Shale gas killed the “clean energy” star.
The Des Moines Register reports,
A proposed wind farm in Plymouth County has been scuttled in part because of the abundance of cheap natural gas, the LeMars Daily Sentinel reports.
Roby Roberts, a spokesman for EDP Renewables, which owns Horizon, told the Sentinel that “there is a lot of very inexpensive natural gas available.”
“That has really put wind development on the back burner almost for everyone,” Roberts said.
Wind energy boosters have worried that the increased abundance of natural gas would tempt utilities to switch to gas instead of wind because gas, unlike wind energy, can be stored and already has its own pipeline transmission system.
Natural gas prices have dipped from $11.50 per thousand cubic feet in mid-2008 to $2.77 per thousand cubic feet this week on the Chicago Board of Trade.
Natural gas production has boomed in the U.S. from new shale fields in Texas and Louisiana adn well as Ohio, Pennsylvania, West Virginia and New York.
Iowa is the nation’s second-largest generator of wind electricity, with 3,675 megawatts installed and another 401 megawatts on the way this year with a newly-announced project by MidAmerican Energy of Des Moines in Marshall, Tama, Guthrie, Audubon and Adair Counties.