Staking a bet on the future, two states face a change in the wind

Iowa and Georgia are two states that have taken decisive steps to secure their place in the 21st-century economy. Now both have a similar problem.

As the Iowa Economic Development & Finance Authority’s website boasts, Iowa got into wind energy “before it became trendy.” U.S. Sen. Chuck Grassley sponsored the first nationwide tax credit for wind energy back in 1993.

Iowa now leads the country in wind power production and has attracted billions in investments by big tech companies like Google, Microsoft and Apple looking for cheap, clean power to run their giant data centers.

Grassley voted this year for the One Big Beautiful Bill (OBBB). He headed off a proposal to tax wind energy projects, and negotiated a “12-month runway” for new renewable energy projects to get the tax credit that goes away after that. But there is no getting around President Donald Trump’s vehement opposition to wind energy.

“Wind doesn’t work… It’s the worst form of energy,” Trump said in a lengthy rant during his recent trip to Scotland. Apparently a round of golf at his Turnbury golf course and the sight of the ocean windmills which first set him off years ago reignited his fury.

With increasing emphasis under Gov. Brian Kemp, Georgia has followed a similar path as a center for electric vehicle, battery and solar production. The OBBB takes a big swipe at these industries as well.

Companies like Hyundai and QCells have invested billions in Georgia based on the assumption of federal subsidies, which the bill eliminates. Between Hyundai’s Metaplant near Savannah and the battery plant Hyundai is building with SK in Cartersville, we’re talking about more than 12,000 jobs, all based on a financial calculation that may no longer add up.

Georgia and Iowa are seeing the future they planned for slipping away at the same time that, according to two United Nations reports released last month, the world has reached a “positive tipping point” in renewable energy development, past which it will become more widespread and cheaper.

According to the reports, 92.5 percent of all new electric capacity added to the grid worldwide last year came from renewables. The reports say solar power is now 41 percent cheaper and wind power is 53 percent cheaper globally than the lowest-cost fossil fuel. In less than a decade, electric vehicle sales rose from 500,000 to 17 million.

These numbers suggest that the rest of the world is headed straight in the direction that planners in Iowa and Georgia have thought. In June, for the first time, the European Union produced more electricity from solar power than from any other source. China is hurtling forward in wind and solar. The budget bill was big, but not bigger than these global trends.

Trump is so obsessed with the subject that when he was asked on the tarmac in Glasgow what message he had for Europeans, the first thing he said was “Stop your windmills. You’re ruining your countries.” This must have sounded very odd to the Dutch.

So what do planners in these and other states that have tried to plug in to the new economy do, now that the world and Washington are at cross purposes? It’s a hard call, because it’s both financial and political. From Trump’s point of view, you might even say it’s aesthetic, because he refers so often to how ugly the windmills are and how they ruin the view of the landscape. But time is on the side of the wind and the sun.

At the same time Trump is on a crusade against windmills, he’s on a mission to build huge data centers like those the big tech companies are building in Iowa. Needless to say, after last week’s jobs report, he needs good job growth like the electric revolution is bringing to Georgia. So while the OBBB may strike a serious blow to both states’ efforts to grab a piece of the future, it’s unlikely to change the bet either state has made.