the purchasing power of these programs is likely to contribute to deteriorating Iowa water quality, if it has not already done so. When funding is scaled to FY13 appropriations, the slow decline in spending on water programs becomes more evident.

Posted by David Osterberg, Executive Director

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Small boost in funding masks long-term reductions in state services

June 26, 2012
David Osterberg

David Osterberg

July 1 begins the new fiscal year for the state of Iowa so this is a good time for IPP staffers to update reports released during the legislative session.

Two areas of funding that generally get lip service support from our elected officials are higher education funding and funding for water quality programs. In both areas there was some increase over the very low levels of funding from the previous year. Yet the long-term erosion of funding in these areas of state services was not improved a great deal.

While funding for ISU, UNI and the University of Iowa was increased this year by about $20 million, funding for these institutions still remains about 40 percent below what it was in fiscal year 2000 when inflation is taken into account. Andrew Cannon’s earlier report showed that long term underfunding is the reason that tuition has increased so much over the last decade. Community colleges seem to have fared better with only a 15 percent reduction in funding in real terms over the same period but enrollment has increased, so actual support for students is lower than that.

Water quality received some funding increases in two of the eight individual programs reviewed by Will Hoyer in his March 2012 report. However, overall funding for this group of water quality programs has fallen from what it was 10 years ago.

Lower funding in areas Iowans strongly support are the consequence of continual tax cuts that reduce the size of the state budget in relation to the size of the Iowa economy.

Posted by David Osterberg, Executive Director

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Ignoring advice?

May 21, 2012

flooding in Iowa City 2008A few years back Iowa legislators kept Iowa’s experts in climate, hydrology, public health and other areas busy for months and years putting together reports and recommendations. What has become of those reports and recommendations? Very little.

In a report released today, “Advice Ignored: Climate Change and Iowa Water Quality Policy,” we discuss the connections between climate change and water – both quantity, in the form of flooding, and quality. Events like the 2008 floods, which the Cedar Rapids Gazette and probably others have termed “Iowa’s Katrina,” are becoming more common. Floods struck parts of Iowa again in 2010 and again in 2011, putting people, farmland, and cities at risk.

Groups commissioned by the Iowa Legislature such as the Climate Change Advisory Council, the Climate Change Impacts Committee and the Water Resources Coordinating Council all address some of the steps that can and should be taken to reduce the risks of climate change. Today their work takes up space on bookshelves and on hard drives across the state rather than being put into action to protect Iowans.

Flooding is damaging by itself, but climate change is also likely to create a “perfect storm” whereby Iowa’s already not-so-great water quality will be put at greater risk by more soil erosion and nutrient loss. This loss will result from heavier rainfall, additional pressure to tear up grasslands or wetlands and put marginal lands into production, increasing stress from pests and other factors.

Some legislators are to be commended for being proactive about addressing climate change and improving watershed management. The majority of them, however, seem content to ignore expert advice and wait around for Iowa’s next flood disaster.

Their work is not done. How many more disasters do we need before they get off their hands and stop ignoring advice?

Posted by Will Hoyer, IPP Research Associate

 

Find the new report by Brian McDonough, Will Hoyer and David Osterberg on the IPP website at this link.

Categories: Energy & Environment

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