Environmental
MidAmerican is focused on meeting our customers’ energy needs with cleaner generation and minimizing our impact on the environment.
Since 2004, we have invested nearly $15 billion in renewable energy projects, at no net cost to our customers. In fact, MidAmerican's customers enjoy some of the lowest electric rates in the country - the 5th lowest in 2022.
As part of MidAmerican’s journey to a net-zero carbon future, our Wind PRIME project — currently awaiting regulatory approval — will add more wind and solar generation and allow us to deliver 100% renewable energy to Iowa customers on an ongoing basis.
Our low, stable rates, renewable energy investments and unique sustainability programs, like GreenAdvantage, provides Iowa businesses and communities an undeniable competitive advantage.
But cleaner energy generation is just one part of our commitment to protecting the environment. Wildlife protection, recycling the equipment we use up and down our supply chain and offering energy efficiency programming to customers are all important initiatives for MidAmerican.
The metal components of a blade are valuable scrap materials, the long balsa wood spars that support a blade’s overall structure are valuable for construction purposes, and the resin that holds the blade together is burned to generate the heat needed for extracting and upcycling the glass fiber. Then, the recycled fiberglass can be provided to manufacturers to go in things like concrete mixes, boats, sporting equipment and more.
Wildlife and habitat protection are an essential part of our environmental efforts. We developed a Habitat Conservation Plan in partnership with landowners and the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service that outlines how we minimize and mitigate negative impacts our wind turbines or energy generation systems have on local ecosystems.
Energy efficiency is more than just making the most power with the least impact, it’s helping our customers use energy wisely to meet their needs while reducing their usage. Energy management will be an important part of a net-zero greenhouse gas emissions future. SummerSaver, our demand response program, helps protect our system and reduce usage during peak hours on the hottest days of the summer. Our energy efficiency rebates help customers save on energy-saving equipment, while programs like HomeCheck® Online help our customers evaluate their energy usage to make small changes to reduce energy consumption.
Additional emissions and regulatory reports below:
- Coal combustion residual data
- Greenhouse Gas and Methane Emissions reports
- MidAmerican's current plan is to retire existing coal units by 2049
MidAmerican knows that the future of transportation is electric. Electric vehicle (EV) adoption in the Midwest has lagged because of a lack of charging infrastructure. But we’re committed to changing that by building a network of more than 41 EV fast chargers across Iowa.
Beyond personal vehicles, we’ve partnered with DART in Des Moines, MetroLINK in the Quad Cities and Iowa City Transit in Iowa City to add electric buses to their fleets. These 100% electric buses run on cleaner energy. Even bikes are running on clean energy! MidAmerican and the BCycle program brought electric bikes powered by wind and solar to downtown Des Moines in 2021.