Midwest governors want more wind energy, wind jobs and a Smart Grid

The difficulties with getting the U.S. on a streamlined, updated grid are significant. Just for starters, the country is currently divided into three unified grid systems, one in the East, one serving the West and the one in Texas (it is the Lone Star state).

The costs will be large. More billions upfront. But clean energy will mitigate those costs by helping the country save energy over the long haul.

One couldn’t really begin to explain or understand everything about this new grid at a news conference. (To find out more see the U.S. Department of Energy website’s Smart Grid resources or see the government’s report “Grid 2030” which outlined back in 2003 how/why a new grid is needed to provide “accessible, abundant, and affordable electric power” via an electric “superhighway”.)

One thing was clear, though. As Congress tackles this issue, which rivals the banking crisis in complexity and stands tall in a crowd of major league problems (unemployment, health care, real estate foreclosures to name a few): Support for the Smart Grid streams across the Plains.

“We need a coordinated game plan to really tap this country’s potential,” said Governor Culver of Iowa, who noted that cities like Keokuk, hard hit by job losses, are already queued up with new manufacturing jobs aimed at supplying wind farms. “We need a grid, a smart grid…if we really want to maximize the potential in our respective states.”

The country may have missed an opportunity in the 1970s to make clean energy a priority, said Governor Strickland of Ohio, but it will not repeat the mistake.

“The zeitgeist is such today that we are on the verge of a major breakthrough in the way we power our country” said Governor Strickland, whose state also desperately need clean energy jobs. “Renewable energy means jobs, and for those that have the misconception that renewable sources for meeting our energy needs are somehow a fringe movement, they are so mistaken.”

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