Why Kentucky Is Dead Last for Wind and Solar Production
Coal industry influence and climate change denial paved
the state’s race to the clean
energy bottom. As one lawmaker put it: “God created coal for people.”
Coal miners, their faces smeared with coal dust in a
coal mine, in Cumberland, Kentucky, around 1945. Credit: Curtis
Wainscott/FPG/Archive Photos/Getty Images
LOUISVILLE, Ky.—Andy McDonald recalls a decade-old Kentucky
legislative hearing on an energy diversification bill with the same
sense of frustration that he felt back then, when he testified before
a panel of lawmakers who were mostly coal industry loyalists.
McDonald, a clean energy advocate and energy policy consultant, was
armed with a study by Synapse Energy Economics of Boston that made an
economic case for requiring utilities to invest in renewable energy
and energy efficiency.
Lawmakers opted to maintain the status quo.
“After testifying about this, the legislature went on a rant about how
high energy bills were and why we can’t do anything about that,” said
McDonald, founder and director of Apogee,
a firm in Frankfort, Kentucky, that provides technical assistance,
education and policy research toward advancing a renewable energy
transition. “I was banging my head on the table, saying we just told
you what you can do about that.”
A decade later, the latest figures from the U.S. Energy Information
Administration show that
Kentucky is dead last among states for wind and solar production in
the United States. And while state officials note an uptick in the
last couple of years in proposed utility-scale solar power projects,
Kentucky experienced what could be described as a lost decade of
renewable energy investment, while wind and solar power have soared in
other states—including some other coal states.
“The absence of a renewable portfolio standard has been a major factor
in our backwardness,” said McDonald. “The coal industry has had such a
grip on the legislature and the governorship, and the culture, it’s
really held back policies that would have supported renewables.
“It’s not the lack of sunshine,” McDonald said.
Coal States’ Response to Energy Transition Varies
Ten years ago, it was clear that the coal economy was in freefall and
that wind and solar were on the rise.
Kentucky ranked third in the country in coal production in 2013,
behind Wyoming and West Virginia, and the state was tied with several
others at the bottom in wind and solar development.
In 2022, Kentucky’s coal production had fallen by 65 percent and its
ranking fell to fifth. And, the state had made almost no investment in
wind and solar, so it remained at the bottom.
But it was a different story in some of the other leading coal states.
Illinois, Indiana, North Dakota, Ohio and Texas all had increases in
electricity generation from wind and solar of at least 150 percent.
Kentucky was much more like its neighbors Pennsylvania and West
Virginia, with a relative lack of wind and utility-scale solar
development.
So what is it about Kentucky that has held the renewable energy sector
back? A common explanation is that the state doesn’t have strong winds
or bright enough sun.
A solar array was constructed next to a shut down coal mine in Lynch,
Kentucky. Credit: James Bruggers
But that’s not true. Kentucky has more than enough of both to support
substantial development, according to a model developed at the Goldman
School of Public Policy at the University of California, Berkeley.
“Western Kentucky has very good solar (potential) and also very good
wind,” said Umed Paliwal, a senior scientist at the university.
It’s useful to compare Kentucky and Indiana, he said. Indiana’s wind
speeds have allowed for significant wind farm development and give it
the capability to build about one-third more wind power capacity than
Kentucky, and Indiana’s sunshine would allow it to build about double
the solar power capacity of Kentucky. This is based on the model’s
estimates of the technical potential of what could be built in each
state and sell for competitive prices on the market.
Indiana has an edge, but it’s not nearly large enough to explain the
huge difference in the amount of wind and solar development that has
taken place. This comparison provides a sense of the scale of
Kentucky’s untapped potential.
“The states that have done well with renewables are states that
planned for it, and had public leadership that welcomed it,” said Adam
Edelen, a former Kentucky state auditor who runs a Kentucky-based
company, Edelen Renewables, working to bring solar projects and jobs
to ailing coal communities in Appalachia. “In Kentucky, for too long,
both political parties have alternated between ambiguous and hostile
to renewable energy.”
The problem persists. One example, he said, is the recent decision by
Kentucky Gov. Andy Beshear, a Democrat, not to veto a bill passed by
the Republican-controlled General Assembly intended to prevent the
closing of half-century-old and uneconomical coal-fired power plants.
