Wednesday was a difficult day for The American Independent News Network, which is the larger entity that operates The Iowa Independent. Our chief executive and founder announced two of our sister sites would close and their content would be moved to The American Independent.
A recently introduced bill could have far-reaching impact on the U.S. sugar industry, including American Crystal Sugar, a farmer-owned cooperative that locked out 1,300 Midwest workers on Aug. 1.
The chairman for Herman Cain’s Iowa effort says the campaign “relied more on the word of farmers than Washington regulators” in deciding to run an ad containing claims the Environmental Protection Agency says are false.
The Iowa Senate will remain under the control of a slim 26-25 Democratic majority when it reconvenes in January 2012.
Iowa is on the cusp of becoming the “Silicon Valley of the Midwest,” and interest in developing businesses related to renewable fuels is high, Iowa Gov. Chet Culver said Wednesday.
“We’ve made a good name for ourselves across the nation and around the world in terms of being very serious about job creation and leading the way in terms of renewable energy,” Culver said.
Culver’s remarks came as he presented first applications to the Iowa Power Fund board, a group charged with deciding how to distribute $25 million in grants to businesses and organizations interested in finding ways to grow the state’s alternative energy industry and decreasing the state’s dependence on fossil fuels.
The Legislature last year agreed to fund a Culver initiative that will award $100 million in grants over the next four years.The grant requests that Culver presented to the board on Wednesday represented applications for nearly $190 million. The grant program, overseen by the newly created Iowa Office of Energy Independence, is charged with reducing the state’s use of foreign oil by 2025.
Culver told the board that the applications were made by groups from all corners of the state, representing universities and colleges, utilities, for-profits, non-profits, associations, and school districts.
“I look forward to seeing which organizations are awarded the very first Power Fund dollars as Iowa moves quickly to become the renewable energy capital of the United States,” Culver said.
The first grants are expected to be awarded in April or May.
Grant requests ran the gamut from high-tech wind turbines that operate regardless of wind speed, the development of technology that would improve the environmental aspects of coal use and the installation of solar panels to convert sunlight into electricity.
The state hopes to leverage the $100 million in aid to a half-billion dollars in spending by requiring investments by the groups interested in receiving the funds.
Iowa’s bio-fuels industry is one of the fastest-growing segments of the state’s economy, with ethanol and soy-diesel plants springing up across the state. In addition, the state has emerged as a major source of wind energy in recent years, and Culver has worked to leverage that by recruiting wind-turbine manufacturers to add factories in the state.
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