Mark Kresowik will never forget Merle Bell, the Iowa farmer whose property near Waterloo, which had been in his family for more than 100 years, was to be the site of a proposed coal plant.
“Merle wanted to see his kids and grandkids inherit their farm, but had been told that he had virtually no choice but to sell his property and watch the coal plant developers bulldoze his family’s legacy,” said Mark. “Instead, more than 500 of his friends, neighbors, and supporters banded together to protect their land and their lungs, and prevent the dirty project from ever moving forward.”
When Mark was hired by the Sierra Club in 2006 as our first organizer in Iowa fighting the Bush-era new coal rush, 75 percent of Iowa’s electricity came from coal, and there were three more new coal plants on the drawing board, including the project slated for Merle’s farm.
Fast forward to earlier this month, when Warren Buffett’s Iowa-based utility MidAmerican announced it will invest $3.6 billion in a 2,000-megawatt wind project that’s the largest economic development project in state history. It will bring the utility to 85 percent wind power by 2020, and it won’t raise electricity rates by one cent.
What in the world just happened in Iowa?
There’s an untold story here. It begins on that farm in Iowa. Mark had been hired to fight those proposed Iowa coal plants after one had already slipped through the cracks, and the news landed on the desks of Bruce Nilles and Verena Owen, the founders of the Beyond Coal Campaign, who were based in Illinois.
It was 2002, and they were astonished to learn that not only had a giant new 800-megawatt coal plant been approved in Iowa – to be built by MidAmerican, no less – but not one single, solitary person or organization had even submitted a comment in opposition to the plant. And so with three more Iowa coal plants on the drawing board, part of a wave of 200 planned coal plants nationwide, they vowed to never again allow a proposed coal plant to be left unopposed.
They started in Iowa by hiring a recent college grad, Mark, who had been inspired by a concerned legislator, then state representative Rob Hogg, to organize opposition to the proposed Waterloo coal plant. Mark proceeded to channel his boundless energy into logging thousands of miles and hours crisscrossing his home state, organizing opposition to all the remaining coal plants and supporting clean energy, working with partner organizations large and small. Ultimately, the allies defeated all three, including the plant proposed by Dynegy and LS Power adjacent to Merle’s farm. As Mark remembers it,
“More than 300 people turned out to an obscure zoning hearing in Waterloo, dozens testified against coal and in favor of clean energy before the Iowa Utilities Board in Marshalltown, and state officials and electric companies hadn’t seen anything like it before. Merle, his neighbors Gail Mueller and the Shatzers, and advocates like Plains Justice’s Carrie La Seur completely turned the public tide against coal and toward wind and solar power for all Iowans.”
All told, around the nation this movement stopped 184 proposed coal plants from being built. Blocking those new coal plants changed everything, in Iowa and nationwide. Specifically, it changed three things: 1) it opened up new market opportunities for renewable energy, 2) it pulled us back from the brink of a massive and irrevocable 50-year investment in our most carbon intensive fossil fuel that would have doomed our climate, and 3) it increased pressure on the remaining coal plants, which weren’t going to be replaced by new coal, and therefore faced investment decisions about whether to modernize or retire.
Since then, our Beyond Coal network has grown to include over 100 organizations and thousands of leaders in 50 states. In Iowa, through litigation and grassroots advocacy we have secured the retirement of over 2,100 megawatts of existing coal at 35 coal boilers, including the nation’s 200th coal plant to announce retirement, which happened last year.
As part of that advocacy, we pushed hard to secure ambitious renewable energy commitments from the state’s utilities as well. In a federal court settlement with MidAmerican, they agreed to one of the state’s first solar projects – a new array at the Iowa State Fairgrounds.
And that brings back us to MidAmerican’s recent announcement that it will generate 85 percent of its power from wind energy by 2020 – putting the utility on track to realize its vision of becoming a 100 percent renewable energy utility. As Bruce Nilles put it, “MidAmerican made clean energy history, and raised the bar for every other utility in the United States.”
In just over a decade, MidAmerican’s generation of electricity has gone from 70 percent coal to 35 percent coal, and now they’re doubling down again. In Iowa, an astonishing 5,000 megawatts of renewable energy has been installed, clean energy is a bi-partisan issue, and it is entirely possible with a little more prodding that the state’s two utilities, MidAmerican and Alliant Energy, will cease burning coal entirely within the next decade.
Here’s the best part – this is the kind of state-by-state transformation we’re working for and realizing all across the country. To be clear, this kind of progress is moving slower in other states, and with 300 coal plants still chugging along and coal country in need of support for an economic transition, we have plenty more work to do. But we’re making progress on the scale that matters.
While market pressures, federal policy, and innovation all played a role in that transformation, grassroots advocacy was a critical factor that tipped the scales and made the difference, harnessing all those forces into a smart, sustained campaign that is changing the world. In Iowa there would have been no market opportunity for clean energy investment today if the state had built three additional coal plants a decade ago.
Our nation’s climate leadership is built on this solid grassroots foundation, one that is not going to shift with the political winds. With one third of US coal plants announced to retire, renewable energy providing the majority of new power on the grid in 2015, and unlimited opportunity ahead, this clean energy transformation is not just our vision. We’re making it a reality. Join us.