Editorial: Iowa's energy riches
        This state could become an exporter of energy, and its economics

would radically improve.
By Register Editorial Board <mailto:[log in to unmask]:

Editorial: Iowa's energy riches>

12/03/2000

They're drilling for oil again in southwest Iowa, where a lot of holes
have
come up dry in the past. Hitting a gusher would be exciting news, but
the
better shot at energy riches in Iowa is probably in the northwest, where

derrick-like structures of another sort are cropping up. Wind farms are
putting Iowa on the cutting edge of an energy revolution.

Like an oil well, a wind turbine on a farmer's land brings in royalties
(about $2,000 per turbine per year). Unlike an oil well, the wind never
runs
dry. It is an inexhaustible and clean source of energy.

Most encouraging of all, the technology is steadily lowering the cost of

electricity from the wind. When it is as cheap as electricity from coal-
or
gas-fired generating plants, it will be more desirable than the other
forms
of electric generation because it won't have their pollution problems.

This has enormous implications for Iowa, which spends an estimated $310
million a year on Wyoming coal to be burned to generate electricity. If
the
money to generate electricity is spent right here in Iowa, enriching
Iowans,
and if Iowa becomes an exporter of energy, the economics of Iowa would
radically improve.

This is not a far-fetched notion. The U.S. Department of Energy ranks
Iowa
10th among the states in wind-energy potential. And the nation's total
wind-energy potential is staggering. The department estimated in 1993
that
the good wind areas that cover just 6 percent of the nation could
generate
one and a half times the nation's total electric needs.

Thanks to state laws that encouraged Iowa utilities to generate
electricity
from renewable sources, Iowa has a head start. Iowa is third in the
nation
in the generation of electricity from wind (behind California and
Minnesota). It's still a small fraction of Iowa's total electric use,
but
the American Wind Energy Association estimates it's already enough to
supply
80,000 homes and to displace the use of 382,094 tons of coal, or 3,821
train-car loads.

Wind power has always had one big drawback: Sometimes the wind doesn't
blow.
Other times it blows more than is needed. Because of this, it has been
thought that wind would remain a supplemental source to conventional
power.

Another technological breakthrough may soon change that assumption. As
Professor B.C. Gerstein explains in an article elsewhere in this section

("Power is Blowing in Iowa's Wind"), fuel cells could be used like
batteries
to store energy during strong winds and release it during slack winds.

Fuel cells are hot news these days. They have long been used in
spacecraft
but were too expensive for earthly use. Now they appear to be nearing
the
point of practical use in everything from automobiles to power plants.

Every high school chemistry student has seen the principle of the fuel
cell
demonstrated. When electricity is passed through water and an
electrolyte,
the water splits into hydrogen and oxygen. Reverse the process - mix
hydrogen and oxygen in the presence of catalysts and an electrolyte -
and
electricity is produced.

Excess electricity from wind turbines could be stored in the form of
hydrogen. When the wind wasn't blowing, the process could be reversed to

release electricity.
Alternately, wind turbines could be used to produce hydrogen full time,
with
the hydrogen gas then piped to homes and businesses, which could produce

their own electricity from individual fuel cells. Or the hydrogen could
be
piped to filling stations where drivers could fill the tanks on their
new
fuel-cell-powered cars.

Perhaps it is fanciful to think of Iowa as the Kuwait of the coming age
of
wind and hydrogen. Then again, perhaps it is not. Iowa's potential
riches
from energy production are great. State policy-makers would be well
advised
to keep Iowa at the forefront.

<end>

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