10 States That Produce the Most Renewable Energy

[Yo_Mama_Been_Loggin]

American renewable energy production has nearly doubled since the turn of the century, according to nonpartisan data center USAFacts, as states across the nation develop a diversified infrastructure that environmentalists hope will be the future of energy in the United States.

But where does most of the country’s renewable energy production come from? U.S. Energy Information Administration data shows that different parts of the country lead the way when it comes to different renewables such as wind, solar, hydroelectric, geothermal, and biomass as well as other fossil fuel alternatives like nuclear energy.

In the first quarter of 2022, Texas led all states in overall renewable energy production, accounting for over 14% of the country’s totals, due in large part to the state’s prolific wind energy program. Texas produced nearly a quarter of the nation’s wind energy, a percentage that is likely to grow after President Joe Biden last week announced his plan to expand offshore wind infrastructure for the first time into the Gulf of Mexico. The plan includes a wind farm larger than the city of Houston off the coast of Galveston, Texas, with the potential to power as many as 2.3 million homes.

Following Texas in overall renewable energy production was Washington, the country’s leader in hydroelectric energy, which generated over 10% of the national total. California, the nation’s leader in both utility-scale solar and geothermal, ranked third in overall production.

-more-

https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/us/10-states-that-produce-the-most-renewable-energy/ar-AA1021E2

But doesn't Ted Cruz consider renewable energy to be too woke?

[Finishline42]

1. How about a list

of the states that produce the most renewable energy vs energy usage as well?

Iowa would be near the top

[NNadir]

2. A better list would be all the states suffering under extreme heat because people...

...brought into the idea that so called "renewable energy" was clean.

Then again, so called "renewable energy" was never even remotely interested in addressing climate change, was it?

It was all about placating people who thought Fukushima was much, much, much, much worse than climate change. They spent all their time saying "nuclear energy is too dangerous," and "nuclear power is too expensive," but we can take that to mean in their withered, tiresome, oblivious psychology that climate change isn't "too dangerous," and that climate change isn't "too expensive."

One thing I always notice about people really, really, really, really disconnected from reality is that they cheer for being so.

The planet's on fire, burning all over, people dying from heat, crops failing, but let's all talk about the grand victory of so called "renewable energy.

Isn't it wonderful!!!!!! Texas!!!!!

All the trillions of dollars of solar and wind power, all the cheering, and the fucking planet is dying.

Not to worry. Be happy!

Unbelievable. Fucking unbelievable.

[thucythucy]

3. "Trillions of dollars of solar and wind power..."

Really? Trillions?

The GDP of the US is about 25 trillion.

So you're saying we've spent the equivalent of 10%--give or take--of our entire annual GDP on renewable energy?

Please provide some sources for that.

Thank you.

[Finishline42]

4. DQIIIIIIII jumping up and down again

How much worse would the CO2 concentrations be without the contribution to energy production by renewables?

BTW, have you seen the bailouts in the Vogtle construction?

We are not building 100 new nuclear plants - it seems we are having trouble finishing the 2 in process at Vogtle...

[NNadir]

5. I have produced the energy output of the useless and expensive so called "renewable energy..."

...fantasy multiple times here.

I've used something called "numbers."

Here they are, yet again, not that this going to stop asinine chanting about Vogtle by bourgeois provincials who have spent 43 years whining about Three Mile Island while literally hundreds of millions of people died from air pollution:



Source: IEA World Energy Outlook, 2021, page 294, Table A1A

Of course, I am about to hear stupid rhetoric, as I always do, that despite cheering for the solar fantasy going back to 1954, it had as of 2020, produced less than 5 Exajoules of energy on a planet consuming close to 600 Exajoules. Some ass will announce, with people dying from extreme heat, and the world food supply becoming desiccated in the fields, that a solar miracle has occurred in just two years.



The first 100 years of solar energy’s history
.

The energy produced by solar and wind is trivial. At best, for all this mining, all the money thrown at it, it might have shaved 0.02 or 0.01 ppm off the 421.63 ppm peak we saw this spring, less than ten years after we first saw the first readings over 400 ppm.l

I keep hearing about Vogtle and lame excuses and idiotic predictions that fly in the face of a 50 year experience with the reactionary, failed and expensive fantasy of making all of our energy dependent on the weather in response, along with yet another in thousands upon thousands upon thousands of similar posts I've addressed here with idiotic soothsaying.

A remark often attributed to Abraham Lincoln goes like this: "The best way to predict the future is to create it."

My son starts work his Ph.D. in nuclear engineering on Tuesday. He doesn't really give a shit about whiny fools who have worked through generally useless lives of illiterate fantasy to destroy the nuclear construction infrastructure in this country - as I often note, "arsonists complaining about forest fires." He is going to challenge the predominance of ignorance to bring nuclear energy back to the state it was in this country when we built over 100 nuclear reactors while providing the cheapest electricity in the industrial world.

If he bought into the rhetoric of idiots, he wouldn't choose this career; he's already a fine Materials Science Engineer and could get a very nice high paying job. But he gives a shit.

Anti-nukes, in general don't give a shit. They just chant and chant and chant and chant the same stupid rhetoric while people all over the world suffer the consequences of ignorance.

Now, the anti-nukes have won. We have the results in. They had their way, certainly in the United States. They death toll of their "victory" is enormous, but they still don't give a shit.

The database of world nuclear reactors can be found here: Reactor Database

Since March of 2021, ten nuclear reactors have been connected to the grid, hardly enough, of course, but again, a lot of money is still be squandered to tear up wilderness to make wind turbines that will be landfill in less than 20 years.

Since last July, first concrete was poured on ten more reactors, all of which will be operating when today's newborns are approaching retirement age, perhaps, throughout their retirement.

Of the ten top producing nuclear reactors on this planet with capacity utilization ratings actually exceeding their rated capacity, nine were built by American engineers in the 20th century before the triumph of fear and ignorance. One of these is in Texas, a state where the failure of so called "renewable energy" is writ large.

These things are facts, not soothsaying bullshit.

Facts matter. Soothsaying doesn't.

You know, this summer I spent a few days on the Jersey Shore. There were lots of tarot card readers and psychics selling their wares on the boardwalks, and of course, some people seemed to be going into their booths. I very much doubt that any of the soothsaying that took place in those places at 20 bucks a reading will be any different than the soothsaying in its results that caused humanity to squander trillions of dollars in this century on the solar and wind faith, for a dire, deadly result which is, essentially, no result other than a dying planet.

Have a nice day today.

[Finishline42]

6. Yep, facts matter

Your IEA charts shows Wind and Solar going from 2 EJ to 10.4 EJ in 10 years (500+% increase). They estimate that by 2030 it will be a 300% increase. My guess is that it will be at least double that due to a couple of factors.

- war in Ukraine - Russian embargoes of oil and gas
- Wind and Solar keep getting cheaper and batteries also keep getting cheaper.
- I also suspect that the totals for nuclear will see a bit of an increase - China will keep building but also France has taken EDF private and announced a plan to build 7 new reactors and refurbish older plants. Vogtle is close to finishing but I don't think we will see many more new plants built in the US.

[NNadir]

7. Oh gee. "Percent talk."

The percent talk is only possible because solar and wind are trivial forms of energy.

Growing by 8 exajoules at an expense of trillions of dollars with the whole world cheering them on is not a victory. It's a tremendous failure.

I note, with disgust, that every single wind and solar facility on this planet needs a redundant system to back it up, a cost that's never included in the cost of this grotesquely failed fantasy.

The planet is burning and all the bullshit chanting will only make it worse.

In "percent talk" the accumulation of the dangerous fossil fuel waste in this century, going from 369.87 ppm in the week beginning July 16, 2000 to 418.43 in the week beginning July 17, 2022 is "only" 11.8 percent. The actual number is an increase of 49.37 ppm, a fucking disaster in a real, barefaced number.

Now, I know that the "renewables will save us" horseshit crowd will never stop with the endless stream of "percent talk." They never have and they never will.

I use the same analogy all the time to confront this terrible murderous thinking: It's easy to double a dollar, difficult to double a billion dollars.

I personally am not in favor of doubling the trillions of dollars squandered on solar and wind fantasies only to have what we are seeing today. Every single bit of infrastructure built will be garbage in about 25 years. Every fucking piece of it.

One thing is clear about the people engaging in this denialist rhetoric, they don't give a flying fuck about the numbers that matter, the millions of hectares of forests burned, the failing crops, the deaths from heat strokes, the deaths from air pollution.

The Germans, for example, don't give a shit how many people they kill by burning coal because they shut their nuclear plants.

Now, how about some chanting about the cost of "cleaning up" Fukushima - this to a risk standard no other energy disaster, including climate change, can meet - without a fucking reference to the cost of cleaning up the planetary atmosphere, now that head up the ass "solar and wind save us" rhetoric has left us here, with the planet burning?

It obviates a certain mentality, one that frankly disgusts me. It would be amusing if it didn't kill people, but it does.

Have a nice day.

[thucythucy]

8. Again with the "trillions of dollars."

I sure would like to see a source for that.

To recap from my last post:

US annual GDP is roughly 25 trillion. This has fluctuated some in recent years due to Covid and other factors, but that's a good ball park figure.

By "trillions" I assume you mean at least two trillion dollars. So we've spent the equivalent of at least 8% of our annual GDP on wind and solar? Is that the accumulated cost world-wide for what, the last 25 years? Or is that only the US?

So you're "disgusted" with "a certain mentality," believing that people with whom you disagree "don't give a flying fuck" about climate change. I suppose one could argue that the proponents of nuclear power "don't give a flying fuck" about the hundreds of thousands of people displaced by the disaster at Fukushima or the potential for similar disasters world-wide. I personally wouldn't make such an argument, which strikes me as pure ad hominem.

And why the scare quotes around "cleanup." You're implying that the necessity of a cleanup there is somehow not real?

Yes, climate change is real and the figures are frightening. But your assumption that people who aren't rah rah nuclear simply don't care about the issue seems to me way off the mark.

[NNadir]

9. The reference is here:

Source: UNEP/Bloomberg: Global Trends in Renewable Energy.

I manually entered the figures in the bar graph in figure 8 to see how much money we've thrown at this destructive affectation since 2004 (up to 2019): It works out to 3.2633 trillion dollars, more than President Biden has wisely recommended for the improvement of all infrastructure in the entire United States.

Note that the figures do not apply to the whole 21st century, just a portion of it. The squandering continues, even as the world burns.

If anyone chooses not to credit this reference from a UN agency, that's fine with me.

Denial is a very, very, very, very popular activity these days. It kills people, but the people who engage in the killing clearly don't care.

I am not dissuaded by any denialist bullshit that anti-nukes give a rat's ass about climate change. It's very clear they don't.

They like to rant about Fukushima. Or Chernobyl. Or even Three Mile Island.

Since Fukushima - how many people died from radiation again? - more than 70 million people died from air pollution.

Again, a reference, to one of the most prominent medical journals on the planet:

It is here: Global burden of 87 risk factors in 204 countries and territories, 1990–2019: a systematic analysis for the Global Burden of Disease Study 2019 (Lancet Volume 396, Issue 10258, 17–23 October 2020, Pages 1223-1249). This study is a huge undertaking and the list of authors from around the world is rather long. These studies are always open sourced; and I invite people who want to carry on about Fukushima to open it and search the word "radiation." It appears once. Radon, a side product brought to the surface by fracking while we all wait for the grand so called "renewable energy" nirvana that did not come, is not here and won't come, appears however: Household radon, from the decay of natural uranium, which has been cycling through the environment ever since oxygen appeared in the Earth's atmosphere.

Here is what it says about air pollution deaths in the 2019 Global Burden of Disease Survey, if one is too busy to open it oneself because one is too busy carrying on about Fukushima:

The top five risks for attributable deaths for females were high SBP (5·25 million [95% UI 4·49–6·00] deaths, or 20·3% [17·5–22·9] of all female deaths in 2019), dietary risks (3·48 million [2·78–4·37] deaths, or 13·5% [10·8–16·7] of all female deaths in 2019), high FPG (3·09 million [2·40–3·98] deaths, or 11·9% [9·4–15·3] of all female deaths in 2019), air pollution (2·92 million [2·53–3·33] deaths or 11·3% [10·0–12·6] of all female deaths in 2019), and high BMI (2·54 million [1·68–3·56] deaths or 9·8% [6·5–13·7] of all female deaths in 2019). For males, the top five risks differed slightly. In 2019, the leading Level 2 risk factor for attributable deaths globally in males was tobacco (smoked, second-hand, and chewing), which accounted for 6·56 million (95% UI 6·02–7·10) deaths (21·4% [20·5–22·3] of all male deaths in 2019), followed by high SBP, which accounted for 5·60 million (4·90–6·29) deaths (18·2% [16·2–20·1] of all male deaths in 2019). The third largest Level 2 risk factor for attributable deaths among males in 2019 was dietary risks (4·47 million [3·65–5·45] deaths, or 14·6% [12·0–17·6] of all male deaths in 2019) followed by air pollution (ambient particulate matter and ambient ozone pollution, accounting for 3·75 million [3·31–4·24] deaths (12·2% [11·0–13·4] of all male deaths in 2019), and then high FPG (3·14 million [2·70–4·34] deaths, or 11·1% [8·9–14·1] of all male deaths in 2019).

Jim Hansen and a colleague, Dr. Kharecha (the first author) have worked the numbers, including the big, big, big bogeyman at Fukushima:

Prevented Mortality and Greenhouse Gas Emissions from Historical and Projected Nuclear Power (Pushker A. Kharecha* and James E. Hansen Environ. Sci. Technol., 2013, 47 (9), pp 4889–4895)

Antinukes and the bullshit anti-nuke rhetoric they hand out, has killed more people than antivaxxers killed in the Covid event. The daily death toll from air pollution, a side effect of the anti-nuke ignorance freak out, is higher than Covid killed on its worst day.

No amount of whining by anti-nukes will ever convince me that they give a shit. They clearly don't.

I don't make shit up; and I don't chant shit from pop websites to which I google my way. I work in the primary scientific literature. I do so because I care. And you know what? The more I've learned about something called "reality," the angrier I get.

The world is on fire. Were it not for the victory of fear and ignorance, it might not have been so.

Have a nice evening.

[thucythucy]

13. Thank you for the reference.

So three and a quarter trillion world wide over sixteen years.

Just to be clear, you're proposing what? Crash programs to bring how many reactors on line and how fast? This presumably would decrease our reliance on coal and natural gas for heat and power, but would do nothing about automobile emissions and green house gas produced by a myriad of manufacturing processes.

And what "anti-nuke bullshit" are you referencing?

I'm not opposed to nuclear power on principle, but I do have concerns I'd like to see addressed--concerns that could have and should have been addressed by now, assuming fixes are possible.

The main concern--and it's substantial--is what to do with the waste products? My understanding is that we already are sitting on an enormous stockpile of highly toxic byproducts of nuclear power generation. These are substances which will have to be isolated for decades, perhaps--or so I've read--centuries. What this means is that not only do we need a solution that works in the short term, but that any such fix will require maintenance and supervision for the foreseeable future. Given the chaos that seems inherent in our politics around the world, I wonder if such a fix is at all possible.

We're now seeing a full scale war in Ukraine. Evidently there are fears that the stations located in the area might be vulnerable. Certainly Russian behavior around Chernobyl isn't reassuring on that score. What happens if a year or three or fifty or a hundred years from now there's a major war during which nukes are attacked--deliberately or not--or facilities storing toxic materials are targeted?

You maintain that raising the instance of Chernobyl is somehow disingenuous. That the deaths or other health effects of that disaster have been exaggerated. That's how I read your posts anyway, or that no matter what the health aftereffects these pale in comparison to the damage done by other pollutants. But I look at Chernobyl and see it as a major factor that brought about the collapse of the Soviet Union. That area--in Ukraine and Belarus--is still contaminated, and will remain so for the foreseeable future. Three or four or ten such disasters, even spread out over decades, would be enormously destabilizing, and the proliferation of nuclear plants around the world would make such instances more likely.

Obviously I'm not as cynical about the opposition to nuclear power as you are. I think its critics are as likely to be concerned about climate change as anyone else.

Three Mile Island, Chernobyl and Fukushima certainly heightened concerns about nuclear power plants. The last two are especially troubling. Chernobyl was largely the fault of cutting corners around cost compounded by human error, and Fukushima the result of a natural disaster. Neither of these will go away any time soon, if ever. So when I think of hundreds more nukes, some of them inevitably located in either future war zones or in areas vulnerable to natural disaster, yes, I have concerns. Knock down a thousand windmills and there will be environmental costs, for sure. Compromise safety at, say, ten nukes over the course of a decade and it's a world altering problem.

Some of this could be alleviated by an increased ability to transmit power across greater distances. It might be not as necessary then to construct plants over earthquake faults or in regions of great political instability. Then again, one aspect of political instability is how unpredictable it can be. Imagine if there had been a nuclear power station in Sarajevo in the early 1990s.

Like I say, I'm not anti-nuke on principle. But nuclear technology is such that it needs to be foolproof in ways that other technologies don't. That to me is the major issue--how to get to a point where major accidents are essentially impossible. And even if the technology and infrastructure are foolproof, there's always human error, human malevolence, and natural disaster.

In retrospect three trillion some odd dollars over sixteen years world wide is rather pathetic. During that time one nation alone--the United States--spent more than 100 trillion dollars on "defense." Had we been at all serious about climate change we should have been spending that sort of money on a variety of fixes, including the massive development of renewables, serious progress on reducing auto emissions--for instance by massive investment in mass transit--on cutting other sources of emissions, and perhaps also developing a foolproof nuclear technology as an additional resource. Instead we've spent our time and treasure on war making and increasing the personal wealth of a tiny sliver of our population.

As a civilization it does appear to me that we've screwed ourselves big time. Future historians--assuming they will even exist--will not be kind to this era of human history.

[NNadir]

14. I really, really, really don't care about what some people call "nuclear waste."

Last edited Fri Jul 29, 2022, 09:10 AM - Edit history (1)

I'm far more concerned with dangerous fossil fuel waste, again, in case you missed it, air pollution and now, climate change.

I hear endlessly about so called "nuclear waste," but what I don't hear is any account of the accumulation of used nuclear fuels over more than 70 years killing as many people as will die in the next 70 minutes from air pollution.

I am familiar with every single fission product and every actinide in the periodic table. I've spent 30 years learning about it, again in the primary scientific literature.

I've written many, many, many articles here about the constituents of nuclear fuel, all of which I consider to be extremely valuable materials that can do what no other materials can do. High energy radiation breaks strong chemical bonds. Most persistent chemical pollutants feature just such bonds.

Here's just one example of what I've written about the utility of components of used nuclear fuel, one that is not employed because of irrational fetishes about the risks of radiation: Nice Mechanistic Graphic on the Mechanism of Mineralization of PFAS by Irradiation.

So please spare me a lecture on so called "nuclear waste." The difference between so called "nuclear waste" and dangerous fossil fuel waste is that fossil fuel waste kills people on a vast scale, and is, in fact, killing the entire planet, wiping out precious ecosystems and so called "nuclear waste," um, isn't.

Now, again, in case it escaped you, I have not claimed that nuclear energy is risk free. It doesn't have to be risk free to be vastly superior to everything else; it only has to be vastly superior to everything else, which it is. I include in "superior to everything else," tearing the shit out virgin wilderness and lacing it with access roads for huge diesel trucks to make industrial parks for wind turbines.

You want me to comment on Chernobyl? OK. I will. Chernobyl was a wake up call for me because it opened my mind to question obscene and frankly dishonest rhetoric. I changed my mind from being a dumb rote anti-nuke because of Chernobyl, not in spite of it. The reason is that I was trained by buying into bullshit by people whose credibility I stupidly accepted that Chernobyl would lead to vast deaths across Europe, millions of people. The reality is very different. Chernobyl is the worst case possible. A flammable core burned for weeks releasing the bulk of the radioactive components. There were deaths of course, but on what scale? Given 18,000 deaths to 19,000 deaths per day from air pollution, how many days of air pollution deaths have been caused by Chernobyl radiation releases over 36 years?

Kiev is still there, although it's being attacked by Russians whose weapons were financed by Germany because Germany made the disastrous, deadly decision to shut its nuclear plants in an appeal to fear and ignorance.

Which killed more Ukrainians, dangerous fossil fuels diverted to weapons of mass destruction or Chernobyl?

I don't credit selective attention. Chernobyl occurred in April of 1986, 36 years ago. In that 36 years, I'm certain that more people have died from air pollution generated by burning coal to power computers to whine about Chernobyl than were killed by the radiation released by the reactor.

I'm not joking. I'm deadly serious. Fossil fuels kill people whenever they operate normally. The rates at which they kill were also reported in Lancet, again, one of the world's most prestigious scientific medical journals.

Anil Markandya, Paul Wilkinson, Electricity generation and health, The Lancet, Volume 370, Issue 9591, 2007, Pages 979-990.

Here's table 2: .

Literally tens of thousands of scientific papers have been written about Chernobyl. I've personally read at least a thousand myself, probably much more; I've lost count.

The Germans worked themselves up to a frenzy of extreme ignorance, destroying valuable infrastructure that worked to save humanity, because of idiotic interpretations of Chernobyl

The Germans are burning coal right now because they shut their nuclear plants to finance Putin. It's a decision that is effectively murder based on the data just produced.

On Tuesday, my son, of whom I'm very proud, a highly trained materials science engineer begins a Ph.D. program in nuclear engineering.

He knows, as I know, that selective attention is obscene in the extreme. The numbers from my previous post indicate about 6 to 7 million air pollution deaths per year. There are more recent assessments that argue the figure is higher.

I discussed on such claim here: A different figure for world wide air pollution deaths than the one I generally use.

This recent paper claimed 8.7 million air pollution deaths per year.

But let's use the Lancet numbers, between 6 and 7 million deaths. In the 36 years that people have been carrying on endlessly about Chernobyl, the death toll from air pollution, between 220,000,000 million and 250,000,000 people died from air pollution.

And yet, and yet, and yet I am still asked to discuss Chernobyl.

I'm sorry. I can't take that seriously.

Nuclear energy saves lives. So called "renewable energy," with it's very very low energy to mass ratio, is based on mining the shit out of the planet and building multiple systems that add up to extreme unreliability. Depending on the weather for all of our energy at the same time we have destabilized the weather is, frankly, insane. We've made a world in which people will die of their air conditioners lose power, or if they can't afford air conditioning, a very dangerous feedback loop.

The claim that so called "renewable energy" is sustainable is nonsense and it's reactionary. It's reactionary because humanity lived at the pleasure of the weather for eons and abandoned it for a reason. It proved to be something of a Faustian bargain, since the move to high energy density materials, coal, oil, and gas is not sustainable, but they did so because depending on the weather was not sustainable. Most people then, even more so than today, lived short, miserable lives of dire poverty.

I believe it's just at the edge of feasibility that some of what is left for future generations might yet be saved using the discovery in the 20th century made by some of the finest minds the world has ever seen, and even that some of what has been lost might be restored.

You want to know what I think we should do? How about thinking differently? How about recognizing that everything we're doing is not working? How about confessing ignorance? I did after Chernobyl.

People get angry at me for telling the truth as I see it but I'm morally compelled to refuse to lie to make people feel all warm and fuzzy by nodding my head in agreement with the unacceptable and the immoral. A vast tragedy is underway. Because of this, we should challenge ourselves; challenge our assumptions, in particular lazy rote assumptions.

Few people have the privilege of access to the scientific literature that I have enjoyed for 30 years; I do understand that, but I didn't have that access in 1986, but still I opened my mind and questioned myself. I sought, urgently, to learn more, and I've spent all the years since doing so, often at personal sacrifice.

Anyone who cares can do that. On the other hand, if one doesn't care, one can - and many people here do - mouth slogans.

I have no use, none, zero, zilch, nada, for slogans containing the words "Chernobyl," "Fukushima," or "Three Mile Island." On the scale of the vast and unyielding and constant face of climate change, those three events are trivial in the extreme. Likewise, I have no use for evocations of so called "nuclear waste." I have told my son as he embarks on a nuclear engineering career - one he's chosen that honors me - that used nuclear fuel, particularly the actinides therein, are the key to saving what still can be saved and restoring what can be restored. It's not "waste." It's a valuable treasure an essential tool to which we are privileged to have access.

Have a nice day tomorrow.

[hunter]

10. If wind energy wasn't good for the natural gas industry Texas would oppose it.

Wind energy will only prolong our dependence on natural gas and the gas industry knows it.

It's not a coincidence that Denmark loves wind energy too.

[NNadir]

11. No, it isn't a coincidence where Denmark is concerned. To their credit, they're up front about it.

The put the link to their data on the wind industry on the same page as they put their offshore oil and gas drilling data.

Of course, if one digs deep enough, one can see them mouthing the lie that someday they'll stop drilling, but they haven't stopped, aren't stopping and won't stop until they can get the last possible carbon dioxide molecule into the atmosphere while chanting about how "green" they are.

[Finishline42]

12. Who owns all that land in Red states where most of the wind farms exist?

That means that ranchers/land owners are the prime beneficiaries of the monthly lease payments per windmill on their property. It's the main reason the subsidies keep getting extended.