renewable energy

Standing near the corner of his property in southeastern Reno County, Nick Egli looked east and pointed to the proposed locations for several 500-feet-tall wind turbines.

Egli is standing on a grass airstrip he’s spent the last 10 years building. He pictures a few more homes, some hangars and, eventually, a residential community for pilots of small planes.

“If there’s turbines there, you’ve completely killed everything I’ve been working on the last 10 years,” he said.

Sedgwick County commissioners approved a temporary ban this week on the development of commercial wind farms and solar energy systems in the county.

One morning after the next, semi-trailer trucks get off Interstate 70 near Colby in west-central Kansas.

They haul parts of giant wind turbines in 150-foot-long sections, the pieces to the Solomon Forks wind farm and the next monumental phase of the Kansas bet on wind energy. The farm will plant 105 turbines in the prairie, each towering 250 feet high.

The project is one of a wave of wind farms under construction in Kansas that will add 20 percent more electrical generation to the state’s output.

Kansas continues to be one of the leading states in renewable energy, especially with wind power.

Kansas is the fifth state to have at least 5000 megawatts of wind power capacity installed. The state is behind California, Oklahoma, Iowa and Texas, which has a capacity of a whopping 21,000 megawatts.

Kansans get 30 percent of their power from wind and solar. California is at 16 percent.

Wichita State University is developing a new technology that may affordably produce fuel-grade ammonia using only air and water as ingredients.

In the 1930s, rural electric cooperatives brought electricity to the country’s most far-flung communities, transforming rural economies. In western Colorado, one of these co-ops is again trying to spur economic development, partly by generating more of their electricity locally from renewable resources, like water in irrigation ditches and the sun.

An Iowa Republican is questioning Democratic Presidential candidate Hillary Clinton’s commitment to ethanol. 

U.S. Sen. Chuck Grassley says Hillary Clinton has been exploring an energy policy in California that focuses on carbon reduction and relies upon a market strategy.

That contrasts with the existing Renewable Fuel Standard, which mandates production of ethanol and other bio-based fuels. The RFS has been a boon to Corn Belt farmers.