AMES — U.S. Energy Secretary Chris Wright says it's time to end tax credits that have helped make Iowa a wind energy leader.
Speaking Thursday, Aug. 14 during a visit to Ames National Laboratory, Wright said wind energy incentives “have been around for 33 years, and I think you've seen a mature industry develop.” Wind and solar energy need to “compete in the marketplace” like other sources, he said.
“It doesn’t mean that wind is going away” in Iowa, said U.S. Sen. Joni Ernst, who joined Wright at the federal lab along with U.S. Reps. Mariannette Miller-Meeks and Ashley Hinson, also Iowa Republicans.
Iowa gets about 60% of its annual energy from renewable sources, mostly wind. It's the state with the largest share nationally, according to the U.S. Energy Information Administration.
“We’ll continue to see a great pull of electricity coming from those wind turbines,” said Ernst, adding that she’s talking with the Trump administration to ensure that Iowa wind and solar projects qualify for incentives.
The "Big Beautiful Bill" tax and spending measure the Senate gave final approval in July sets aggressive deadlines that new renewable energy projects must meet to qualify for the credits before they disappear.
In July, Alliant Energy proposed investing up to $3 billion to build 1,000 megawatts of wind energy over the next two years, and in February, MidAmerican Energy said it plans to build 800 megawatts of solar energy along with a $600 million natural gas "peaker" plant in southern Iowa.
Think tanks and advocacy groups have said eliminating wind and solar incentives would slow Iowa's adoption of renewable energy and raise residents' utility bills.
Wright on Thursday also defended efforts to review past national climate assessments, telling reporters that climate change is a “real thing. It’s a true physical phenomenon. But it's just not even close to the world's greatest problem.”
Here’s what to know about the energy secretary’s visit to the Ames federal lab with companions who also included U.S. Reps. Bob Latta of Ohio and Bruce Westerman of Arkansas, Republicans who are chairs of key energy committees.
U.S. must mine, refine critical minerals, Wright, others say
Wright touted the importance of the lab’s critical materials research a day after the Energy Department’s announcement that it will pour nearly $1 billion into speeding the development of U.S. critical minerals and materials, used in everything from cell phones to electric vehicle batteries.
He and the congressional members said the U.S. needs to mine and refine the critical minerals that are available nationally, instead of relying on China and other countries for them.
“We’ve outsourced that overseas,” said Wright, former CEO of Liberty Energy, a Colorado oil and gas company. “It’s become a national defense problem for us. It’s become a medical problem for us.”
The Ames laboratory, one of 17 nationally, “is a leader in bringing these technologies and capabilities back to our country,” said Wright, an engineer, noting that there are “92 naturally occurring elements” and “everything we do is made up from combinations of those elements.”
The Energy Department said Wednesday it would make nearly $1 billion in funding available to “advance and scale mining, processing and manufacturing technologies across key stages of the critical minerals and materials supply chains."
More: Will 'Big Beautiful Bill' raise your energy bill? How much more your utilities could cost
Westerman, the House Committee on Natural Resources chair, said Alaska alone holds 49 critical minerals. “We’ve got to start mining more,” he said. “We can’t just mine it, we’ve got to refine it. We’ve got to make it into those useful metals that go into all those components."
Then “we can start manufacturing with it,” he said, adding that refining the minerals boosts their value by 650%.
While environmentalists have raised concerns about mining in Alaska, Miller-Meeks said the U.S. can better protect the environment and workers who mine and refine critical minerals than China and other countries.
Wright defends challenges to established climate science
Critics have called Wright's decision to review past national climate assessment reports as an upending of climate science.
Last month, the Energy Department issued a report concluding that "carbon dioxide (CO2)-induced warming appears to be less damaging economically than commonly believed, and that aggressive mitigation strategies could be more harmful than beneficial."
Wright said he asked five scientists to examine climate data because the "public discourse around climate change is so divorced from the actual data and facts."
The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change has said the "influence of human activity on the warming of the climate system has evolved from theory to established fact" and that climate change "is already affecting many weather and climate extremes in every region across the globe," leading to "losses and damages to nature and people."
But Wright said concern over climate change has been used “as a cudgel to make energy more expensive, to export jobs overseas, to make kids have nightmares… and for young people to not want to have children because they think the world's going to be terrible and dangerous going forward.”
The agency's report helped support the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency's proposal last month to rescind a 2009 greenhouse gas endangerment finding that is the foundation for regulating the gases as a pollutant.
Donnelle Eller covers agriculture, the environment and energy for the Register. Reach her at [email protected].
This article originally appeared on Des Moines Register: Energy Secretary Chris Wright says wind, solar tax credits should end
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