In 2017, four US states generated more than 30% of their electricity from wind

Last week, as President Trump made bizarre and wandering remarks about “windmills” being an inferior source of energy, the Department of Energy (DoE) released the 2017 Wind Technology Report (PDF), showing that wind energy had an extremely successful year.

In four states—Iowa, Oklahoma, Kansas, and South Dakota—wind contributed 30 to 37 percent of each state’s entire electricity generation. These are fairly unique cases, because the states are sparsely populated and benefit from areas with high wind speeds. But the fraction of wind-generated electricity is growing in many other states, too. Fourteen states had more than 10 percent of their energy come from wind. On a wider scale, wind contributed just 6.3 percent of national generation, although that’s up from 5.7 percent in 2016.

Wind turbines are my favorite thing to see while road-tripping.

Renewable energy is the future, there’s no way around it.

#windpower #lettherebehope

Ladies and gentlemen, on this leg of the road trip you’ll see a wind farm on the horizon 🚜💨

#photos #windpower

#photos #windpower #lettherebehope