Who Builds Those Windmills? The windmill has become a symbol of
Indiana’s move into the clean energy future. Many Hoosiers have
gazed in awe at the expansive wind farms off of I-65 just north
of Lafayette. But how much do we really know about wind energy
in Indiana? In the last several decades, wind energy has come a
long way from the heavily subsidized Carter-era energy projects
that eventually fizzled. Recently, thanks to technological
developments making turbines more efficient, wind energy has
taken off in the United States. Installed capacity for wind
energy in the U.S. has increased at an average rate of 22
percent over the past five years. The Midwest has experienced
similar growth in wind energy capacity. Iowa and Minnesota have
led the expansion in the Midwest over the last five years,
complemented more recently by Indiana (see Figure 1). As Figure
2 shows, Iowa and Minnesota are two of the top five wind-
producing states across the nation as a whole due largely to
their favorable wind conditions. Fig